Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629 (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) 0195305760, 9780195305760

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Part I: Basel and the Reformation, 1529–1550
1. Basel and Its Reformed Church
2. Preaching and Teaching in Theory and Practice
3. Building a New Church
Part II: Creating a System of Pastoral Education
4. Laying the Foundation
5. The Arts Faculty and General Education
6. Theology Instruction in Basel
Part III: The Reformed Art of Preaching
7. The Development of Reformed Homiletics
8. The Evolution of Preaching in Basel
Part IV: The Pastor in the Parish
9. The Career of a Basel Pastor
10. The Pastor as Teacher
11. Pastoral Care from Cradle to Grave
12. The Transformation of the Pastoral Ministry
Tables
Graphs
Appendix: Comparison of Commentaries on Daniel 3:24–25
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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D
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K
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P
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Citation preview

Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629

AMY NELSON BURNETT

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Teaching the Reformation

OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY Series Editor David C. Steinmetz, Duke University Editorial Board Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-WilhelmsUniversita¨t Bonn Irena Backus, Universite´ de Gene`ve Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia THE GOSPEL OF JOHN IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The Johannine Exegesis of Wolfgang Musculus Craig S. Farmer PRIMITIVISM, RADICALISM, AND THE LAMB’S WAR The Baptist-Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England T. L. Underwood HUMAN FREEDOM, CHRISTIAN RIGHTEOUSNESS Philip Melanchthon’s Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam Timothy J. Wengert CASSIAN THE MONK Columba Stewart IMAGES AND RELICS Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe John Dillenberger THE BODY BROKEN The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France Christopher Elwood WHAT PURE EYES COULD SEE Calvin’s Doctrine of Faith in Its Exegetical Context Barbara Pitkin

THE PLEASURE OF DISCERNMENT Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian Carol Thysell REFORMATION READINGS OF THE APOCALYPSE Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg Irena Backus WRITING THE WRONGS Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation John L. Thomspon THE HUNGRY ARE DYING Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia Susan R. Holman RESCUE FOR THE DEAD The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity Jeffrey A. Trumbower AFTER CALVIN Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition Richard A. Muller THE POVERTY OF RICHES St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered Kenneth Baxter Wolf

THE UNACCOMMODATED CALVIN Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition Richard A. Muller

REFORMING MARY Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century Beth Kreitzer

THE CONFESSIONALIZATION OF HUMANISM IN REFORMATION GERMANY Erika Rummell

TEACHING THE REFORMATION Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629 Amy Nelson Burnett

Teaching the Reformation Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629

amy nelson burnett

1 2006

3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright # 2006 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burnett, Amy Nelson, 1957– Teaching the Reformation : ministers and their message in Basel, 1529–1629/ Amy Nelson Burnett. p. cm.—(Oxford studies in historical theology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-19-530576-0 ISBN 0-19-530576-0 1. Reformed Church—Doctrines. 2. Pastoral theology. 3. Clergy—Training of—History. 4. Basel (Switzerland)—Church history. 5. Church history—16th century. I. Title. II. Series. BX9422.3.B87 2006 274.94'3206—dc22 2006003676

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For Peter

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Acknowledgments

In many ways, this is a book about boundaries—not only the confessional boundaries separating Reformed from Lutheran but also the generational boundaries separating the phases of confessional development within Basel. Like the Baslers, I have tried to straddle many boundaries in order to write it. My favorite metaphor for that process, modified to fit the particular circumstance, has been the description that Charles Homer Haskins’s anonymous undergraduate gave of Dante, who ‘‘stands with one foot in the Middle Ages while with the other he salutes the rising star of the Renaissance’’ (Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, p. 9). My own feet have been more prosaically planted on two sides of a number of divides, whether geographical, national, cultural or disciplinary. The Atlantic presented the biggest barrier to an American scholar doing research in European history, but even when I was in Europe I spent as much time doing research and writing in Germany as I did in Switzerland. In the book itself I have attempted to bridge the gap between social and intellectual history, as well as the academic divide in Europe between secular history and church history. I have drawn on scholarship devoted to both Lutheran and Reformed confessionalization and benefited from conversations with specialists from all of these areas. Such a balancing act has been made possible by the support of funding agencies, institutions, and individuals. I wrote most of the book while supported by a Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The fellowship allowed for extended time away from teaching and administrative responsibilities so that I could concentrate on writing. Just as important, the fellowship made it possible for me to do that writing within range of libraries that

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provided the sources for parts II and III, making them into something quite different from what they would have been if I had not had such ready access to those books. A fellowship from the Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbu¨ttel enabled me to spend a summer using the rich holdings of that library. Both the Research Council and the (now defunct) Humanities Center of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UN-L), as well as the Anderson and Oldfather Funds of the university’s history department, have supported summer travel to Switzerland and the extensive microfilm orders that allowed me to do archival research in European history even from the heart of the Great Plains. Heinz Schilling graciously welcomed me into his Oberseminar during the year I spent in Berlin, and despite its many quirks, I grew to love working in the Staatsbibliothek there. An invitation by Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte to participate in an Arbeitstagung on the early modern clergy in the spring of 2002 proved immensely stimulating to my own work on Basel’s pastors, and I have appreciated further conversations about Basel and its pastors with her in the years since. The present and former editors of Heinrich Bullinger’s correspondence at the Institute for Swiss Reformation History in Zurich, especially Hans Ulrich Ba¨chtold, Rainer Henrich, and Kurt Jacob Ru¨etschi, were more than generous with their assistance as I combed through the Institute’s transcriptions of Bullinger’s correspondence looking for references to developments in Basel. Stephen Buckwalter of the Bucer Forschungsstelle in Heidelberg just as readily provided me with transcriptions of Bucer’s correspondence with various Baslers. I am especially grateful to friends and colleagues in Basel. This study was sparked by a conversation fifteen years ago with Hans Guggisberg, who suggested that Simon Sulzer would be a worthwhile figure for someone interested in Basel’s history to examine. The scope of the book has grown far beyond what he originally envisioned, but I am glad that he was able to hear my very first and preliminary findings before his death in 1996. I became aware of Martin Sallmann’s Habilitation on Basel preaching as I was finishing work on this book, and I regret that it was not published in time for me to consult it. The staffs of both the Universita¨tsbibliothek and the Staatsarchiv in Basel have been tremendously supportive during my many visits to both institutions over the course of the past decade. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Martin Steinmann and his colleagues in the Handschriftenabteilung of the library, as well to Dr. Josef Zwicker and the personnel of the archive for their advice, their patience, and their good humor as they dealt with the stack of orders I regularly turned in during my visits. On my many trips to Basel through the years I have enjoyed the generous hospitality and friendship of Ingalisa Reicke, whose familiarity with Basel’s theology faculty in the twentieth century has been a fascinating counterpoint to my knowledge of that faculty in the sixteenth century. Rebecca Reese and John Kristopeit have also provided a warm welcome and a familiar Wisconsin accent over the many years since we were students together in Basel. As a testimony to the interdependence of teaching and research, I would also like to acknowledge the influence of the Peer Review of Teaching Project

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at UN-L on my study of Basel’s clergy. Dan Bernstein, who first got me involved in Peer Review, Paul Savory and Amy Goodburn, my fellow coordinators of the Project, and the many outstanding teachers at UN-L who have participated in the project over the past several years have all helped me see that whether one is talking about Reformed pastors in the past or university professors in the present, communication is at the heart of effective teaching. They should all recognize my premise that although this book is about the pastors, their effectiveness as teachers cannot be fully assessed without some discussion of student learning. My greatest personal debt is to my family. My husband, Steve, has been my chief sounding board and encourager over the many years I have devoted to this project. I have relied not only on his knowledge of Basel (and of Hebrew!) but also on his good sense and critical judgment. Our children have grown up listening to conversations about clergy, curriculum, and confessional propria over dinner—and they have patiently put up with a mother whose mind sometimes seemed to be more in the sixteenth century than in the twenty-first. They have weathered with good grace the trials of being uprooted from familiar surroundings in order to spend summers or an entire school year in unfamiliar places. Without all of their support, I would not have been able to write this book. In a special way, though, this book is associated with my son Peter. I began work on it in earnest a decade ago, the summer before he was born, and Basel’s pastors have been part of his entire life. It therefore seems appropriate that since Katy and Dan have already seen their names in print, this book should be dedicated to Peter.

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Contents

Introduction, 3 Part I: Basel and the Reformation, 1529–1550 1. Basel and Its Reformed Church, 19 2. Preaching and Teaching in Theory and Practice, 47 3. Building a New Church, 67 Part II: Creating a System of Pastoral Education 4. Laying the Foundation, 91 5. The Arts Faculty and General Education, 111 6. Theology Instruction in Basel, 127 Part III: The Reformed Art of Preaching 7. The Development of Reformed Homiletics, 157 8. The Evolution of Preaching in Basel, 171 Part IV: The Pastor in the Parish 9. 10. 11. 12.

The Career of a Basel Pastor, 197 The Pastor as Teacher, 221 Pastoral Care from Cradle to Grave, 237 The Transformation of the Pastoral Ministry, 261

Tables, 279 Graphs, 285 Appendix: Comparison of Commentaries on Daniel 3:24–25, 291

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Notes, 295 Bibliography, 405 Index, 443

Teaching the Reformation

Interior of Basel cathedral during a worship service, 1650, by Johann Sixt Ringle, Historisches Museum Basel. Reprinted by permission.

Introduction

In the beginning was the word . . . —John 1:1 In 1519, Erasmus published the second edition of his Greek New Testament containing, among other changes, a translation of the opening of John’s Gospel that differed from the time-honored wording of the Vulgate. Erasmus’s substitution of sermo for verbum provoked such criticism that the following year the Dutch humanist felt compelled to publish a defense of his translation.1 The controversy over Erasmus’s translation of the Greek logos demonstrates how seriously biblical humanists and scholastic theologians alike took the meaning of words, particularly those words that comprised the word of God, the Bible. In fact, the tempest over Erasmus’s translation would soon be subsumed by the much larger conflict over the interpretation of God’s word waged between evangelical reformers and defenders of the old church. Social historians are fond of quoting A. G. Dickens’s aphorism about the urban nature of the Reformation, but Dickens’s complete thought points to its verbal nature as well: ‘‘the German Reformation was an urban event at once literary, technological and oratorical.’’2 Luther regarded the word of God as the origin and touchstone of his theology; one of the first reforms demanded by his followers was the preaching of ‘‘the pure word of God.’’ Luther and his supporters used the relatively new technology of printing to publicize their message beyond their immediate audience, thus ensuring the rapid spread of evangelical ideas throughout German-speaking Europe. The word, whether spoken or written, was given new significance by the reformers’ appeal to the authority of the Bible.

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This emphasis on the word was in sharp contrast to many of their contemporaries’ experience of Christianity. Late medieval religion was rich in imagery and symbolism. Particularly as experienced by the laity, it was primarily affective and sensual, intended to induce feelings of awe and reverence. The evangelical concentration on the word led the reformers to stress the intellectual content of the faith, not just for the learned but for all Christians. And for some reformers, that concentration led to an almost complete rejection of the nonverbal aspects of worship so important in the late medieval church. The ‘‘stripping of the altars’’ that Eamon Duffy describes in England was a pale imitation, both in speed and in degree of change, of the radical transformation of worship and religious devotion that occurred in the areas influenced by the Zwinglian reformation. In a few short years, the symbolic and sensual aspects of worship were abolished from many churches in Switzerland and south Germany and replaced by a focus on the reading and preaching of the word of God.3 The Protestant reformers believed that their chief responsibility was to communicate a message, which they directed toward two different audiences. Their most immediate task was to teach the gospel to the laity. The word of God had to be proclaimed as fully and as accurately as possible, adapted to the laity’s level of understanding and explained to meet the circumstances of their lives. The reformers were too few to undertake this task alone, however, and so they also had to teach other pastors, both their contemporaries and their successors, to communicate the evangelical message as well. And as any teacher knows, it is not an easy task to communicate a complex body of ideas to one’s audience. The transmission process is rife with possibilities for misunderstanding. In the case of the Reformation, well-intentioned intermediaries could easily distort the evangelical message, through either omission or unauthorized embellishment of key components, and even a straightforward presentation might meet with simple incomprehension from a largely illiterate audience. In fact, the effectiveness of the reformers as teachers has been questioned ever since Gerald Strauss asserted that the Reformation failed to establish the Christian society its leaders envisioned. On the basis of his survey of visitation records, Strauss argued for the persistence of a popular religious culture, despite the reformers’ best efforts to indoctrinate the common people with evangelical beliefs.4 In a later defense of his work, Strauss acknowledged that not all historians shared his understanding of the Reformation as an effort to Christianize the common people, but he continued to maintain that the spiritual impact of the Reformation was neither deep nor long-lasting.5 Strauss’s claims spurred further research into the impact of the Reformation at the popular level. In the three decades since his work was published, scholars have learned to approach visitation reports and other types of ecclesiastical records with greater methodological rigor. Anthropological theory, in particular, has had a tremendous influence on the investigation of popular religion. Following the pioneering work of Natalie Davis and Bob Scribner, historians have developed a new awareness of the continuities in popular religious practice before and after the Reformation and a greater appreciation of ritual for both shaping and giving expression to popular belief.6

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The new focus on ritual and popular religious practice has been a necessary corrective to earlier preoccupation with major figures such as Luther and Calvin. However, this new interest has largely neglected a key group, the parish clergy, who played a vital role in the process of establishing new religious beliefs and standards of behavior among the laity. These men were primarily responsible for transmitting the evangelical message formulated by a handful of theologians to the burghers and peasants who comprised the bulk of the population. They were also the ones who controlled the rituals that were retained, revised, or introduced by the reformers and who were charged with instructing the laity about their significance. Finally, they were the ones often entrusted with overseeing the behavior of their parishioners. Any effort to determine the impact of the Reformation at the popular level must therefore consider the parish pastors as the crucial link in teaching the Reformation. The Protestant pastors and their message are the subject of this study. I look at the Reformed clergy of Basel as teachers of the Reformation from three perspectives. First, I examine the way future pastors learned to teach the word of God while they were students at Basel’s Latin school and university. Second, because it is linked inextricably with pastoral education, I analyze the increasingly complex message that future pastors were taught to communicate. Third, I investigate how this training shaped the practice of the Reformed pastoral ministry and evaluate the influence of that ministry on the religious beliefs and behavior of the laity. Only after we understand how these pastors were taught and what they were taught to communicate can we understand why they acted as they did as teachers and evaluate what impact they had on popular religious culture. To provide a broader context for evaluating the pastors’ ministry, I also consider the institutions and practices that were developed to aid the communication process: not only the schools where young men were prepared for the ministry but also the supervisory structures and practices that were established to aid pastors in their preaching and teaching responsibilities. The communication process was not static but evolved significantly in the century following the Reformation, as intellectual, confessional, and political developments shaped successive generations of the Protestant clergy. During this period, church leaders developed and then fine-tuned a system to train future pastors as effective teachers. At the same time, the confessional developments of the later sixteenth century brought a growing precision and detail to the interpretation of God’s word. As a consequence, each generation of pastors had their own understanding of what they needed to teach and how they were to go about teaching it. The result was the gradual implantation of a Reformed religious culture in the city and territory of Basel.

The Reformation and the Pastoral Ministry To appreciate these developments fully, we must start with a consideration of pastoral care and the parish ministry on the eve of the Reformation. Only then

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can we understand the significance of the changes the reformers and their successors wrought. Before the Reformation, ‘‘the clergy’’ was an amorphous group, separated from the laity by their special relationship to the church but as varied an estate, both socially and economically, as the laity were. At the top of the social scale were the prince-bishops and prelates from Germany’s most powerful families—Erasmus allegedly quipped that Christ himself would not have been admitted to the cathedral chapter in Strasbourg. At the bottom of the scale were the ‘‘clerical proletariat,’’ priests who found temporary positions as curates for absentee pastors or as assistants to resident pastors, and who vied to obtain benefices, hence a guaranteed income, for themselves. In between was a broad spectrum of secular clergy and religious (both male and female, cloistered and mendicants); those charged with cure of souls and those without pastoral responsibility; ordained priests and those in minor orders; officials who staffed the ecclesiastical courts and episcopal and papal administrations; university professors and students; private chaplains and chantry priests.7 The parish clergy comprised only a very small proportion of the clerical estate. On the eve of the Reformation, those priests who were involved in pastoral care at the parish level were differentiated by social standing, income, and degree of interaction with their parishioners. According to the church’s ideal, the beneficed priest resided in his parish and provided cure of souls for those in his charge. In fact, by the end of the Middle Ages, there were many variations on this model. Parishes could be incorporated into ecclesiastical institutions that used a portion of the benefice’s income to pay a curate or perpetual vicar (Leutpriester) to carry out the pastoral responsibilities associated with the benefice. Depending on how these positions were funded and supervised, they could be fairly stable or they could experience frequent turnover. Priests who presided over large parishes could hire one or more assistants or make use of chaplains to assist in the provision of pastoral care. Parishes at both the high and the low end of the economic scale often suffered from nonresidency—the wealthy benefices because priests used part of their income to hire vicars to perform their duties, and the poorer benefices because they could not support a resident priest and their holders were often pluralists. In the diocese of Strasbourg, roughly one-third of the parishes had nonresident clergy in the later fifteenth century, while in the diocese of Geneva, the percentage of nonresident curates rose from 31 percent in 1413 to 43 percent thirty years later.8 The priests responsible for pastoral care also varied in the amount of education they had received. At the end of the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon for the holders of parish benefices to have some university education. In south Germany and Switzerland, as many as 30–40 percent of the incumbents of diocesan benefices had matriculated in a university, and the proportion was even higher for the incumbents of urban parishes. The relatively high rate of nonresidency means that the proportion of those with university degrees who actually exercised pastoral care was somewhat lower, but one cannot assume that the parish clergy as a whole were largely uneducated.9

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While a university education in itself may have helped a priest to obtain a parish benefice, it did little to deepen his knowledge of theology or to prepare him to exercise the tasks of pastoral care. The practical skills needed by a pastor were often acquired by newly ordained men who served a form of apprenticeship through assisting an older priest. Those who lacked such experience could make use of the pastors’ manuals produced at the end of the Middle Ages, intended as practical how-to manuals for those charged with the cure of souls.10 The Reformation brought about a radical transformation of the clergy and of the pastoral ministry.11 It not only broke the pinnacle off the social pyramid that comprised the clerical estate but removed its base as well by eliminating the endowed masses that had supported many of the lower clergy.12 Only the parish clergy remained, a group much more homogeneous in social origin than was the first estate as a whole. Moreover, these priests—now called ministers, reflecting the new perception of their duties—were no longer set apart and above the laity as a separate estate but were now set alongside the laity as part of the priesthood of all believers. The pastoral duties of the parish clergy were also redefined. The medieval definition of pastoral care stemmed from the parish priest’s mediating and intercessory position between God and his parishioners. It consisted chiefly in the provision of the sacraments, especially saying mass for the entire parish, but also administering baptism to those at the beginning and the viaticum as well as confession and last rites to those at the end of life. Petitions requesting the creation of a new parish repeatedly cited the need for a priest who could perform these sacramental and liturgical acts for the petitioners. The laity also expected their parish priest to lead or assist in corporate devotional exercises such as pilgrimages and processions and to offer sacred protection to individuals and the community through their blessings and their control of sacral objects, ranging from relics to holy water.13 Perhaps the closest that a medieval parish priest came to meeting a modern definition of pastoral care occurred within the sacrament of confession. At least once a year, the parish priest had the opportunity to see how much his parishioners knew about the Christian faith, to bring to mind a consciousness of sin along with an assurance of divine forgiveness, and to evoke a sense of repentance and inner devotion. But the circumstances that surrounded the yearly confession militated against its educational and consolatory function. If parishioners confessed only once a year, before their Easter communion, how much time and energy could a priest devote to examining and instructing his charges?14 Parish priests were also supposed to be able to preach and teach, but these abilities were distinctly secondary to their responsibilities for sacramental and ritual acts. Much of the responsibility for preaching had shifted to the mendicant orders after their creation and spread in the thirteenth century. Over the course of the fifteenth century, there was a growing emphasis on preaching within the parish mass on Sundays and feast days. Parish pastors could make use of various preaching manuals and sermon collections, often written

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by mendicants, to assist them in their preaching responsibilities. Perhaps the best known of these, Johann Ulrich Surgant’s Manuale Curatorum, combined a preaching manual with a guide explaining the various tasks and duties of a parish pastor. Studies have shown that these volumes did make their way into the hands of the secular and pastoral clergy in south Germany. Nevertheless, on the eve of the Reformation, parish preaching was still far from usual, especially outside the cities. Perhaps in compensation, there was a significant increase in the number of preacherships endowed by civic institutions and by pious laymen and women, which had the effect of reinforcing the separation of preaching from the other duties of pastoral care incumbent on the parish priest.15 With the Reformation, the focus of pastoral care shifted from performance of ritual to communication of a message. Instead of mediating salvation through their administration of the sacraments, the clergy now mediated it by making the word of God known to the laity.16 In their own eyes, at least, the status of the clergy rested not on their performance of sacramental acts but on their ability to communicate God’s will as revealed in Scripture. The evangelical doctrine of the priesthood of all believers meant that they did not hold a monopoly on Scripture’s interpretation. Nevertheless, the minister’s training in languages, theology, and the principles of exegesis gave him a claim to special authority in his handling of God’s word. This system of training did not spring into being with the introduction of the Reformation, however. The creation of a trained Protestant pastorate was the work of several generations. Each successive generation was distinguished from its predecessors by its educational experiences, as well as by the larger political and confessional developments of its time.

Generational Analysis and the Early Modern Clergy In his seminal essay ‘‘The Problem of Generations,’’ Karl Mannheim observed that individuals of different ages experience the same event in different ways. Members of the same generation are shaped by experiencing events at the same stage of life, and they are differentiated from other generations who interpret those events in the context of their own life experiences. The differing impact of these events creates ‘‘social generations,’’ distinguished not by specific numbers of years so much as by divergent perceptions of the same events. Mannheim highlighted the importance of adolescence as the phase when generational identity was most likely to develop, because youth had fewer experiences with which to interpret the events and movements of the times. He also pointed out that the continual emergence of new participants in society and the withdrawal of older participants contributed to the process of social change. Generational change, in turn, has implications for cultural continuity and change, for what an older generation might unconsciously accept can be regarded as problematic and therefore subject to conscious reflection and questioning by those on the threshold of adulthood. The faster

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the pace of social and cultural change, the more likely it becomes that particular generations will develop their own identity, or ‘‘generational entelechy.’’17 Mannheim’s ideas on the importance of generational identity for cultural change, first proposed in the 1920s, have been modified and refined by later generations of scholars. Sociologists, social psychologists, and historians have recognized the value of Mannheim’s basic insight into the nature and significance of generational difference and proposed new ways of incorporating it into research in their own fields.18 Indeed, the idea of generational identification has become so commonplace that it is a part of popular culture: one has only to think of the labels ‘‘baby boomers’’ and ‘‘Generation X.’’ Most historical studies of generational change have been devoted to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the rapid transformation of society and culture led to very distinct differences between generations. Some theorists have argued that generational analysis cannot be applied to premodern society because its relative stability prevented the formation of distinct generations.19 This argument can certainly be questioned with respect to the sixteenth century. The church had tremendous influence in all areas of late medieval society, influence that was questioned, shaken, or uprooted throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. The Reformation not only brought a major change in how those alive in 1517 experienced Christianity; its aftershocks continued to shape successive generations as well. This is particularly the case with the English Reformation, where the contrasting religious policies of Henry VIII and his children meant that people of different ages experienced the Reformation in quite different ways.20 If generational analysis can be applied to the populace at large, it is even more relevant for the study of smaller groups whose outlooks were shaped by a common educational or cultural experience. Historians of humanism have drawn attention to the generational differences that distinguished the intellectual elites of early modern society. Lewis Spitz explicitly linked one of these differences to the Reformation, pointing out that the second generation of German humanists remained loyal to the Catholic Church, while many of the third generation became reformers. In her study of printing in Strasbourg, Miriam Chrisman identified clear generational differences in works published by intellectuals over the course of the sixteenth century.21 The generational differences identified among the humanists and intellectuals of the Renaissance and Reformation can also be detected in the Protestant pastors who benefited from the humanist educational reforms introduced into Germany during the sixteenth century. The Protestant clergy were the group most sensitive to the confessional and political milestones of the sixteenth century. The Reformation itself created fundamental differences between the life experiences of those pastors who grew up within the medieval church and those born after the adoption of Protestantism. The Peace of Augsburg was another significant event, not only because it separated those Protestants who reached adulthood in the tense political circumstances before midcentury from those who grew up in the relative safety created by the Peace but also because it had much different implications for Lutherans and

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Reformed, both within and outside of the Empire. To give yet another example, the consolidation of Lutheranism behind the Formula of Concord through the 1580s created a very different intellectual climate for men who entered the ministry at the end of the century from that experienced by those who had witnessed or participated in the internecine strife among Lutherans before 1577. While these events may have had little immediate impact on the peasants who made up the largest group in the German-speaking lands, they most certainly affected the Protestant clergy, not only changing the situation of those currently holding pastoral positions but creating new situations for those who would succeed them. The phases in the development of confessionalization described by both Wilhelm Neuser and Heinz Schilling can be correlated with the events that helped define social generations within the Protestant clergy.22 Research on the early modern clergy has grown significantly in both depth and sophistication over the last generation. Where some of the earliest studies concentrated on the background and training of the Protestant clergy, recent works have looked more broadly at career patterns and social networks, economic position, performance of pastoral responsibilities, and interactions with parishioners. These studies have expanded to consider the Catholic parish clergy and to draw comparisons among all three confessions. Long-term statistical studies have provided a much stronger basis from which to draw conclusions about the composition, social position, and careers of both Lutheran and Reformed pastors, while in-depth studies of the clergy in particular territories give greater insight into areas such as family life and pastoral activity.23 One area that has not received the attention it deserves is the question of pastoral education and preparation for the ministry, particularly in the years following the Reformation. As just noted, the spread and gradual institutionalization of humanism through the schools and universities of Germanspeaking Europe led to significantly different outlooks among those educated at the beginning and those educated at the end of the sixteenth century. Complicating this development was the cooptation of humanism for the service of the church in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, which caused humanism in Germany to evolve in a significantly different way from elsewhere in Europe.24 The interrelationship and mutual influence of intellectual and religious reform brought changes to the educational process that were key for shaping both individuals and ideas in a way that the first generation of reformers, even those with a humanist background, were not able to foresee. The Protestant clergy were one of the largest and most easily identified beneficiaries of these changes. A study of the education they received over the course of the sixteenth century reveals the interplay between late humanism and evangelical theology, pedagogical innovation and ecclesiastical reform. Although scholars agree that the level of education among the Protestant clergy had increased significantly by the early seventeenth century, they are

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divided on the practical impact of that education. Research on the evolving content, methods and institutional structures of education during the sixteenth century has come instead from a different quarter, those interested in late humanism and the development of the early modern university. These scholars recognize the importance of the Reformation for shaping sixteenthcentury education in Protestant territories and acknowledge that many of the recipients of this education became pastors. Nevertheless, they have generally neglected this group in favor of those students who entered secular careers. What studies do exist on pastoral education in the sixteenth century tend to focus on the theology faculty, despite the fact that many pastors never matriculated in a theology faculty, and even those who did received a significant amount of their pastoral training outside of that faculty. Studies of the theological colleges and foundations created for theology students also give some insight into pastoral training, but these tend to be overviews rather than in-depth studies of curriculum and pedagogical methods.25 The difficulty of determining what future pastors actually studied is compounded by the heterogeneity of the pastors themselves. Although there was a growing tendency over the course of the sixteenth century for pastors to study at a local university and then be appointed to a parish within that territory, there was enough variety in geographical origin, early education, and choice of university that it is extremely difficult to identify precisely when, where, and how these young men gained the knowledge deemed sufficient for a pastor. This is true for not only the large territories of northern Germany that have been most studied but also the imperial cities that recruited clergy trained elsewhere to serve their churches.26

Why Basel? The dearth of studies focusing on pastoral education highlights one of the reasons for examining the pastors who served Basel’s church. Basel was a small city-republic whose pastors were fairly homogeneous in both background and education. By the 1570s, virtually all of the men appointed to pastorates in either the urban or rural churches were native sons who had studied first at the city’s Latin school and then at its university. In this respect, the variables that otherwise complicate the study of pastoral education are here controlled, so that the impact of education—or, more precisely, changes in education— can be traced through successive generations of pastors. A study of Basel’s clergy is significant in two other respects. First, Basel was the only Protestant city outside of Wittenberg that had a university available to train its pastors as early as the 1520s. Other cities and territories needed to establish educational institutions to prepare young men for the pastorate; Basel already had a university with a theology faculty that could be put to the service of the church. On the one hand, this presented the city’s church with an opportunity other places lacked, since it did not have to start from scratch in designing an educational program for its clergy. On the other

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hand, the university also presented a challenge, since the new church had to contend with entrenched academic customs and practices predating the Reformation that the city’s reformers did not feel were either appropriate or necessary for training future clergy. A study of pastoral training in Basel thus provides a Reformed counterpart to the more familiar example of Wittenberg. And this points to the second way Basel is significant, for the city’s church was Reformed, rather than Lutheran, from its inception. Most studies of the clergy have focused either on Lutheran states or on those territories that converted to the Reformed confession in the later sixteenth century.27 Comparisons of these two types of territories do indicate some confessional differences, but those differences are blurred by their common Lutheran origin. Although the leaders of Basel’s church during the third quarter of the sixteenth century were condemned as ‘‘Lutherans’’ by their opponents, there was never any serious question of Basel’s Reformed identity. A study of the Basel clergy thus throws into sharp relief the role played by confession in the education and careers of the early modern clergy. Looking at the education of Basel’s pastors gives us only half of the picture, however. The other half comes through an examination of their careers and their performance of their pastoral duties. How did these pastors put what they had learned into practice? What were the implications of the generational differences among the clergy for the communication of the evangelical message? And what impact did their efforts have on Basel’s religious culture? Answering these questions requires an examination, above all, of the sermons preached over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Here, as well, a focus on Basel offers new insights, both into the practice of early modern preaching in general and into the confessional differences between Lutheran and Reformed preaching. The abundance of Lutheran sermons from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has allowed scholars to move beyond a preoccupation with the sermons of key figures such as Luther to study different genres of sermons and to analyze the themes and emphases of sermons preached by individuals more representative of the clergy at large.28 In comparison, the studies of Reformed preaching focus almost exclusively on the most influential reformers, especially Calvin.29 The existence of a significant number of printed and manuscript sermons by Basel’s pastors, stretching from the early years of the Reformation into the seventeenth century, allows us to follow the generational differences manifested in the preaching of Basel’s pastors. Although preaching was the most visible of the Reformed pastor’s responsibilities, it was not his only duty. Protestant pastors, like their medieval counterparts, were also charged with administering the sacraments, although the number and theological meaning of those sacraments differed from those of the Catholic Church. In addition to their preaching, they were expected to teach both children and adults, through regular catechism instruction and through more individualized instruction at times of need, particularly as death approached. Finally, the Reformed emphasis on the reformatio vitae as well as

introduction

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the reformatio doctrinae meant that the pastors had responsibility for the exercise of church discipline as well. In each of these areas, the pastor could encounter conflict with his parishioners. Especially in the early years after the Reformation, there was a gap between the parishioners’ more traditional expectations of their pastors and the pastors’ own view of their responsibilities. In recent years, much has been written about the careers of pastors in their parishes, often based on the visitation records that survive from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.30 These studies tell us much about the pastors’ economic status, their efforts to enforce Christian standards of conduct, and their relations with their parishioners, but often they do not adequately reflect the generational changes in the clergy, either because they cover too short a period or because they do not distinguish between visitation reports from earlier and later periods.31 Moreover, because they often focus on problems that arose within the parish, they tell us little about the day-to-day functioning of pastoral care. A careful examination of Basel’s visitation reports and synodal records from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century gives a better indication of both the duties of the ministers and the impact of their pastoral ministry on the beliefs and practices of their parishioners. I will address each of these issues—education, preaching, and pastoral care—over the course of this book. Part I introduces the Basel church and then focuses more specifically on the first generation of clergy, the men who served the Reformed church at its birth. Chapter 1 describes confessional developments in Basel and then gives an overview of its pastoral corps during the century after the Reformation. Chapter 2 looks at the message the first generation of pastors communicated to their audience, not only in their sermons but also as it was enshrined in other official or quasi-official documents—the catechisms, liturgies, and confessions adopted by Basel’s church. Chapter 3 describes the pastors’ attempts to create a stable institutional structure for the church and to meet the educational needs of its present and future clergy. An era ended with the passing of the first generation of pastors and the entrance into the ministry of men born after the Reformation. Part II traces the evolution of a system of pastoral education in Basel over the second half of the sixteenth and into the early seventeenth century and places it in the context of developments in education throughout German-speaking Europe. Chapter 4 looks first at the general religious education gained at the city’s Latin school and then describes the financial structures established to support young men while they were studying for the ministry. The second stage in the system of pastoral training, their education in the arts faculty of the city’s university, is described in chapter 5. Here the young men learned the disciplines of rhetoric and dialectic, which would be the basic tools used for preaching and teaching. Chapter 6 looks more specifically at the changes to the theology faculty and the growing influence of dialectic on theology instruction, as reflected in both lectures and disputations. The most important thing a future pastor had to learn was how to preach. Part III examines both the theoretical approach to preaching and its practice

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in Basel. Chapter 7 shows how the skills taught at the gymnasium and university were drawn together in contemporary homiletics texts, published in Basel and elsewhere, that were meant to teach future pastors how best to convey the evangelical message. The following chapter looks at the outcome of that education, as revealed in the sermons preached by Basel’s pastors. These sermons not only provide evidence of how well pastoral candidates learned their lessons at the university but also shed light on the changes in both form and content of the evangelical message over the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. With the examination of preaching in Basel, we move from the university to the parish. Part IV examines the practice of pastoral care at the parish level. As context for this discussion, chapter 9 sketches the typical careers of Basel’s pastors, beginning with their appointment to office, and describes the gradual development of a system of clerical oversight that placed the rural church more closely under the supervision of the leadership in the city. The next two chapters examine the tasks of the pastoral ministry. Chapter 10 focuses on preaching and catechization, the most specifically pedagogical of those tasks, while chapter 11 looks at the remaining responsibilities assigned to the pastors in Basel’s Reformation ordinance: administration of the sacraments, visitation of the sick, and the exercise of church discipline. The final chapter discusses the transformation of the ministry in Basel’s Reformed church within the broader context of educational reform, professionalization, and confessionalization in the century after the Reformation. The chronological limits to this study are determined by the generational rhythms of Basel’s Protestant clergy. Although evangelical ideas spread through Basel soon after Luther posted his ninety-five theses, the city did not officially adopt the Reformation until 1529. The generational changes within Basel’s pastoral corps were greatest between the earlier generations, when the Protestant church itself was still in a state of flux, and became less obvious over time, as the church’s institutions were stabilized and fine-tuned. The year 1629 marked not only the centennial of Basel’s Reformed church but also an important generational turning point. In that year, the city was hit by a severe outbreak of the plague that claimed not only the church’s antistes (primary pastor), Johannes Wollebius, but many other pastors as well, allowing for an influx of young men into the ministry. Other changes in the city’s educational system also occurred during the 1620s that would influence the generation of men who entered the ministry in the 1630s and 1640s. Although this new generation could have been included in this study, they differed from earlier generations in that they were influenced by the circumstances of the seventeenth rather than the sixteenth century. This study is guided by the question of how the Protestant clergy were formed in the wake of the Reformation, so it is limited to the four generations of pastors who served Basel’s church in the century after the adoption of the Reformation. Each of the topics I discuss in this book—education for the ministry, the evolution of preaching, and the practice of pastoral care—could easily be the focus of a full-scale study in its own right, particularly when approached from

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a comparative perspective. But there is also something to be learned from an examination of how these three aspects of the ministry were related to each other in one specific place. At heart, all three concern the transmission of the central beliefs of the Protestant Reformation, whether from the educated elite to the laity, or from one generation to the next. The reformers faced the daunting challenges of teaching the evangelical message to their parishioners and of training men who would teach that message to the next generation. How that message was conceived and communicated would change over time, becoming more precise and more detailed. The manner of teaching it changed as well, as Basel’s pastors introduced new methods of communication and refined older ones. Over time, the teachers themselves—Basel’s Reformed pastors—both shaped and were shaped by that message. It is the task of this book to explore the interaction between ministers and their message in the century after the Reformation.

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part i

Basel and the Reformation, 1529–1550

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1 Basel and Its Reformed Church

On the feast of the Annunciation in 1517, Heironymus Brilinger put the final touches on his compilation of ceremonies performed throughout the year in Basel’s cathedral. The most senior of the priests charged with overseeing the liturgical activities associated with the high altar, Brilinger was familiar with the daily, weekly, and yearly cycle of observances in the cathedral. As he wrote in the preface of his Ceremoniale, he drew his description of these rites from various sources so that the ancient customs and observances of Basel’s cathedral would not be forgotten but rather would be restored to their full glory.1 Brilinger could not foresee that an obscure theology professor in distant Saxony would soon unleash a movement whose force would cause the abolition of those ancient practices he so lovingly described. A dozen years after finishing his Ceremoniale, Brilinger and many of his fellow priests would leave Basel in the wake of the city’s official adoption of Protestantism. The immediate changes the Reformation wrought to Basel’s church and its clergy were obvious and profound. Less visible were both the continuities and the structural transformations that took several generations to be fully implemented. The century after the Reformation witnessed the evolution of Basel’s pastoral corps from a heterogeneous collection of former priests not much different from their late medieval predecessors to a homogeneous group of highly trained professionals conscious of their duty to elucidate God’s word for their pastoral charges. This transformation took place in stages, as one generation of pastors succeeded another. A generation can be defined in three ways: biologically, referring to the distinction between adults and their offspring; chronologically, as the period of time, usually twenty to thirty years, that separates

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parents and children; or as a social construct, determined by the shared experiences of all those born within a given set of years. In Basel, all three aspects can be used to distinguish among the generations that served the church. As in other Protestant cities and territories, it was not unusual for the sons of pastors to follow their fathers into the ministry. Although very imprecise, the estimate of twenty-five to thirty years for a generation length corresponds to the two main phases of the pastors’ life-cycle: the years of preparation before entering the ministry some time in their late twenties, and the years they served as pastors until their deaths, which usually came when they were in their late fifties.2 Most important, however, for shaping the generational identity of Basel’s pastoral corps were the political, confessional, and educational developments that had a direct impact on the city’s church and its university. As an introduction to the successive generations of Basel’s clergy, this chapter will provide an overview of the city-republic’s clerical corps, tentatively identifying four distinct generations of pastors within Basel’s church during the century after the city’s official introduction of the Reformation. It will also summarize the larger political and confessional developments that helped shape the generational identity of Basel’s pastors through this period. To appreciate the changes brought to Basel by the Reformation, though, we must begin by looking at the city’s church during the period when Brilinger was composing his Ceremoniale.

The Reformation in Basel On the eve of the Reformation, the church had a strong presence in Basel, as it did in other south German and Swiss cities. As both an episcopal and a university city, Basel was home to roughly four hundred religious, extending through the full social spectrum of the first estate.3 At the top of this hierarchy was the bishop of Basel, who was important to the city as both a spiritual and a temporal authority. A prince-bishop of the Holy Roman Empire, he ruled a territory stretching to the southwest of Basel that corresponded very roughly to the present-day canton of Jura.4 Since the fourteenth century, the bishops had preferred to live outside of Basel, settling eventually in the Frenchspeaking city of Porrentruy (Pruntrut), which lay within their territory but outside the diocese of Basel. Until the early sixteenth century, the bishop was still the nominal overlord of Basel, but his authority over the city and the surrounding countryside had been eroded by the growing power of the city’s Senate.5 Over the course of the fifteenth century, the impoverished bishops had pawned some of their lands to Basel, which gave the city control over a small territory extending to its southeast.6 In 1521, the newly elected Senate took the final step of refusing to swear the traditional oath of allegiance to the bishop, thus asserting its complete independence. Four years later, Basel used the turmoil of the Peasants’ War to extend its protection over seven episcopal villages located just outside the city. The bishop was powerless to stop these

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encroachments on his jurisdictional authority. Although the city’s official adoption of the Reformation raised new questions about the city’s relationship with the bishop as a political power, by midcentury a modus vivendi had been reached whereby Basel maintained an indirect influence over the northern portion of the episcopal territory while still recognizing the bishop’s sovereignty there.7 The diocese of Basel was a much larger area that included parts of Alsace, as well as all of Basel’s territory on the left bank of the Rhine, and extended to the south, where it bordered on the dioceses of Lausanne and Besanc¸on.8 Although the bishop was nonresident, his officials and administrators still lived in Basel and staffed the episcopal courts. Their presence, in turn, provided employment for many Baslers and made the area around the cathedral a community in itself. The bishop at the time of the Reformation, Christoph von Utenheim, was personally pious, a friend of Geiler von Keysersberg and Johannes Wimpheling, and a patron of both humanists and artists. Soon after his consecration in 1503, the new bishop called a synod of his clergy in Basel and issued new statutes intended to promote reform. His efforts remained without effect, however, due to the entrenched opposition of both the secular and regular clergy, and in the years that remained until his death in 1527 he did little to upset the ecclesiastical status quo.9 The cathedral chapter, in particular, fought to preserve its own rights and privileges against the bishop’s efforts at ecclesiastical reform, as well as against the Senate’s attempts to increase its authority in both secular and ecclesiastical affairs. The chapter had two dozen canonicates, but since many of the canons held other benefices as well, no more than twelve to fifteen of them were usually resident in the city. The Domherren came chiefly from the upper Rhenish nobility, and they fought to exclude men of common birth from their midst. As late as 1470, Basel burghers were specifically excluded from election to the cathedral chapter.10 In addition to the cathedral chapter, Basel had two collegiate churches and many religious houses for men and women, including convents of Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinian Hermits. The city’s Carthusian monastery was able to maintain its reputation for piety and austerity from its founding in 1401 through the eve of the Reformation. The same could not be said of many of the city’s other religious foundations, though, and the fifteenth century was marked by a series of reform efforts aimed at improving monastic discipline. Both the male and one of the female Dominican convents adopted Observant reforms in the 1420s. The Council of Basel, which opened in 1431, promoted and strengthened these efforts, which contributed to the successful reform of the house of male Franciscans and the female Franciscan convent of Gnadental. The reforms extended as well to the Cluniac priory of St. Alban and the collegiate chapters of St. Peter and St. Leonhard. Because all three of these latter institutions were associated with parish churches, their reform had an impact on the provision of pastoral care in the city. But the reforms met a roadblock with the female convents of St. Clara and Klingental, which successfully resisted efforts to tighten discipline. Moreover, although

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the financial and institutional structures of the chapter of St. Peter were improved, its ten canons remained largely unaffected by the spirit of reform until the 1460s.11 Most of the city’s canons were not ordained priests but were only in minor orders, and it was not necessary for those in religious houses or in the episcopal administration to be ordained.12 The largest proportion of priests in the city were chaplains who held benefices associated with the altars in the cathedral and the city’s other churches and chapels. The cathedral alone had over seventy chaplaincies, while St. Peter had more than thirty. The chaplains, rather than the canons, were the men actually responsible for performing the religious ceremonies at these churches, from the masses celebrated at the side altars and the singing of the canonical hours to the religious processions prescribed for feast days. Many of these benefices were held by native Baslers. Another seventeen chaplains were associated with the parish churches of St. Martin and St. Theodor. In addition to the confessors responsible for the pastoral care of the nuns, the convents also had chaplains who were obligated to celebrate mass regularly at their churches’ altars. Last but not least, there were a dozen or so chapels scattered about the city, each with its own priest.13 The university, established in 1460 in the wake of the Council of Basel, attracted students and teachers to the city. Although granted its charter by the pope, the university was a civic institution. Four (later three) senators plus the Stadtschreiber, or city chancellor, were appointed as Deputaten responsible for oversight of the university. Over the objection of its canons, the chapter of St. Peter was incorporated into the university, so that its canonicates could be used to support professorships. The university was never very large: at the turn of the century, it had roughly 130 students and eleven faculty. Nevertheless, it was able to attract noted German humanists, from Peter Luder in the 1460s to Johannes Reuchlin at the turn of the century. The growth of the city’s printing industry contributed to the city’s reputation as a humanist center, which reached its peak in the circle that gathered around Erasmus after he came to Basel in 1514.14 The primary pastoral responsibility for Basel’s ten thousand inhabitants fell on the city’s parish priests and their assistants. At the time of the Reformation, Basel had about sixteen parish clergy and preachers, divided among the city’s eight parishes. The oldest parishes were those of St. Martin, in the center of the city, and St. Alban, stretching along the Rhine to the east. The parish of St. Peter, on the western edge of the city, was rivaled in size by the parish of St. Leonhard, in the southwest corner. The tiny parish of St. Johann was associated with the chapel of the Knights of St. John next to the western city gate on the bank of the Rhine, while the parish of St. Ulrich extended outside the city walls to include the villages of Binningen and Bottmingen to the south. The parish of St. Theodor encompassed all of Kleinbasel, the part of the city on the right bank of the river. It differed from the city’s other parishes in that it was subject not to the bishop of Basel but to the bishop of Constance. Last but not least, toward the end of the fifteenth century, a separate parish was created in the cathedral; its priest was expected to assist the cathedral

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preacher and was responsible for the cure of souls of those individuals connected with the cathedral.15 The parishes differed significantly in both size and social composition. Basel’s wealthier merchant families lived in the parishes of St. Martin and St. Peter, while the inhabitants of the parishes of St. Alban, St. Leonhard, and St. Johann were primarily artisans. All three parishes included large suburban areas where members of the poorer guilds were strongest: carcass-handlers in St. Alban, weavers in St. Leonhard, and fishermen in St. Johann. Those associated with the manufacture of paper, some of them well-to-do, lived in the parish of St. Alban as well. The parish of St. Theodor in Kleinbasel was home to some of the city’s poorer inhabitants, especially members of the fishing and shipping guild.16 All of Basel’s parishes were incorporated into one of the city’s religious foundations—that is, the legal holder of the benefice was an ecclesiastical institution, which collected the benefice’s income and hired a curate (Leutpriester) to carry out the responsibilities of pastoral care. Most of the curates also had at least one assistant, a priest who was hired to help with the tasks of pastoral care and was paid by the ecclesiastical corporation that held the benefice. The churches of St. Leonhard and St. Peter each supported a curate and one assistant from chaplaincies associated with their altars. The Cluniac priory of St. Alban appointed the curate for the parish associated with its church, while the knightly order of St. John made one of its members responsible for the cure of souls in that tiny parish. The cathedral chapter was responsible for appointing the curates and their assistants for the remaining parish churches. There was also a priest assigned to the Spital, or city hospital, who provided for the spiritual needs of its residents.17 Basel’s inhabitants had ample opportunity to hear frequent preaching. The cathedral had not one but two endowed preacherships: the primary preacher, who was obliged to preach on Sundays, festivals, and daily during Advent and Lent, and the curate who was to substitute for him if necessary. The collegiate church of St. Peter also had an endowed preachership whose incumbent was also required to preach on Sundays, festivals, and during the penitential seasons. In addition, the three mendicant houses had the right to preach and hear confessions in the city, with the proviso that their sermons would not be held at the same time as the parish mass. The synodal statutes issued by the bishop of Basel in 1503 required parish priests to give a brief sermon on the Gospel text during the parish mass on Sunday, and Johann Ulrich Surgant, the parish priest of St. Theodor at the turn of the century, wrote his Manuale Curatorum to assist his fellow pastors in their preaching responsibilities.18 Basel’s parish clergy were not being held to unrealistic standards by this expectation that they preach regularly, for most of them were well educated. Thanks in part to the city’s university, the proportion of parish clergy with a university education was much higher than the norm. Roughly two-thirds of the men who served as curates in the city during the 1520s had at least matriculated at a university. Several of these had master’s degrees, and a few

figure 1.1. Bird’s-eye view of Basel, Matthaeus Merian, Topographia Helvetiae, Rhaetiae, et Valesiae . . . (Frankfurt: Merian, 1654), repr. Kassel: Ba¨rereiter Verlag, 1960. Reprinted by permission.

Note: Bottom right is north.

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had training in theology beyond their education in the arts faculty. The endowments establishing the preacherships required that their holders be trained theologians as well.19 Despite the high level of education among the city’s clergy and the impact of both monastic reform and the Council of Basel, there remained a general climate of anticlericalism in Basel on the eve of the Reformation. City residents resented the exclusivity of the Domherren, who opposed the appointment of any commoners, even those who had obtained doctoral degrees, to their closed circle. The chapter’s noble members were notorious for their pluralism, and the few canons who lived in Basel were targets of criticism on account of their luxurious lifestyle. Some of the cathedral chaplains were also guilty of pluralism and nonresidence, while the records of fines imposed on the clergy of the diocese show that the requirement of celibacy was often ignored, especially by the rural clergy.20 The earliest evangelical ideas thus found fertile soil when they reached Basel. The city’s flourishing printing industry ensured the rapid spread of those ideas. Johannes Froben published the first collection of Luther’s Latin works in 1518, while Adam Petri became one of the leading printers of Luther’s writings in the early 1520s. Basel’s printers also produced a large number of works, both first editions and reprints, by Melanchthon and other reformers in the early years of the Reformation.21 The evangelical movement divided Basel’s clergy into two hostile camps. Although the cathedral’s canons opposed the Reformation, their resistance was ineffective. Much more important was the opposition of the university, both faculty and students, to evangelical ideas. The mendicant orders were divided: several Franciscans supported the evangelical movement, while the Dominicans remained loyal to the old church. The parish clergy were split as well. The curates of the cathedral parish and St. Peter, as well as the preachers at both churches, were staunch opponents of Luther’s teachings, while the curates of St. Alban and St. Theodor were among the Reformation’s earliest supporters. The curate of St. Alban, Wilhelm Reublin, was removed from his position in 1522 for his open advocacy of evangelical positions. Loyalty to the old church remained strong in the parish of St. Theodor, and its evangelically inclined curate, Marcus Bertschi, faced deposition as well. Bertschi was able to move to the church of St. Leonhard in 1523, however, where he found a parish much more open to evangelical ideas.22 The arrival of Johannes Oecolampadius in Basel in the fall of 1522 gave the evangelical movement a prominent and highly educated leader. Within a few months after his arrival, the Senate appointed Oecolampadius as vicar for the ailing curate of St. Martin, which gave him a pulpit in the heart of the city. Oecolampadius also began lectures on the Bible together with the Franciscan Konrad Pellikan, backed by the authority of the Senate.23 From this point on, the parish churches of St. Martin and St. Leonhard served as focal points for the evangelical movement. The churches of the Augustinians and of the Franciscans, as well as the Spital, which was located next to the Franciscan church, also had evangelical preachers who attracted large audiences.

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Caught between growing popular pressure and a strong Catholic faction in its midst, Basel’s Senate tried to thread its way between the two fronts. On the one hand, it asserted control over appointment rights to benefices in the city, extended citizenship rights to the clergy, and secularized several of the city’s religious institutions. On the other hand, it deposed Jacob Immeli, the evangelically minded curate of St. Ulrich, after he married in late 1524, and it accepted the cathedral chapter’s appointment of a staunch traditionalist, Augustinus Marius, as the new cathedral preacher. The second half of the 1520s was marked by increasingly strident disputes between Catholic and evangelical preachers over the mass, in clear violation of the Senate’s mandates to avoid divisive sermons. By early 1529, the evangelicals outnumbered the Catholics by about four to one, and the pressure on the Senate to eliminate Catholic ceremonies was immense.24 An iconoclastic riot that broke out on the eve of Ash Wednesday in 1529 brought the religious crisis in Basel to a climax.25 The offending images were removed from the city’s churches, and the dozen senators who had been most opposed to evangelical reforms were expelled from the Senate. On 1 April, the Senate issued its Reformation Ordinance, which served as the constitution for the city’s now officially reformed church. Among its many provisions, the ordinance streamlined the parish structure. The tiny parish of St. Johann was eliminated, and the cathedral parish was raised to first importance, while the former parish churches of St. Alban, St. Martin, and St. Ulrich were reduced to filial congregations of the cathedral. Oecolampadius was named pastor of the cathedral parish, and the formerly Catholic parishes were given evangelical pastors.26 Those Catholic clergy who wished to remain in the city were allowed to continue receiving the income from their benefices, but they were required to take an oath of citizenship. Many of them refused to do so and left Basel. With the Reformation, then, the number of clergy serving Basel’s church dropped from over four hundred to about a dozen. Although the decline was not quite so precipitous in Basel’s rural parishes, because there were not as many chaplaincies and only a few religious houses, there was nevertheless a reduction in the clerical presence in the countryside as well.27 The first synod of the reformed church gives us a more detailed picture of the men who remained as pastors in both the city and its rural territories. The synod opened on May 11, 1529, six weeks after the Reformation Ordinance was issued by the Senate. The synod was presided over jointly by four members of the Senate and the two theology professors, Johannes Oecolampadius and Paul Phrygio, who were also pastors of the cathedral and St. Peter, respectively. According to the official records from the synod, eleven pastors from the city of Basel and twenty-seven from the rural territory were ‘‘examined, found acceptable, and admitted to their offices.’’28 Nine of these pastors were new to their positions. Oecolampadius had addressed a ‘‘Pastoral Letter’’ of 1528 to thirteen of the rural pastors; these men were apparently already committed to the evangelical cause.29 This does not necessarily mean that they had a sound grasp of evangelical doctrine: two of the pastors named

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in the letter were warned to study so that they would pass the examination to be held at the next synod.30 Two more pastors attended this next synod, held in late November of the same year, and a third was noted as being unable to attend due to illness.31 The difficulties of transition are reflected in the records of this synod. One pastor initially appointed to the parish of Oltingen had since been replaced because the villagers would not accept him. Another pastor had been transferred from the hospital church of St. Jacob to the previously vacant village church of Hu¨ningen, leaving the position at St. Jacob empty. The two pastors who had been warned at the first synod were again told to improve their study habits or be deprived of their posts; two more pastors received the same warning. Either these threats proved effective or the church leadership was reluctant to carry them out, for all four pastors were still in their parishes at the synod held a year later, in November 1530.32 Who were the pastors who bore the responsibility of passing evangelical doctrine on to their flocks? Little information is available about many of them, but what we do know reveals a heterogeneous group.33 Geographically, they came from throughout southern Germany and Switzerland (table 1.1). Only three of the forty-two pastors who held a parish position in 1529 were from Basel itself. Wolfgang Wissenburg’s father was a weaver wealthy enough to represent his guild in the Basel Senate; two other pastors also had fathers who were Basel citizens. Three more pastors came from Liestal, the only city in Baselland: one was the son of the Schultheiss (that city’s top official) and another the son of a priest. A seventh pastor came from the village of Mu¨nchenstein, just to the southeast of Basel. Nine other pastors came from neighboring territories: four from Alsace and the Sundgau on the west side of the Rhine, two from Baden and the Breisgau to the north, and three from the Habsburg territories to the northeast. Another eight pastors came from other parts of southwestern Germany, chiefly the imperial cities of Swabia and Franconia. Only one pastor came from as far away as Mainz. Balancing these German pastors were the nine who came from other parts of the Swiss Confederation. The geographical origin of the remaining eight pastors is unknown. Almost all of these pastors had been ordained before the Reformation. The clerical status of three of the pastors, all new in 1529, is unclear, but the rest were all former priests. Thirty of them had been secular clergy, while the remaining nine had been members of various religious orders. Of the former regular clergy, one city pastor had been a Franciscan and two had left the Augustinian order; a third Augustinian became a pastor in the village of Bubendorf. Two other rural pastors came from monasteries within Basel’s territory. Both of them had been responsible for the care of souls in their parishes before the Reformation. The new Protestant pastors varied in their educational experiences as well (table 1.2). The dozen pastors who served the city parishes had a fairly high level of education, due in part to their association with the university. Johannes Oecolampadius and Paul Phrygio not only were parish pastors but also held the two chairs in theology at the university. Telemonius Limperger,

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the cathedral preacher, and Marcus Bertschi, the pastor of the third parish in the main part of the city, both had degrees in theology, although they had not received the highest degree. Bertschi’s assistant, Balthasar Vo¨glin, had received a bachelor’s degree in Freiburg before matriculating at Basel. Wolfgang Wissenburg, the parish priest of St. Theodor in Kleinbasel, had received a master’s degree from Basel, while Johann Lu¨thardt, the former Franciscan preacher, and Thomas Gierfalk, a former Augustinian, had both been teachers within their respective convents. Another pastor was also a former Augustinian who probably received some advanced education within his order. The diarist Johann Gast did not have a university education; the educational background of the remaining two pastors is unknown.34 We know less about the educational attainments of the rural pastors. Without question, the most highly educated was Jacob Immeli, who became a master of arts in Basel in 1509 and taught on the arts faculty for several years. He was one of the leading proponents of evangelical doctrine in the city in the early years of the Reformation. He was removed from his post as curate of St. Ulrich after his marriage, but after the Reformation he was appointed parish priest in Pratteln, just outside the city.35 Another rural pastor also had an M.A., while two more are known to have received their bachelor’s degrees. A further six matriculated at a university. There is no record for the remaining twenty pastors. These forty-two men provide a rough baseline against which subsequent changes in Basel’s pastoral corps can be measured. Although the leaders of Basel’s church began remedial measures—such as the requirement to study for rural pastors and to attend theology lectures for city pastors—intended to improve the competence of all clergy, genuine change to Basel’s clerical corps would only come with the infusion of new personnel, as those who held posts in the church died and were replaced by a new generation. But before examining those changes, let us look first at the political and confessional developments in Basel over the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that formed the background for this transformation. Basel’s geographical location on the border between the Holy Roman Empire and the Swiss Confederation placed the city in a very delicate situation during this period when political and confessional boundaries were being ever more sharply defined.

Basel on the Border: Political and Confessional Identity Perhaps the single most important determining factor for the long-term development of Basel’s Protestant church actually happened a generation before the beginning of the Reformation. In 1501, Basel became a full member of the Swiss Confederation. As an imperial city, Basel had long maintained close ties with the Swiss, and the city had faced much criticism from both the Swiss Confederation and the Empire as a result of its careful neutrality during the Swabian War in 1499. The Swiss victory persuaded Basel that its interests would best be defended against both the Habsburgs and France if it had the

30

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backing of the Swiss. After lengthy negotiations, Basel was admitted to the Confederation in the summer of 1501.36 Although supported by the general public, Basel’s decision to ‘‘turn Swiss’’ was not greeted with enthusiasm by some among the city’s elite. Basel’s traditional intellectual ties were with the imperial cities of southern Germany. Many of the university’s faculty and students, as well as the city’s printers, were foreigners, most of them from the Empire. The city had strong economic links with Alsace and the Habsburg territories north of the Rhine. Its ecclesiastical institutions had considerable property within the Empire to the north and northwest, and its merchants were heavily involved in trade with Germany. In comparison, Basel’s economic ties with its fellow Swiss confederates were still fairly weak. Moreover, the city had only a small rural territory that it was only beginning to exploit economically. This distinguished it from the other Swiss city-republics of Zurich and Bern, both of which were much smaller cities with extensive rural territories. The contrasts between Basel and the rural members of the Swiss Confederation were even greater.37 Despite these differences, Basel’s ties with the Confederation gradually strengthened over the course of the sixteenth century.38 The outbreak of the Reformation contributed significantly to deepening Basel’s relations with the other Swiss city-republics, especially Zurich. With the beginning of the

figure 1.2. Basel and neighboring territories in the sixteenth century. Drawn by Ezra Zeitler.

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eucharistic controversy in 1525, Oecolampadius placed himself firmly on the side of Ulrich Zwingli, and the friendship between the two reformers continued until their deaths within a few weeks of each other in 1531. The man elected to succeed Oecolampadius as cathedral pastor, Oswald Myconius (1488–1552), was a former schoolmaster in Zurich who had worked closely with Zwingli and who quickly became one of Heinrich Bullinger’s most frequent correspondents. During the 1520s, support for Zwingli and Zurich did not mean that Basel had to abandon its older ties to south Germany. The imperial cities of south Germany, most notably Strasbourg, with which Basel had long had close relations, also supported Zwingli over Luther. This situation would change over the 1530s, as the Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer worked tirelessly to bring about an end to the eucharistic conflict. Bucer’s efforts bore fruit in the Wittenberg Concord, which was accepted by the cities of southern Germany but rejected by Zurich. Although initially skeptical of Bucer’s efforts, Myconius and his fellow pastors in Basel accepted Bucer’s interpretation of the Wittenberg Concord, and in early August 1536 they gave it their official approval. The Wittenberg Concord itself was built on a series of ambiguities and omissions that allowed its provisions to be interpreted differently by either side. By accepting the Concord, Basel did not thereby become Lutheran, but it endorsed a theological stance that placed unity above doctrinal precision. This stance enabled Basel’s church to maintain its friendship with both Strasbourg and Zurich at a time when the relationship between the latter two churches was crumbling, and it mirrored the efforts of Basel’s political leaders to minimize the difference between its older status as an imperial city and its new position as a member of the Swiss Confederation.39 Basel’s efforts to keep one foot on each side of the political and confessional divide would become increasingly difficult as a result of several developments at midcentury. The emperor’s defeat of the Schmalkaldic League set off a chain of events that would deepen the chasm separating Lutheran Germany from Reformed Switzerland in the years after 1550.40 The confessional differences were the first to emerge. The threat posed by the Augsburg Interim prompted Jean Calvin to seek closer ties with Zurich. The result was the Consensus Tigurinus, signed in 1549, which moved Calvin closer to the ‘‘late Zwinglian’’ view of the sacrament taught by Bullinger. The Consensus Tigurinus, in turn, led the Lutheran preacher Joachim Westphal to issue two polemical works attacking the Swiss view of the Lord’s Supper. Calvin’s response touched off a second eucharistic controversy that was, if anything, even more bitter than the first.41 The renewed controversy differed from the earlier dispute in two important ways. First, it encouraged the more precise formulation by Lutheran theologians of the Christological basis for the doctrine of Christ’s real presence in the Lord’s Supper. Although differences in Christology were a factor in the polemical exchanges of the 1520s, they were not as important as other issues. The uneasy truce regarding the Lord’s Supper achieved by Bucer’s concord efforts rested, among other things, on the implicit agreement not to

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discuss Christology. This implicit agreement broke down with the renewal of the controversy. By the early 1560s, the differences between Reformed and Lutheran Christology, particularly as the latter was formulated by Johannes Brenz, were so pronounced that even those most dedicated to concord had difficulty finding common ground for agreement.42 Just as significant were the political developments that discouraged efforts to establish concord between Lutherans and Reformed. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg had granted recognition to ‘‘the churches of the Augsburg Confession’’ in the Empire, but not to the Zwinglian churches. With this treaty, the south German cities that had endorsed Bucer’s concord efforts were given a strong incentive to identify themselves as Lutheran and to abandon their ties to the Swiss churches outside the Empire. The Swiss churches, however, were not subject to the provisions of the Peace of Augsburg. Following Zurich’s lead, most of them had not signed the Wittenberg Concord. After 1555, they became even less willing to establish concord with the churches in south Germany that were becoming more clearly Lutheran. During the first eucharistic controversy, political pressures had encouraged concord, despite doctrinal differences. During the second controversy, both political pressures and increasingly detailed doctrinal positions worked together to undermine efforts for concord within both parties. The confessional and political divide that developed between the Empire and Switzerland in midcentury had grave consequences for Basel, for the city would eventually be forced to abandon its traditional cultural and economic ties with southern Germany and become more closely linked to its fellow Swiss confederates. The significance of these events was not immediately apparent to contemporaries, however. When Myconius died in 1552, his successor, Simon Sulzer (1508–85), tried to maintain Basel’s middle course between the increasingly strident positions expressed in Lutheran Germany and Reformed Switzerland.43 Originally from the Bernese Oberland, Sulzer had studied in Strasbourg with Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito before moving to Basel in 1531 to continue his studies. His spell as a teacher in Bern’s new academy was broken by a short stay in Basel for more education, but he returned to Bern in 1538 to teach theology and to assist that city’s pastors. Sulzer was quickly drawn into the controversy over the Lord’s Supper in Bern that predated his arrival. By the early 1540s, Sulzer had become the spokesman for the faction that favored Bucer’s mediating theology, but this group was opposed by a party still loyal to Zwingli’s early eucharistic views. Tired of the interminable wrangling among its pastors, the Bern Senate dismissed Sulzer from office in 1548. He moved to Basel, where he was soon chosen as pastor of St. Peter. As both the best educated and most experienced of the younger generation of clergy in Basel, he was easily elected to succeed Myconius as pastor of the cathedral parish in 1553.44 Sulzer continued to advocate Bucer’s eucharistic theology long after that theology had been abandoned in Bucer’s own city of Strasbourg. Over the next two decades, Basel’s political and ecclesiastical leaders pursued a policy of

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involvement with and mediation between both sides. In 1563, Basel’s Senate sent Sulzer and his fellow pastor Ulrich Koch to help resolve the conflict over predestination and the Lord’s Supper that had developed in Strasbourg. Three years later, Sulzer forestalled Basel’s direct endorsement of the Second Helvetic Confession by arguing that the city’s own Basel Confession of 1534 was sufficient. But the growing confessional and political divide between Lutherans in the Empire and Reformed Switzerland made Sulzer’s nonconfessional posture increasingly untenable. Moreover, the pastors who were born after 1530 and who reached adulthood after midcentury had no memory of the earlier close ties between Basel and the Empire. Their orientation was increasingly Swiss and Reformed rather than cosmopolitan and irenically Protestant. By the early 1570s, Sulzer was having great difficulty maintaining Basel’s confessional neutrality, a task made even more difficult by his own increasingly Lutheran sympathies.45 The second half of the 1570s witnessed three events that introduced the Confessional Era in Basel. Coincidently, two of these events occurred in 1575 and were linked with the emergence of two important figures: the election of a new bishop of Basel, Jacob Christoph Blarer von Wartensee, and the appointment of a new professor of theology, Johann Jacob Grynaeus, destined to become head of Basel’s church in 1586. Bishop Blarer was committed to the two tasks of strengthening his secular authority over his episcopal territory and promoting the goals of Tridentine reform wherever possible. During the decade following his appointment, the traditionally good relations between the city and the bishop disintegrated, as Blarer first sought an alliance with the Catholic cantons and then, with their backing, began pressuring Basel to return to his control all of the villages over which the city had extended its protection. The city sought the help of its fellow Reformed confederates, but ultimately it was forced to yield. In the spring of 1585, the two parties reached an agreement whereby the seven villages to the southwest of Basel that had come under the city’s protection in the 1520s would be restored to the bishop. In return for a large payment, the bishop renounced his claims over the remainder of Basel’s rural territory. The Treaty of Baden marked the political and religious resurgence of the Catholic church in Basel’s immediate vicinity and brought a new level of confessional awareness to Basel.46 At the same time that tensions between Catholics and Protestants were increasing, Basel was also forced to come to terms with the division within Protestantism it had long tried to ignore. The untiring efforts of Lutheran theologians to forge a common confession resulted finally in the Formula of Concord of 1577, which was incorporated, along with other documents, into the Book of Concord in 1580. Although it did not immediately end the quarrels among Lutheran theologians, the Formula’s explicit condemnation of both Zwinglian and Calvinist positions led to an anti-Lutheran backlash in Basel. In 1577, the Basel Senate forbade any of its pastors to accept the Formula of Concord. Over the next decade, the Reformed party gradually gained the upper hand in Basel.

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The key figure in Basel’s adoption of Reformed Orthodoxy was Johann Jacob Grynaeus (1540–1617). A prote´ge´ of Sulzer, Grynaeus was born in Bern but had grown up in Basel.47 After several years of study at the city’s university, he became a pastor in the neighboring Margraviate of Baden. Four years later, supported by a stipend from the Markgraf, he matriculated at Tu¨bingen. He received his doctorate in theology in 1565 and was appointed superintendent of the district of Roeteln, directly across the Rhine from Basel. A decade later, he was called to the chair of Old Testament at Basel’s university. When he began his teaching responsibilities in Basel, Grynaeus still held a Buceran understanding of the Lord’s Supper, but by 1578 he had become the patron of those Reformed students in Basel who opposed Sulzer’s Lutheran sympathies.48 The growing threat posed by the Tridentine reforms of the bishop of Basel and the new sense of unity and opposition to the Reformed church among Lutherans in Germany brought an end to Basel’s attempts to maintain a nonconfessional Protestantism. By the early 1580s, Basel was forced to acknowledge the confessional consequences of its entry into the Swiss Confederation at the beginning of the century. Grynaeus’s election to succeed Sulzer as head of Basel’s church at the end of 1585 marked the final victory of the Reformed party in the city. Grynaeus reestablished Basel’s ties with the churches of Zurich and Bern and created new ones with Geneva; he also worked to eliminate the last vestiges of confessional nonconformity within Basel’s church. In 1596, he was joined by the young Silesian theologian Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, newly appointed to the chair of Old Testament at the university. Under these two men, the theology faculty gradually established its Reformed reputation and began to attract students from Reformed territories throughout Europe.49 By the early seventeenth century, however, Basel was losing the reputation as a cultural and intellectual center that it had enjoyed through much of the sixteenth century. Its printing industry had begun to decline already during the 1580s. A generation later, the city suffered tremendous losses when a seemingly minor outbreak of plague in the fall of 1609 turned particularly virulent. The death toll mounted steadily over the summer of 1610, and by the time the plague had run its course, over four thousand Baslers had died, including many leading figures in the government, church, and university.50 Grynaeus survived the epidemic, but by this time he was in his seventies and suffering the physical limitations of old age. Three young theology students were rapidly given their doctorates to distinguish them as theologians and leaders of the church, but none of the three had the stature or reputation to replace Polanus, who had died in the epidemic of 1610. Two of these theologians, Sebastian Beck and Wolfgang Meyer, were sent to the Synod of Dort as a demonstration of Basel’s solidarity with the larger Reformed world, although they did not play an important role at the Synod; the third, Johann Georg Gross, became a pastor but remained closely tied to the city’s university. Neither they nor Johannes Wollebius (1586–1629), a younger colleague

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elected as Grynaeus’s successor as both cathedral pastor and theology professor, could attract students to Basel’s university as their more illustrious predecessors had. Wollebius and Gross might have left a greater mark on Basel’s church if they had not both fallen victim to another outbreak of the plague in 1629.51 By the time of their deaths, political developments outside of Basel were also taking their toll on the city. The outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War sharpened confessional tensions within Switzerland. Basel was particularly vulnerable to outside pressures, for it was surrounded by Catholic territories and separated geographically from the other Reformed confederates. Moreover, it lay along one of the major routes used by troops moving between Italy and the Netherlands. The spread of the war into Germany disrupted trade and sent refugees, mercenaries, and bandits into Basel’s territory. The confessional tensions and the dangers of travel also had an impact on the city’s university: matriculations declined from a high of 146 in 1602 to only 69 in 1629. All of these crises contributed to the increasing concentration of political power in the hands of an urban oligarchy, a tendency that was already apparent in the last decades of the sixteenth century.52 A century after its official adoption of the Reformation, Basel was a much different city from the one it had been when its printers first started producing Luther’s works. It was solidly Swiss, looking to Zurich and Bern rather than to Strasbourg and the other imperial cities, as its natural allies and supporters. It was also firmly Reformed, conscious of its place in the international community of Reformed churches. The guildsmen who had played a prominent role in the city’s government in the first half of the sixteenth century had been replaced by a small circle of dominant families who thought in terms of magistrate and subject rather than seeing themselves as representatives of the guilds who had elected them. The foreigners who lived within Basel’s walls were refugees, not intellectuals and scholars. A new intellectual elite had emerged, comprised of Basel families descended from the printers, university professors, and pastors who had shaped the city’s cultural climate in the sixteenth century.53 Of course, not all of Basel’s pastors were members of this intellectual elite. This study will focus more broadly on all of the clergy who served either an urban or a rural parish in Basel’s church. By way of introduction, let us look at a group portrait of Basel’s pastors in the century after the Reformation.

Basel’s Pastors: A Group Portrait The 254 men who served the Basel church in the century after the Reformation were a varied lot. Somewhat more than half (56 percent) came from Basel (table 1.1). Roughly 15 percent of the native Baslers came from the city’s rural territory; most of these were sons of rural pastors.54 Of the nonnative pastors, 9 percent came from territories that bordered on Basel, while 7 percent came from other parts of southwestern Germany. Only 3 percent of the pastors

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Colmar Breisach

River

UPPER

BREISGAU

Rhine

ALSACE Ensisheim

Mulhouse

MARGRAVIATE OF BADEN

COUNTY

SUNDGAU

OF

Basel Waldshut

Säckingen Rheinfelden Laufenburg

Montbéliard MONTBÉLIARD

MANDATED

Liestal

Porrentruy

BASEL Delsberg

Aarau

BURGUNDY

Baden SOLOTHURN

PRINCE- BISHOPRIC

TERRITORIES

BASEL Solothurn

Sursee Biel Bieler See

LUCERNE

Landeron

Lucerne

BERN

EZ

Vierwaldstätter See

Lac de Neuchâtel

Reformed Catholic Lutheran

Political Border Religious Border within State

0

STAT E NA ME

0

R E G I O N N AM E

5

10

15 km

N W

5

E

10 mi S

figure 1.3. Confessional identity of territories neighboring Basel ca. 1620; adapted by Ezra Zeitler from Historisches Museum Basel, Wettstein: die Schweiz und Europe 1648. Katalog zur Ausstellung (Basel: Merian, 1998). Reprinted with permission.

came from more distant parts of the Empire: three from Franconia and others from the Palatinate, Bavaria, Hesse, and as far north as Hamburg. Approximately 11 percent of the pastors came from the Swiss Confederation or its allied territories. Ten of these men were from Bern, including Simon Sulzer and Johann Jacob Grynaeus, the two men who led the Basel church during the second half of the sixteenth century, but both of them had prior Basel connections. Sulzer had studied at Basel, and his wife was from the city, while Grynaeus’s family had moved to Basel when he was a boy. No other area of Switzerland contributed more than two or three men to Basel’s pastoral corps.

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Almost all of the 118 pastors whose family backgrounds are known were Baslers who came from the middling levels of society.55 Slightly more than one-third were the sons of artisans or members of craft guilds; 18 percent were the sons of men employed by the city in some official capacity (many of them as Schaffner, or managers of ecclesiastical property that had been secularized at the Reformation); and 8 percent were the sons of merchants. Fifteen pastors in this group had fathers who were wealthy enough to serve as senators, but none of them belonged to the inner circle that controlled the city’s government. The remaining 39 percent came from families associated with the city’s religious and educational institutions: most were the sons of pastors, but five had fathers who were professors at Basel’s university, and eight were the sons of schoolteachers.56 Like other cities, Basel had its own pastoral dynasties, but these families maintained their ties with the artisan class from which they had sprung. Although perhaps unusual because of its size, the family of Johann Parcus demonstrates the network that linked pastoral and artisan families. Parcus’s first wife, Dorothea Wildysen, was the daughter, stepdaughter, and sister of pastors; her sister Anna was the first wife of the pastor Philip Luterburger. After his first wife’s death, Parcus married Luterburger’s sister Margaretha. His third wife, however, was from one of the villages in Parcus’s parish. Of Parcus’s many children, one son, Heironymus, became a pastor himself, but his other children either became artisans or married them.57 Through his second wife, Johann Parcus joined one of the larger networks of pastoral families, which linked the Merian, Falkner, Brandmu¨ller, and Luterberger families and extended to include Simon Sulzer. Sulzer’s wife, Elisabeth, was the sister of the senator Ulrich Merian. Their sister Margaretha Merian was married to Ulrich Koch, who as pastor of St. Peter became one of Sulzer’s staunchest allies when confessional tensions began to divide the city’s clergy. Chrischona Merian, a niece to the wives of both Sulzer and Koch, married the pastor Hans Ulrich Falkner, whose uncle was the Stadtschreiber Heinrich Falkner. After the younger Falkner’s death, his widow became the second wife of the St. Theodor pastor Johannes Brandmu¨ller. Her daughter Elisabeth married pastor Ulrich Leucht, while her son Hans Ulrich II followed his father and stepfather into the ministry, as did two of Brandmu¨ller’s sons from his first marriage. The older of these married yet another sister of pastor Philipp Luterberger, and the other married a daughter of the Stadtschreiber Falkner.58 The extensive connections between the Merian, Falkner, Brandmu¨ller, and Luterburger families were more characteristic of the city pastors, especially those who served as senior pastors in one of the four city parishes.59 Links of blood or marriage were not uncommon among the rural pastors as well, but they were generally limited to only a few individuals. These family connections could be important for helping young pastoral candidates obtain their first post.60 Such ties were not always beneficial, though. There was considerable ill will, for instance, between the two pastors Heinrich Ott and Antonius Weitz, who was married to Ott’s sister Gertrud. When Ott accused

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Weitz of mistreating Gertrud before her death, their ecclesiastical superior was forced to intervene; he, in turn, blamed Ott’s mother for aggravating tensions between the two families.61 More significant than family ties was the amount of education needed to qualify for a post in Basel’s church. Three-quarters of Basel’s clergy had some university education, and the overwhelming majority of these received at least one degree (table 1.2). Approximately 15 percent matriculated at a university, another 15 percent left the university with a bachelor’s degree, and 24 percent went on to receive a master’s degree. An additional 20 percent formally matriculated in the theology faculty and continued their education for a few years after receiving their master’s degrees; eight of these were awarded doctorates in theology after they became pastors. Another five pastors already had doctorates in theology when they entered the service of Basel’s church.62 Almost all of those holding theology degrees held one of the university’s two chairs of theology concurrently with their pastoral position. Only eleven of these pastors did not receive at least some of their university education in Basel, and those eleven were all appointed to posts in the Basel church during the first half of the sixteenth century. In addition to their studies in Basel, thirty-six pastors studied at a second university, ten matriculated at three universities, and one matriculated at four different universities. Thirteen of Basel’s pastors studied at Heidelberg, and ten others matriculated at Wittenberg.63 Eleven students matriculated at Freiburg, nine of them before the Reformation, but two future pastors studied there in the 1560s when Basel’s university was temporarily closed due to an outbreak of plague. Seven more pastors studied in Geneva, while five pastors attended the university in Tu¨bingen and four matriculated at Leipzig.64 At least four are known to have studied in Strasbourg, but the loss of Strasbourg’s matriculation records make it impossible to know how many other Basel pastors studied there. No other university attracted more than one or two students who would become Basel pastors. Many statistical studies have pointed to the rising level of education and the increasingly territorial nature of the early modern Protestant clergy, but few have paid much attention to the timing and causes of these changes. In Basel, the changes that occurred over the course of a century were so dramatic that overall statistics tell only part of the story. Much more informative is a careful examination of the Basel clergy over time. As one pastoral generation succeeded another, Basel’s clerical corps underwent a transformation that would have a significant impact on both the church and the laity. A closer examination of each generation reveals how and when that transformation occurred. The changes are illustrated by tracking the composition of the Basel clergy over approximately ten-year intervals.65 To begin with, there was a gradual shift from a clerical corps that came from throughout southern Germany and Switzerland at the time of the Reformation to a group of clergy who came entirely from the city of Basel or its close environs a century later (graph 1.1). The proportion of Basel natives grew slowly but steadily each decade, with the greatest increase taking place

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between 1559 and 1571. Pastors from elsewhere in Switzerland made up roughly 20 percent of the Basel clergy through the first half of the sixteenth century, but by 1571 they were only a small minority. Pastors from adjoining territories and other parts of southern Germany also continued to hold posts in Basel in the decades after the Reformation, but they had declined to an insignificant proportion by 1571 as well. Educational standards also rose over time; here the improvement came in stages rather than in continuous increments (graph 1.2). There was no significant improvement in the educational level of the pastoral corps in office during the first two decades. The chief difference between the clergy as a whole at the adoption of the Reformation and those in office two decades later was a slight increase in the number of pastors known to have matriculated, whether at a university or more specifically in the theology faculty. One consequence of the increasing number of Baslers being brought into the pastorate during the 1550s was an improvement in the overall educational level of the clergy. By 1559 there was a significant increase both in the proportion of clergy who had matriculated at a university and in the proportion of those who had master’s degrees. As was true of the pastors during the first two decades, the relative proportions of those who had matriculated or earned university degrees remained roughly unchanged in 1571 and 1581. Another shift in the level of education had occurred by 1590, however, when the number of pastors who had matriculated but not received a university degree fell to half the earlier level. By this time, all of Basel’s pastors had received at least some university education. The relative educational level of Basel’s pastors remained roughly the same in 1599 as it had been nine years earlier, but by 1609 the distribution pattern had changed again, this time because of a significant increase in the number of students who had matriculated in theology. Some of these students matriculated in that faculty before earning their master’s degree, but most of the matriculations came after completion of the master’s degree. Over the next four decades the proportion of pastors who ended their education with only a bachelor’s degree steadily declined. The number of those with only a master’s degree decreased at a somewhat slower rate, but the number of those who had matriculated as theology students increased steadily. Over the entire century, the number of pastors with doctorates in theology held relatively constant. It was the practice for at least one of the university’s two theology professors to hold a post concurrently as senior pastor of either the cathedral or of St. Peter. Because the university statutes specified that holders of endowed chairs had to have the appropriate degree, all of these men were required to have received a degree in theology. The brief exception to this general rule was Simon Sulzer, the leader of the Basel church from 1553, whose illegitimate birth precluded the attainment of a theology degree until political circumstances made it expedient for one to be granted to him in 1563.66 The step-like changes in educational level point to another important fact about the composition of the Basel clergy: it could only change as the older generation of pastors was replaced by younger, better educated men. The

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most important factor governing the rate of change was therefore turnover in pastoral corps. On the positive side, a slow turnover rate provided a certain continuity within the pastoral corps. Too-rapid turnover in personnel could create difficulties for the church if a sufficient number of qualified replacements were not available. On the negative side, and assuming a satisfactory pool of replacements, the slow turnover in personnel made it much more difficult for the leaders of Basel’s church to bring about appreciable change within a short period of time. An analysis of how many men either died or left Basel’s ministry during each decade gives some indication both of stability of personnel and opportunity for rapid change. For the first two decades after the adoption of the Reformation, the turnover rate was fairly stable, at about half of the number of available positions, despite an outbreak of the plague in 1541 (graph 1.3).67 Turnover increased significantly over the next two decades, as individual pastors either moved to other territories or left the ministry altogether. The outbreak of plague in 1564 also contributed to the higher number of deaths, for it claimed at least six pastors. The most important factor, however, was the aging of Basel’s pastoral corps: several of those who died during these two decades had first entered the ministry during the 1530s. The turnover rate returned to about 50 percent during the next two decades, and then fell to a low of only eight vacancies during the first decade of the seventeenth century. After that, the turnover rate returned to about one-half of the posts, again due to outbreaks of the plague in 1610 and 1629. Very few pastors were removed from office either because of old age or for behavior considered inappropriate for a minister.68 Already by the 1560s, the majority of pastors died in office, which implies a certain commitment to the Basel church and its ministry. One way to analyze further the changes in turnover rate would be to look at the average career length of a Basel pastor. This would be misleading, however, since the lengths of careers varied enormously. At one end of the spectrum was Jacob Ha¨rtlein, who was appointed deacon or assistant pastor of St. Peter in Basel after the incumbent died during the 1564 epidemic; Ha¨rtlein himself succumbed to the plague two months later. At the other end of the spectrum were two pastors, both appointed in the 1570s, who served the church for over sixty years. For this reason it is more useful to look at the proportion of pastors with careers of differing lengths (graph 1.4). In 1529, 85 percent of the clergy had held Basel posts for ten years or less; in other words, only a handful had been pastors in Basel at the time that Luther’s ideas began to reach the city. A decade later, a significant proportion of these pastors still served the Basel church, making up about half of Basel’s clerical corps, but there was also a large number who had been appointed to positions during the 1530s. As late as 1559 and after thirty years of ministry, eight of the first Protestant pastors were still in office. At the same time, the decade of the 1550s witnessed the appointment of a large number of new pastors: almost half of the clergy in office in 1559 had been pastors in Basel for ten years or less.

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Over the next three decades the younger pastors continued to make up 40–45 percent of the clerical corps, but the slowing turnover rate gradually changed the age structure of the clergy. As fewer new men were appointed to positions in the 1590s, the age distribution evened out, so that in 1599 approximately the same number of pastors were serving at the various levels of experience in the church. During the first decade of the seventeenth century, the scale tipped in favor of older pastors. The extremely low turnover during this decade meant that very few young men were appointed to office, and the largest proportion of clergy—roughly 35 percent—were those who had held Basel posts for thirty years or more. The most experienced pastors continued to hold a significant proportion of posts, but the plague of 1610 led to an infusion of new blood. After 1609, more young men entered the pastorate, which created the unusual age dichotomy of a church with a large number of pastors fairly new to their positions and a surprising number of pastors who had served the church for thirty years or more. Examination of the clergy in office by decade provides only the framework for understanding changes to Basel’s clerical corps. A more detailed picture emerges when we examine the backgrounds and education of the men chosen to fill pastoral posts during each decade between 1530 and 1629. The contours are similar to those shown in the examination of the clergy as a whole, but by looking only at the new clergy appointed to posts during each decade, we can identify emerging trends and establish when they occurred.69 With regard to geographic origin (table 1.1), it is striking that only one Basel native was appointed to a parish post during the first decade after the adoption of the Reformation, and only four more in the second decade. Despite the Senate’s willingness to provide financial support for boys preparing for the pastorate and the presence of a university where they could study, only a very small number of native sons actually entered the service of the city’s church. This situation changed dramatically during the 1550s, when over half of the newly appointed pastors came from Basel or its rural territories. Despite hardening confessional boundaries, a small number of new pastors came from Lutheran territories—Baden, Swabia, and further north in Germany—into the 1560s and 1570s. By the 1580s, however, the clear preference for Basel natives steadily squeezed out competition from outside territories, and even from other Reformed churches in the Swiss Confederation. The only non-Basler to receive a position in the Basel church during the first three decades of the seventeenth century was appointed in 1612, in the wake of the massive mortality associated with the outbreak of plague.70 An analysis of the educational level of new clergy shows a much more rapid improvement than is apparent from looking at the clergy as a whole (table 1.2). Having an educated clergy was clearly a priority to Basel’s church leaders during the first decades after the Reformation, as demonstrated by their appointment of men with at least a master’s degree. As graph 1.2 (on education of clergy in office) revealed, however, these new appointees did little

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more than replace men of similar educational background. By the decade of the 1560s, the number of new pastors with M.A.s had increased significantly, but the rapid turnover in pastoral posts during that decade meant that roughly the same number of men with less university training were appointed as well. The declining rate of turnover over the next three decades made it easier for Basel’s church leaders to raise the educational bar. Already by the 1570s, a bachelor’s degree had become a virtual prerequisite for pastoral office, and a decade later, pastoral candidates needed a master’s degree. Of the seven pastors without master’s degrees appointed after 1590, three were native Baslers who had served as ministers elsewhere in Switzerland and thus had considerable pastoral experience when they were appointed to Basel posts; two were the sons of pastors who had almost certainly met the requirements for their master’s degrees;71 and a fourth, Johannes Bu¨rgi, had served as schoolmaster in one of the rural villages for ten years before being appointed to a position that combined the job of schoolmaster and pastor. Both Bu¨rgi and the fifth pastor, Jacob Su¨ss, were appointed to replace pastors who had died during the 1611 outbreak of plague. It is significant that, despite the increase in vacancies during the plague decades, the vast majority of new pastors not only had received their M.A.s but had formally matriculated as theology students as well. Finally, an examination of the career length of the new pastors by decade tells us something important about the stability and experience of the pastoral corps as a whole (graph 1.5). Many of those pastors placed in office during the first two decades after the official adoption of the Reformation had fairly short careers. Although a small number served the church for over thirty years, approximately half were no longer in office ten years after they had first been appointed. This pattern continued through the 1560s, when the mortality caused by the 1564 outbreak of plague contributed to the large number of pastors with short career lengths during this decade. At the other extreme, however, six of the men appointed to posts during this period went on to serve the Basel church for over forty years. The careers of pastors appointed during the 1570s shows the further development of the dichotomy between short careers and very long ones. Roughly one-third of the pastors appointed to the ministry served for ten years or less, but at the other extreme, 45 percent of them would serve the church for over thirty years. By the last decade of the sixteenth century, the trend toward ministries of twenty years or longer is unmistakable among the new clergy. There continued to be a number who died within a decade of assuming pastoral positions, but it is striking how many pastors had very long careers. Almost half of the pastors appointed in the 1620s would have pastorates of over thirty years. An inevitable result of longer average career length was greater stability within Basel’s pastoral corps. In many respects, the clergy who served the Basel church were very similar to their brethren in other territories. Studies of the clergy in Wu¨rttemberg and in the Palatinate, Strasbourg, the imperial cities of Franconia and lower Swabia, and the territorial cities of Braunschweig and Kitzingen have all found

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a narrowing of geographical origin, strong family and marital ties to the class of civic and territorial officials and artisans, as well as the creation of pastoral dynasties, and a gradual improvement in educational level.72 In Basel, however, these developments came fairly early, due to the almost exclusive recruitment of native sons for the pastorate. After 1570, only nine men who were not native Baslers became pastors in the city-republic’s church. This meant that the men who oversaw Basel’s educational system had an unusual opportunity to direct the training of the city-republic’s future pastors. The discussion so far has demonstrated that Basel’s clerical corps evolved significantly over the century after the Reformation. In order to evaluate changes in generational attitudes and the potential for generational conflict, however, it is necessary to identify and differentiate between generations. This can be done by looking at the ages of Basel’s clergy at roughly ten-year intervals (graph 1.6). There is not enough information about the age of pastors in office before 1550 to draw any useful conclusions, but by 1571 the birth dates of almost all pastors are known. Although there are still significant gaps in our knowledge about the age of several pastors in office in 1550 and in 1559, it is possible to approximate a minimum age by assuming that each pastor whose birth date is unknown was at least fifteen years old when he matriculated in a university. If there is no record of matriculation, I have estimated that the pastor was at least twenty-five years old when he first becomes historically visible.73 This method of estimation gives us minimum ages for those clergy in office by 1550. The data for 1550 thus provide a general view of age structure. With increased information about those clergy in office in 1559, we have a somewhat more detailed view that can then be compared to the precise information we have for 1571 and after. In order to analyze age structure, I have grouped the pastors into ten-year birth cohorts covering the span of their careers.74 Although modern sociologists consider withdrawal from active participation in society to be a distinguishing feature of the oldest generation, this generalization needs to be taken with a grain of salt when applied to the early modern period. In many cases, the infirmities of old age certainly sapped the powers of pastors over sixty. Nevertheless, they continued in their posts despite poor health and physical frailty. This had a twofold consequence for the church: not only did it hinder the older pastors in the vigorous performance of their duties but also it deprived younger men of a chance for a guaranteed living in the Basel church. This would be a source of tension as the number of available posts declined over the last third of the sixteenth century. The most striking fact about the age structure of Basel’s clerical corps in 1550 is the predominance of older pastors: almost three-fourths of them were at least forty years old. Because the birth dates for twenty-eight out of the fortyfive pastors are minimum estimates, and fifteen of these must have been born before 1509, the majority of Basel’s clergy could well have been over fifty years old. The dominance of pastors over forty means that the majority of Basel’s pastors at midcentury had grown up within the late medieval church and

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experienced the turbulent early years of the Reformation as teenagers or adults. At the other extreme, there were three pastors under the age of thirty who been born after the outbreak of the Reformation and had thus grown up within Basel’s Protestant church, and another six who may have been young enough to fall into this category.75 It is hardest to determine the number of pastors in early middle age, those who would have reached adulthood during the early establishment of Protestantism, whether in Basel or elsewhere. In fact, only three pastors are known to have been born between 1505 and 1519, although another eight may have been born during this period. Nine years later, the age structure of the clerical corps was beginning to change. Increasing documentation makes cohort identification easier for the clergy in office in 1559. A number of the older pastors had died and been replaced by young men under the age of thirty, who now made up almost onethird of Basel’s pastors. Those over fifty made up another one-third. Only fifteen of the forty-four do not have birth dates, but in light of their careers, five of these were at least fifty, and four more could not have been younger than forty. The remaining six may have been in their thirties but could well have been older. Despite the increase in the number of younger clergy, then, the older generation still dominated Basel’s pastoral corps. On the basis of these figures, it is possible to see the beginning of a bipolar age structure among the Basel clergy at the end of the 1550s. At one end of the age spectrum were a large number of much older pastors, most of them born a decade or more before the Reformation and thus raised within the medieval church. At the other end of the spectrum were a significant number of young pastors, all born during the 1530s and appointed to office during the decade of the 1550s. These men had reached adolescence during the tense years of the Schmalkaldic War and the eventual political resolution of the Peace of Augsburg. They had also watched the rapprochement between Geneva and Zurich that was signaled by the Consensus Tigurinus and had followed the renewed polemics of the second eucharistic controversy that resulted from it. In between these two groups were a very small number of pastors who were born in the years immediately surrounding the outbreak of the Reformation. The significance of this trend becomes clear in the next decade. The young pastors born in the 1530s have moved into the next age cohort. Only a few of the pastors in this group had passed their fortieth birthday. In addition, as the oldest generation of pastors had died, they were replaced by another large group of young men. Together the two youngest age cohorts comprised almost three-quarters of Basel’s pastoral corps. Correspondingly, the number of pastors over age forty had dropped precipitously, and six of the eleven in this age group were over sixty years old. There were no pastors born during the 1510s, and only three who were born during the decade of the 1520s. There was, therefore, a significant gap in age and experience separating this oldest generation from their much younger colleagues. In practical terms, this meant that a large number of young pastors, all of whom had been born well after the Reformation, was dominated by a handful of old men, including Antistes Simon Sulzer, born a decade before the beginning of the Reformation.

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A decade later, the demographics had shifted again. By 1581, the inevitability of aging had brought the first group of pastors born in the 1530s into their forties and early fifties, while all but three of those over age sixty had died. A new generation of men had come into power in the Basel church, as is clear from a comparison of the clerical corps over the next two decades. More significantly for the future, there were a large number of pastors who had been appointed in the 1560s. Their numerical strength made these relatively new pastors a force to be reckoned with. Although there were not so many young pastors in office in 1581, the fact that so many of those appointed in the 1570s had extremely long careers meant that they would provide a certain continuity and stability for the rest of the century. The slowing turnover rate among the Basel clergy meant that from the 1580s the number of very young pastors would never again be as high as it had been during the third quarter of the sixteenth century. By 1609, more than half the pastors in office in Basel were over fifty. Higher turnover rate caused by the plague outbreak in 1610 brought a number of younger men into office, but the longer career spans of pastors appointed in the seventeenth century meant that over time the number of older pastors increased. This analysis of the changes to the Basel pastoral corps over time makes it possible to tentatively identify successive generations of clergy, with each generation lasting between twenty and thirty years. During the first two decades after 1529, there were few major changes within the clerical corps. Those new pastors who were appointed during the 1530s and 1540s were similar to those in office in 1529 with regard to variety of background, geographical origin, and educational level. Most of the clergy in office in 1550 were roughly the same age, no matter how long they had held positions in Basel. The age similarities make this the most clearly identifiable generation to serve Basel’s church. This first generation began to die off during the 1550s. Its members were gradually replaced by a new and much younger group of Basel students who had been trained for the ministry. Change was not instantaneous, nor was it always in a positive direction. The next two decades were a time of turmoil and instability, in which gains in education were offset by high turnover. The outbreak of plague in 1564 was an additional setback to the progress made over the previous decade, and it took approximately another decade to make good the losses. What distinguished this generation from those who both preceded and followed them was the common experience of growing up entirely within a Protestant church and reaching adulthood either during the Schmalkaldic War or after the its conclusion with the Peace of Augsburg. At the same time, these men witnessed the renewed outbreak of the eucharistic controversy and the growing separation of Lutheran and Reformed, symbolized on the one side by the Lutherans’ condemnation of Zwingli at the colloquy of Worms in 1557 and on the other by the publication of the Second Helvetic Confession in 1566. By the 1570s, Basel’s clerical corps was taking on a new profile, one that would last into the early seventeenth century, thanks in part to the large

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number of pastors who served the church for three decades or more. Social and geographical uniformity, the formation of family ties among pastors, shared educational experiences, and higher levels of education all combined to create a homogenous and fairly uniform clerical corps. Over the course of some very long careers, these pastors would contribute significantly to the establishment of Reformed doctrine and the enforcement of new standards of behavior among their parishioners. The cohort of young men who entered the ministry in the 1570s thus served as the link between the second and third generation. The third generation of pastors, those who entered the ministry between 1580 and 1610, were characterized by their relative homogeneity.76 The most significant development to create a generational consciousness among these pastors at the end of the sixteenth century was the church’s abandonment of its nonconfessional Protestantism in favor of a clearly Reformed identity. This Reformed identity was further sharpened by its contrast to both the Tridentine Catholicism in the neighboring episcopal territory and the consolidation of Lutheran territories in the Empire behind the Book of Concord. A definitive generational break came during the second decade of the seventeenth century, due to the large number of young men who entered the ministry in the wake of the plague outbreak of 1610–11. Further generational differences, both within the pastors appointed to office between 1580 and 1610 and between this older group and those entering the ministry after 1610, can be identified on the basis of their education, which I will discuss in later chapters. But before considering the successive generations of post-Reformation pastors, let us examine more closely the first generation of Basel’s Protestant clergy, looking first at the message they conveyed to their parishioners in their preaching and teaching, and then at the institutional and educational structures they established to ensure the long-range future of their church.

2 Preaching and Teaching in Theory and Practice

Even before the official adoption of the Reformation, the practices of medieval Catholicism were crumbling in Basel. By 1527, Catholic worship had been virtually eliminated in two of the parish churches. In its place the pastors had introduced services that centered on the sermon and were accompanied by congregational singing of the psalms in German. The Reformation Ordinance of 1529 brought an end to the remaining elements of Catholic worship in the city. Images were removed from the remaining churches, parish priests loyal to the old church were replaced by those committed to the evangelical cause, and those Catholic clergy who chose to remain in the city were prohibited from performing Catholic rites and required to attend sermons and theology lectures. The task now facing the reformers was the ‘‘evangelization,’’ or reformation, of the city and territory’s entire population. Preaching, catechization, and the liturgical acts surrounding administration of the sacraments were the pastors’ chief means of communicating the evangelical message to the populace. But what precisely was that evangelical message? In order to answer this question, we must distinguish between theology and praxis. In the years surrounding the official adoption of the Reformation, the city’s pastors, led by Oecolampadius, established the normative contents of the city’s new faith. Their theology was contained not only in the Reformation Ordinance of 1529 and the Basel Confession of 1534, both issued by the Senate, but also in the liturgical agenda that the church adopted and the catechism that was reprinted in successive editions of the agenda. These documents were of fundamental importance for Basel’s church, not only because they established theological guidelines for the first generation of pastors but also because they were reinterpreted and, in some cases, altered

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to meet the needs of later generations. These reinterpretations, and the controversies that surrounded them, would demonstrate the impact of confessional developments outside of Basel on that city’s church. A survey of Basel’s official theology, established in the early years of the city’s Protestant church, is therefore essential for placing later doctrinal developments in the proper perspective. It is one thing, however, to establish an official theology and quite another to teach that theology to a largely illiterate laity. Thus it is also necessary to examine the contents of the sermons preached in Basel. Here it becomes clear that along with the evangelical gospel, Baslers heard a fair admixture of other elements, ranging from political advice to polemical outbursts against enemies—both Catholic and Anabaptist—of the new faith. Moreover, although pious Baslers were exposed to the evangelical message in a variety of ways, the city’s pastors had no effective means of ensuring that the entire population heard, understood, and internalized that basic message. This gap between official theology and the actual practice of preaching and teaching points to a central problem in the transmission of the evangelical faith in the decades immediately following the Reformation.

Basel’s Official Theology From the early years of its existence, Basel’s reformed church had three documents that set out the doctrinal basis for what was to be preached and taught in the city and its rural territory. These documents held an authoritative position, not only because they were given official recognition by the magistrate but also because they were all attributed to Johannes Oecolampadius. The earliest of these to be written was the liturgical agenda first published in 1526 and later revised, probably in 1529. The Reformation Ordinance issued in April 1529 combined provisions governing doctrine, worship, and morals. The Basel Confession, issued by the Senate in 1534, was written by Oswald Myconius on the basis of an older confession of faith by Oecolampadius.1 The Reformation Ordinance was the first official statement of Basel’s theology, and its doctrinal positions were fairly general. The fundamental principle underlying the ordinance was the authoritative nature of God’s word. The preface of the ordinance justified the elimination of Catholic abuses and misuses and the establishment of good order on the basis of what God had revealed in his word. Accordingly, the ordinance itself began by specifying how the word of God was to be proclaimed in Basel: ‘‘purely, plainly and clearly, for the honor of God and the planting of brotherly love.’’ The ordinance summarized the evangelical message: God has sent his only Son for us out of pure grace; Christ died and rose for us and is the sole mediator and savior of all who trust in him, having paid for our sins and reconciled us to the father; and Christians are to die to sin and live a new life. The ordinance also made Scripture the touchstone of both belief and practice. The preachers

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were to teach only from the books of the Old and New Testaments, and where disagreement arose, Scripture was to be the final arbiter of opinion. Allegories, histories, parables, and the like could be used in preaching, but only in moderation. Human laws that bound consciences, however, were to be rejected.2 The only other doctrinal matters contained in the ordinance concerned the sacraments. The sections on baptism and the Lord’s Supper were included primarily to refute opponents of Basel’s new church, whether Catholic or Anabaptist. The ordinance explained baptism as a mystery signifying ‘‘the gracious working of Christ’s passion.’’ It was compared to circumcision in the Old Testament, as a covenantal sign of God’s grace; it was therefore appropriate for infants. Henceforth the sacrament was to be administered in German, and the use of salt, candles, holy oil, and other things that Christ had not commanded was abolished. Likewise, the ordinance rejected the abuses associated with the Lord’s Supper, and particularly the belief that the mass was a sacrifice. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper was also to be simplified, and those who ‘‘scorned the body of Christ, as unhealthy and withered members,’’ were not allowed to the fellowship of the Lord’s Table. Significantly, despite the controversy raging between Lutherans and Zwinglians over the proper interpretation of the Lord’s Supper, the church ordinance contained no clear statement of the sacrament’s meaning or significance.3 The Reformation Ordinance may have summarized the evangelical preaching of the 1520s, but it did not address a whole host of other doctrinal issues. Five years after the official introduction of the Reformation, the city adopted a confession of faith that gave a broader account of its new beliefs. Basel’s adoption of an official confession coincided with similar moves by other south German and Swiss cities to specify more precisely the contents of the message proclaimed by their preachers.4 The Basel Confession consisted of twelve articles, with the longest devoted to the Lord’s Supper. Although the wording of this article took account of Bucer’s concord efforts, its position was essentially Zwinglian: Christ’s body and blood were presented and offered, but the natural, true, and substantial body was not enclosed in the elements, and the spiritual nourishment of the sacrament was received only by the faithful. The marginal glosses made the Zwinglian view even more explicit by specifying that the sacrament ‘‘did not draw Christ according to his humanity down from the right [hand] of God.’’5 The Confession avoided anti-Catholic polemic, but its final article, regarding Anabaptists, specifically condemned their rejection of infant baptism, of oaths, and of the Christian nature of the magistrate. Despite its condemnation of Anabaptist beliefs, the Confession did not include a positive discussion of what Christians should believe about baptism. In early 1536, Basel’s church leaders helped draft the First Helvetic Confession, which was intended as an official statement of faith by all of the reformed churches of Switzerland. Its article on the Lord’s Supper was the farthest the Swiss churches were willing to go in order to reach an agreement with Luther concerning the sacrament. Six months later, Basel’s church

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endorsed the Wittenberg Concord, the only Swiss church to do so. Basel’s church leaders were persuaded to take this step, in part, on the basis of Bucer’s own interpretation of the Concord, which distinguished between unworthy and impious recipients of the sacrament and thus preserved the Swiss insistence that faith was necessary for the reception of Christ’s body and blood. The agreement represented the culmination of Bucer’s efforts for eucharistic concord, and by accepting it, Basel’s church aligned itself with the Strasbourger’s policy of placing church unity over doctrinal precision.6 Taken as a whole, then, Basel’s official theological pronouncements contained very little that identified the city’s church with a specific theological current within the broad evangelical spectrum. Neither the First Helvetic Confession nor the Wittenberg Concord held the same iconic status for Basel as its earlier confessions did, yet these later statements, and not the earlier confessions, would shape the understanding of the Lord’s Supper taught in Basel over the next several decades. Significantly, the most pointed confessional assertion in the Basel Confession, the marginal gloss that endorsed a clearly Zwinglian interpretation of the Lord’s Supper, was omitted from the edition of the Confession printed in the late 1540s.7 As a consequence, the Confession’s article could more easily be harmonized with the Wittenberg Concord. Rather than moving in the direction of a more precisely defined confessional stance, by the 1540s Basel’s church was backing away from identification with either side on those doctrines that divided the evangelical churches. Although these official statements of doctrine were significant for establishing the city’s theology, the city’s liturgical agenda was perhaps more important for indoctrinating Basel’s citizens and subjects in the new faith. Whereas the Reformation Ordinance and the Basel Confession were official documents rarely read by the clergy, let alone the laity, in the years after the Reformation, the liturgical agenda specified what Baslers heard every time the sacraments were administered. The first agenda, attributed to Oecolampadius and published in 1526, contained liturgies for the Lord’s Supper, for baptism, and for visiting the sick; it also contained a public confession of sin to be used by the pastor before the sermon. Within a few years a new agenda was published that also included a wedding service, Oecolampadius’s catechism, and two catechetical hymns.8 Both the baptismal and communion liturgies were significantly modified in this second edition. The order for visitation of the sick was also revised, but in comparison to the sacramental liturgies, those changes were relatively minor. This liturgy would be more important for allowing practices in Basel that were rejected by other Reformed churches. The original baptismal liturgy differed radically from the elaborate ceremony of the late medieval church. The liturgy was intended to instruct those present about the proper meaning of baptism rather than to exorcise evil spirits or to portray symbolically the infant’s spiritual rebirth. It began with a lengthy discussion of the Fall and its consequences, and then explained infant baptism as a sacramental sign accompanied by prayers that God would also baptize the child with the Holy Spirit. After this short lesson in baptismal

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theology, those bringing the child to be baptized were asked to renounce the devil and give their assent to the Apostles’ Creed. The child was then baptized and given a white robe, the only element of the many symbolic embellishments to baptism to be retained.9 The spread of Anabaptists in Basel’s territories made the implicit distinction between external and internal baptism problematic, and the revised baptismal liturgy was much more forthright in emphasizing the value of infant baptism. Baptism was now equated with incorporation into the church, and the liturgy spoke much more positively about the link between the external washing with water and the internal washing through the Holy Spirit. It also stressed the responsibility of parents and godparents to teach the Christian faith to the child, and warned them not to let the child separate from the community of the faithful. Finally, it no longer specified that the infant was to be clothed in white, thus breaking with the last vestige of extrascriptural symbolism.10 The original eucharistic liturgy also began with an explanation of the sacrament, through which the congregation testified to both its gratitude and its unity as the body of Christ, as expressed in the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed. A lengthy list of sinners considered to be banned followed, following the order of the Ten Commandments but omitting explicit mention of the sin of covetousness—a reflection of Oecolampadius’s own interpretation of the Commandments.11 The liturgy included readings from Isaiah, several epistles, and the passion accounts from the Gospels to help participants remember Christ’s suffering and to encourage a deeper sense of thanksgiving. The revised liturgy retained many of the elements of the earlier version, but it was more streamlined and the parts better integrated into a whole. The Old Testament and epistle readings were eliminated, the list of bannable sins was both shortened and sharpened, and new prayers were included. The new liturgy placed more emphasis on the participants’ obligation and intention to live a new life. By modifying the words of absolution and distribution, it loosened slightly the link between the participants’ subjective faith and the value of the sacrament.12 The earliest liturgy for visiting the sick retained two elements that were later firmly rejected by the Reformed. First, it allowed for a form of private confession: bystanders were invited to leave the room, and the dying person was given the opportunity to confess any sins that burdened his or her conscience to the pastor. This provision proved too close to both Catholic auricular confession and to Lutheran private confession to be left unchanged. Accordingly, the revised liturgy stated only that the sick person could ask the pastor questions about the faith; no mention was made of confessing sins or of others leaving the room.13 Even more problematic was the inclusion of the Lord’s Supper in the visitation liturgy. The 1526 agenda had the pastor ask if the sick person wanted to receive the sacrament as a testimony of unity with all Christians. After the bread and wine were distributed, the pastor again reminded all present that the sacrament testified to the unity of Christ’s body. The incorporation of the sacrament into the visitation was controversial, however, to judge from the

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rubric added to the revised liturgy. This specified that if an individual had not received the sacrament in a long time and wished to testify to Christian unity, he or she should not be refused. Those who had communed recently, however, were to be told that they did not need the sacrament.14 These revised sacramental and visitation liturgies became the standard ceremonies for Basel’s church. They were reproduced unchanged in the agendas that were published about once every decade through the end of the century. They were, therefore, important for helping to establish a number of traditions that differed from those associated with either Zurich or Geneva and that would eventually be regarded as typically Reformed. The most important addition to the agendas was Myconius’s 1544 reworking of Oecolampadius’s catechism. To appreciate the significance of this catechism, however, we must trace the development of catechetical instruction in Basel.

Catechisms and Catechetical Instruction In the years immediately following the Reformation, Basel’s parents, teachers, and pastors could choose from a variety of catechisms to teach the essentials of the evangelical faith. During the later 1520s and early 1530s, the German catechisms of Wolfgang Capito, Kaspar Megander, and Jacob Otther were all printed in Basel.15 For those who preferred something written by a Basler, a catechism attributed to Oecolampadius was published as part of the liturgical agenda in 1537.16 Oecolampadius’s catechism could perhaps be seen as an expansion of the principles contained in the Reformation Ordinance, but it was a rather idiosyncratic text. The catechism’s contents were an uneasy mixture of old and new that was typical of the early Reformation. Its evangelical nature is reflected in the statement that a true Christian is one who ‘‘believes from his heart that the Son of God became true man, who has obtained forgiveness of sins and eternal life for us through his passion and death.’’17 There is also implicit criticism of Catholic teaching in the assertion that God has not forbidden any kind of food or drink, and the catechism condemns prayers to the saints, but it also contains the admonition to praise the saints for the sake of the gifts and grace God has given them.18 More surprisingly, the catechism did not contain an explanation of either the articles of the Apostles’ Creed or the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments were discussed only briefly. The catechism condemned those who rejected baptism or who advocated rebaptism, it implied that the baptism of infants was scripturally sound, and it reminded the child of the vow made in baptism to renounce the world and the devil and become God’s servant. Only one question was devoted to the Lord’s Supper, which was described as a ‘‘communal thanksgiving and high praising of our Lord Jesus’s death and the shedding of his blood, as a testimony of Christian love and unity.’’19 The Decalogue, in contrast, was treated in some depth. The catechism emphasized that the Ten Commandments are all subsumed by God’s two

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commands that we love and trust him above all else, and that we love our neighbors as ourselves. Oecolampadius’s treatment of the Commandments was unusual: he did not highlight or separate the command against images, as became standard in later Reformed theology, but he did combine the two last commandments in the traditional numbering, both of which dealt with covetousness, and he used them as the lens through which he viewed the internal significance of the preceding eight commandments. The Commandments themselves were to be understood and obeyed internally, and the acts prohibited by the first eight commandments (following the medieval numbering) were each briefly equated with sins of thought or attitude. For instance, an idolater loves something more than God, a blasphemer uses God’s name in a dishonorable way, and an adulterer has an unchaste heart.20 As a consequence of this unusual treatment, Oecolampadius’s discussion could be used to support either the Lutheran or the Reformed division of the Commandments, and it therefore became a cause of conflict later in the century. The bulk of the catechism was made up not of doctrinal exposition but of the discussions between teacher and pupil that served as bridges between the creed, Commandments, and Lord’s Prayer. The exchanges between teacher and pupil concerned the need to persevere in faith in spite of persecution, good works as a consequence of genuine faith, and the conduct appropriate for a pious child, which included diligently hearing God’s word, avoiding idleness and bad company, exercising moderation in eating and drinking, rising immediately upon waking up, and speaking when spoken to.21 Children who had memorized the catechism would have a much better understanding of how they were to behave than of what they were supposed to believe as evangelical Christians. In fact, with its emphasis on behavior rather than on belief, Oecolampadius’s catechism had more in common with one of Erasmus’s colloquies than with most evangelical catechisms.22 A potential rival to Oecolampadius’s catechism was A Short Instruction for the Young, written by the teacher of the girls’ school of St. Martin, Christoph Wyssgerber, and published in 1538. Wyssgerber’s catechism was far more conventional in its structure, including the texts of the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, as well as short sections on both baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Each section was further broken down into articles, petitions, or commandments with simple explanations and concluded with a brief list of pertinent Bible verses. Wyssgerber’s phrasing occasionally echoed that of Oecolampadius, but he also borrowed heavily from the catechism of Johann Zwick. As a teacher, Wyssgerber knew the importance of repetition as an aid for memorization, and so he made full use of formulaic statements. Thus each of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer began with the question ‘‘Why do you say . . . ’’ and was answered by ‘‘We request and ask God that . . . ’’ The catechism contained a number of simple prayers for various occasions: morning and evening, before and after meals, for patience in suffering, and for special days in the church year.23 Wyssgerber’s catechism was apparently popular enough to warrant reprinting in 1540, but it could not rival the authority of a catechism attributed to

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the founder of the city’s church. However, Oecolampadius’s catechism was a flawed teaching tool. Its brevity and simplicity may have recommended it for young children in the vernacular schools and for peasants in the countryside, but its doctrinal vagueness was inherently problematic, and it was clearly not sufficient for older children. To address this situation, Oswald Myconius published a Latin version of Oecolampadius’s catechism in 1544. As Myconius wrote in his preface, the city’s schools needed a uniform Latin catechism so that the boys would not have to make the translations themselves.24 Myconius did not simply translate Oecolampadius’s catechism, however; he also added the text and new explanations of the creed, Commandments, and Lord’s Prayer, and he expanded the discussion of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These changes resulted in a much more conventional catechism and provided a doctrinal counterpart to the emphasis on appropriate conduct in Oecolampadius’s original catechism. Myconius’s discussion of the three chief elements of the catechism was simple and straightforward, but, like Oecolampadius’s division of the Ten Commandments, it contained passages that would later become matters of controversy in the Basel church. The creed was presented as a summary of the Christian faith, teaching about one God in three persons, the church as Christ’s bride, and what the church receives through faith here and in the future life. Myconius divided the creed into the traditional twelve articles rather than into three sections, which allowed him to make specific statements about Christ’s life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. He could, for instance, assert Mary’s virginity before, during, and after Christ’s birth.25 In particular, Myconius interpreted the descent into hell as Christ’s salvation of those who had died before his coming, ‘‘and so that we would know . . . that we who die in the Lord will not be compelled to descend there after we die.’’26 Although it reflected the typical late medieval interpretation of Christ’s descent, Myconius’s statement here did not accord with any of those interpretations advocated by either Lutherans and Reformed, and it would later become a bone of contention in Basel. Myconius also added a slightly anti-Semitic edge to his interpretation of the ascension: Christ did not remain on earth, thereby refuting ‘‘the Jewish error concerning the Messiah,’’ but ascended into heaven so that believers would know that he had come from there.27 Myconius retained the traditional shortened version of the Ten Commandments, rather than introducing a translation of the Exodus text, and he divided the commandments into two tables of three and seven commands, respectively. In so doing, he placed the Basel catechism within what would become the Lutheran rather than the Reformed tradition concerning the numbering of the commandments. He prefaced Oecolampadius’s discussion of the individual commandments with a general framework within which they were to be interpreted. The first three commandments taught that one was to obey God with heart, mouth, and works. The remaining commands dealt with loving one’s neighbor, beginning with one’s parents, and prohibiting harm to them, moving from the greatest, taking life, to the least, destroying reputation.

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The final two commandments taught that we were to avoid sin not only with our deeds but also our desires.28 Myconius bracketed his explanation of the three elements with a discussion of the sacraments. He used the opening question and answer—‘‘Are you a Christian?’’ ‘‘Yes, God be praised’’—as the introduction to baptism, for the respondent became a Christian ‘‘when, after I was born, I was washed in the sacred fountain.’’ Myconius said nothing more explicit about baptism as a sign of entrance into the visible church or into God’s covenant people but focused instead on the sacrament’s power to effect regeneration and cleanse from original sin.29 At the end of the catechism, he added six more questions on the Lord’s Supper. These emphasized that with the sacrament of bread and wine, one received the body and blood of Christ, but that such reception came only through the believing soul.30 The expanded catechism was quickly translated back into German and over the next fifty years was included in successive editions of Basel’s liturgical agenda, which gave it a quasi-official status in Basel’s church.31 As such, it was taught to all of the children who attended school in the city or its rural territories. During the 1530s and 1540s, however, there was very little catechism instruction offered outside of the school curriculum. The Reformation Ordinance specified that four times a year the parish pastor was to examine all the children between the ages of seven and fourteen to see ‘‘if they could pray and knew the commandments of the Lord, and then to instruct them in the faith and the love of God.’’ In addition, all children wishing to receive the Lord’s Supper for the first time were to be examined by the pastor to see if they understood what the sacrament was.32 These provisions required only a bare minimum of religious knowledge for those Baslers—probably the majority—who did not attend school. And even this minimum was not enforceable, for in 1540 the pastors complained to the Senate that very few children were presenting themselves to the pastors for examination before their first communion.33 Fifteen years later, the pastors were still complaining that Basel’s children did not know their catechism: catechism instruction was only held a few times a year, and not many children came to it. Even worse, many parents purposely allowed their children to receive their first communion at an early age so that they could stop attending catechism instruction.34 Despite the best intentions of the pastors, the religious instruction of the young remained beyond their control in the decades following the official adoption of the Reformation. As before the Reformation, the only reliable means the pastors had to instill knowledge of evangelical doctrine was through their regular preaching.

Preaching in Basel Preaching was the central responsibility of the Protestant pastor. It was also the most public and visible part of his ministry, and the task that consumed most of his time and energy. Just as it regulated other aspects of religious life,

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the Reformation Ordinance had established a new schedule for worship in the city. The times and places of the various worship services were a carry-over from the liturgical activities of the late medieval church. On Sundays, the early mass celebrated at daybreak and intended especially for servants and for travelers was replaced by sermons in the parish church of St. Peter, in the three filial churches of the cathedral (St. Martin, St. Alban, and St. Elizabeth), and in the former convent church of St. Clara, across the river in Kleinbasel. This was followed at 8 a.m. by the main worship service of the day in each of the four parish churches (the cathedral, St. Peter, St. Leonhard, and St. Theodor). At noon, Baslers could attend yet another sermon, either at the cathedral or at the Franciscan church, and a final sermon was held at 4 p.m. in the cathedral. Preaching continued regularly throughout the week as well. Sermons were held at 5 a.m. every weekday morning in the Franciscan church in the main part of the city, and in St. Clara in Kleinbasel. A short sermon (the Ratspredigt) was also delivered in the cathedral each day before the meetings of the Senate. The daily mass formerly celebrated in each of the parish churches was replaced with one service held in the cathedral at 9 a.m.35 Finally, the theology lectures given in the cathedral in midafternoon were open to all. Although these lectures were given in Latin, in the years following the Reformation they also included a German summary for the edification of the audience. Rural pastors were required to preach on Sunday and once during the week. In 1541, during a severe outbreak of the plague, an additional service of prayer and repentance on Tuesday morning was instituted in each of the parish churches, and the Tuesday sermons remained a fixed feature after the plague subsided. Although the responsibility for preaching was divided among Basel’s thirteen pastors, this still entailed a considerable amount of preaching by each one. In 1566, the assistant pastor of St. Theodore estimated that he gave 212 sermons a year—and that did not include funeral and catechetical sermons.36 Opportunities to hear preaching were therefore abundant—and it was not left up to Basel’s inhabitants to determine whether or not they would go to church. Shortly after the publication of the Reformation Ordinance, the Senate issued an edict ordering all who had reached the age of reason to attend the Sunday sermon in their own parishes each week; parents were to bring their children and servants as well. This mandate was renewed repeatedly over the next decade, with increasing emphasis on the fine to be imposed on those who disobeyed. Officials recognized legitimate hindrances to church attendance, granting in particular that villagers might need to leave someone at home to watch the children and animals, but in these cases, each household was to establish a rotation schedule so that no one could completely avoid attending church.37 The authorities took such a firm stance because church attendance, and particularly reception of the Lord’s Supper, was a visible sign of doctrinal unity. The mandates complained about individuals who loitered in the churchyards, on the Rhine bridge, in public squares, or in taverns and guildhalls at

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the time of the Sunday morning service, thereby separating themselves from the city’s church. These people caused offense not because they were simply indifferent to religion but because they were perceived as actively opposed to the city’s official teachings. The edicts requiring church attendance not only guaranteed that they would hear the official interpretation of God’s word; the provision that they attend their own parish church also meant that pastors could more easily identify nonattendees and report them to the Bannherren for admonition.38 But what did Baslers hear when they went to church? The sermons preached in Basel differed significantly from those given before the Reformation, not only in content but also in form. Evangelical preachers abandoned the thematic sermon popular in the late Middle Ages in favor of a more scripturally based style of preaching.39 Their sermons could take two forms. The older model was the patristic homily, in which the preacher expounded a section of Scripture phrase by phase or verse by verse. Ulrich Zwingli adopted this expository style of preaching when he began preaching in Zurich in 1519, and Bullinger and other Zurich pastors imitated it. Calvin used it as well in Geneva. The other model was that of classical oratory, which Protestant humanists like Melanchthon adapted to the demands of the pulpit. In this style, the contents of the sermon were arranged according to theological loci or topics drawn from the Scripture text. Bullinger recognized the value of this topical style of preaching for teaching the uneducated laity, and he occasionally used it for his own sermons. Nevertheless, he acknowledged the prejudice against it that existed in Zurich in the early 1530s, and the Genevans criticized him for his occasional use of this type of sermon. As a consequence, the majority of his sermons were expository, following the practice of lectio continua introduced in Zurich by Zwingli.40 Given their associations with Switzerland and Wittenberg, respectively, the potential for confessional differentiation was inherent in these two models, although this was not apparent in the early years of the Reformation. In Basel, both of the newer types of sermons could be heard. Here, as in other areas, Oecolampadius’s example proved to be decisive. A few of Oecolampadius’s sermons were published as pamphlets during his lifetime, while others were added to his biblical commentaries published posthumously by his colleagues. Because most of these sermons were based on the transcriptions of others, they are not completely accurate portrayals of Oecolampadius’s preaching, but they do give some indication of both its style and its content. Oecolampadius’s skills as a preacher were derived from three sources: his extensive theological training; his experience as preacher in Weinsburg, Basel, and Augsburg before his break with the Catholic church; and his work as translator of the Greek fathers, particularly the homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom. His preaching style underwent a marked shift from the medieval thematic approach in the early 1520s to the patristic homily by the middle of the decade.41 His earliest printed sermons, preached while he was in Augsburg, were more closely tied to the church festival on which they were preached than to a specific Scripture text.42 By contrast, the sermons

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preached in Basel, particularly those preached serially, were concerned with explaining the contents of Scripture passage by passage.43 In these sermon series, Oecolampadius followed the same principle of lectio continua used in Zurich, proceeding through the text on a verse-by-verse basis. Oecolampadius’s dual role as theology professor and as preacher and, eventually, pastor of St. Martin led him to use both of the newer forms of preaching, with some blurring of the boundaries between them. During the 1520s, he continued to follow the traditional lectionary in his Sunday and feast day sermons, although he apparently abandoned this practice after the official adoption of the Reformation. Stylistically, these sermons were similar to the medieval model, in that they had a single theme or topic and were clearly divided into parts. However, they were much more closely based on a Scripture text than were Oecolampadius’s earlier sermons, and they contained frequent citations of related Scripture passages.44 Oecolampadius’s adoption of the lectio continua method of preaching undermined the distinction between his sermons and his theology lectures. Indeed, two of Oecolampadius’s sermon series were published posthumously as commentaries.45 Oecolampadius’s lectures and sermons differed primarily in two ways. First, the theology lectures were likely to consider philological questions, while the sermons were more general expositions of a passage. Second, the lectures proceeded verse-by-verse through the text, while the sermons were usually organized around a theme and included some practical application of doctrine. Thus a sermon on the parable of the sower has as its theme the justifying faith that produces fruit and exhorts the hearers to receive God’s seed in their hearts, while a Pentecost sermon on John 14 focuses on the consolation that is found in God alone and reminds the audience to shun earthly consolations and to meditate on and praise God for his goodness.46 The differences between lecture and sermon should not be exaggerated, though. In particular, Oecolampadius’s weekday morning sermons and his afternoon theology lectures tended to blur the distinction between the genres. His sermons on the Psalms, for instance, combined the rhetorical features of the sermon with the verse-by-verse explication of the text. Thus his sermon on Psalm 74:9–23 has an introduction that is a brief exhortation to repentance in itself, but it then discusses each verse of the psalm individually.47 Perhaps most important, the intellectual level of the theology lectures was not so high as to make them inaccessible to a lay audience, and the goal of the sermon, like the lecture, was to impart familiarity with the Scripture text and its practical application. Common to many of Oecolampadius’s printed sermons is a sharp rejection of Catholic beliefs and practices. His two 1526 sermons on the Lord’s Supper, for instance, were provoked by charges that the evangelicals dishonored the sacrament. In response, he criticized the Catholics for twisting Christ’s words to Thomas (‘‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,’’ John 20:29) to mean that one should disbelieve one’s own senses in order to accept Christ’s essential presence in the consecrated host. In fact, Oecolampadius argued, ‘‘both mice and worms tell us that it is still bread,

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even though the pope’s crowd denies it. Yes, truly both before and after use it is nothing more than bread, and so one does not need to preserve it in a tabernacle with such great idolatry, for it is now bread, and Christ did not institute it so that one can commit idolatry with it.’’48 In other sermons, Oecolampadius made clear the differences between true evangelical faith and the old church through the adroit use of comparisons and contrasts. In the sermon he preached at the time of his own appointment as curate of St. Martin’s, for instance, he condemned the selfseeking clergy and described the selection of ministers in the early church in contrast to the Catholic hierarchy of orders and the faults of the Catholic clergy: For the Lord said, ‘‘the laborers are few’’ [Matt. 9:37–38], and today there are few, however much the world complains about the multitude of priests. For there are few of them who are faithful. Many of them are slaves of their belly, many turn piety into profit, many seek their own, and there are few who seek Christ. The Lord wants to be asked, because nothing prospers without him. Here I do not see that method of promotion by which they are made lectors, exorcists, acolytes, subdeacons. This was the method, as I far as have been able to draw together from the funeral oration of Basil and from Cyprian: if anyone had served faithfully, and was found suitable in teaching, admonition, and exhortation, and moreover was of honest life, he was promoted. . . . Today there are abuses with all things. Whoever has money or can serve is ordained: yesterday a cobbler, today a bishop; yesterday in the stables, today at the altar. And they think they are ordained, even though they cannot perform even the least office, indeed, cannot read even a verse: and they dare to claim for themselves the authority of judging about the Gospel and the word of God.49 Likewise, in a sermon preached on the Sunday before Lent, Oecolampadius contrasted the true works of repentance—avoiding drunkenness and lusts, and devoting time to prayer and God’s word—with the church’s prescriptions, such as the signing with ashes on Ash Wednesday. The latter practice, he charged, was hypocritical and should be avoided, for it opposed faith, repentance, and the word of God.50 Oecolampadius did not limit his polemic to his Catholic opponents. In the years after the city’s official adoption of the Reformation, he attacked Anabaptists as well. Nor did he shy away from criticizing his fellow citizens: he chastised the men charged with overseeing secularized church property for the unexplained disappearance of funds, he attacked the Stattknecht for not enforcing the prohibitions against gambling and drinking, and he accused the Baslers in general of faintheartedness and indifference to religion. In the printed sermons, this polemic is always balanced by a more positive presentation of evangelical teaching, but the latter could easily be overshadowed

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by the invective. At least one educated listener, the jurist Bonifacius Amerbach, paid more attention to these polemical outbursts than to the presumably more constructive or edifying portions of the sermons.51 Oecolampadius’s sermons and theology lectures were important as models for Basel’s preachers. Most of the leaders of Basel’s evangelical movement were experienced preachers before the Reformation, whether as holders of endowed preacherships or as members of preaching orders, particularly the Franciscans. Nevertheless, they also had to change their style of preaching to reflect the evangelical emphasis on making the contents of Scripture known to their audience, and Oecolampadius’s example was constantly before them in the early years of the Reformation. Because all of Basel’s clergy were required to attend the daily lectures in the cathedral, they had ample opportunity to hear Oecolampadius’s teaching, which they could then imitate in their own sermons. The fact that the pastor Johann Gast could publish transcriptions of these sermons after Oecolampadius’s death demonstrates that at least one of Basel’s pastors was paying close attention to those sermons, while Amerbach’s brief descriptions of the sermons of Gast and other Basel pastors reveal that they often castigated their hearers in their sermons in the same way Oecolampadius had.52 Oecolampadius’s successor, Oswald Myconius, was a humanist schoolteacher, not a priest. Unlike Oecolampadius, he had never been trained in the late medieval tradition of preaching. He had developed his preaching skills instead as a lecturer on the New Testament in Zurich. Myconius had a mixed reputation as a preacher. On the one hand, he was elected to his first post in Basel on the strength of an extemporaneous sermon he preached on a topic suggested by his former student Thomas Platter.53 On the other hand, Myconius’s pointed sermons made him unpopular in certain quarters. In 1539, he complained bitterly to his friends that few people came to hear his sermons, because he diligently preached against sin. Instead, they preferred the sermons of Andreas Karlstadt, who used his sermons on Joshua to praise the study of geometry and to describe the geography of the Holy Land.54 Like Oecolampadius, Myconius felt that it was his duty to criticize the magistrate from the pulpit if it deviated from the proper path. In 1539, he warned of divine punishment because the Senate had exempted the Carthusian monks who remained in the city from the Reformation Ordinance’s requirement that all clergy attend the evangelical sermons. Three years later, Myconius reported to Bullinger that he had run afoul of the Senate because he had called for greater financial support for the city’s educational system and questioned the Senate’s handling of church property. Myconius was not the only pastor to earn the Senate’s disfavor; at the synod of 1542 the pastors defended themselves against charges that when they denounced sins from the pulpit, they were acting more from fleshly motives than godly ones.55 Basel’s pastors could also use their pulpits to support the magistrate. Myconius and his colleagues Marcus Bertschi and Jakob Truckenbrot all preached against those who had left Basel to fight as mercenaries for the French in violation of the Senate’s prohibition. The proper application of scriptural

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principles to political decisions was not always readily apparent, however, and the city’s pastors could disagree in their sermons about the proper course to follow. In August 1549, the pastor of St. Peter preached against entering into an alliance with France, which led his colleague at the Spital to preach even more vehemently in favor of the alliance the next day. It was in order to prevent such public disagreement among its pastors that the Senate rebuked Bertschi in 1543 for even mentioning in his sermons the recent publication of the Koran in the city.56 Although fragmentary, these references to what was preached in Basel in the two decades after the Reformation demonstrate that the city’s pastors did not limit their sermons to the explanation of the Scripture text or the inculcation of the city’s official theology. A manuscript sermon on the Lord’s Supper preached by Myconius gives us greater insight into the relation between prepared text and preached sermon. The text of the sermon was preserved because it was the subject of protest by Zurich’s clergy. Some Zurich citizens visiting Basel for the November fairs and again at Christmas time in 1543 reported to Bullinger that Myconius was preaching a different understanding of the sacrament from that accepted in Zurich. This news prompted Bullinger to send a formal letter to Myconius, written in the name of his colleagues, to protest against Myconius’s statement that Christ was present corporally in the sacrament and to remind Myconius that Oecolampadius had never taught Christ’s corporal presence.57 In response to the protest from Zurich and to demonstrate his orthodoxy, Myconius wrote out a sermon on the Lord’s Supper. It is uncertain whether this text is the sermon he originally preached, whether in November or at Christmas time, or if it was a later version never actually preached but written in order to illustrate the way he taught on the sacrament. Myconius himself told Bullinger that he had taught this way about the sacrament ‘‘not only on the days you name, but for the last twelve years.’’58 Since the Lord’s Supper was celebrated monthly in the cathedral, Myconius had frequent opportunity to preach on the sacrament, and so, with regard to its doctrinal content, Myconius’s sermon can be assumed to be an accurate representation of his teaching. In fact, the sermon adheres closely to the interpretation of the Lord’s Supper outlined in Martin Bucer’s explanation of the Wittenberg Concord. On this issue at least, Myconius took very seriously his responsibility as preacher to make sure his audience heard the city’s official position on a very controversial point of theology.59 There was more to the sermon than a simple explanation of the Lord’s Supper, however. According to the Zurichers who heard the Christmas sermon, Myconius had claimed that Oecolampadius taught the same about the sacrament as Luther. Myconius’s colleague Johann Gast provided more detail in his own account of the controversial sermon to Bullinger. Someone had provoked Myconius on the issue of the Lord’s Supper, which had angered him enough to respond publicly by reading from a letter of Oecolampadius, and then asserting that the Basel Reformer said the same thing that Luther had written.60 Myconius justified his citation of Oecolampadius to Bullinger by

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explaining that some ‘‘big mouth’’ was defaming him throughout the city by claiming that Myconius taught ‘‘more crassly’’ about the sacrament than Oecolampadius or than Myconius himself had once taught. The reference to Luther was not to the Wittenberger’s writings in general but specifically to his letter to the Swiss churches written in the wake of the Wittenberg Concord.61 Combining the accounts of Myconius, Gast, and Bullinger’s informants with the written sermon text, it becomes clear that in this instance, Myconius’s preaching combined a sober and straightforward presentation of doctrine with an extemporaneous and more emotional outburst that was an angry response to public criticism. Moreover, although Myconius believed he had presented his understanding of the sacrament in a simple way, his message was distorted in transmission. His Zurich hearers could tell that he was not explaining the sacrament in the same way they heard it in Zurich, which implies that Zurich’s pastors had succeeded in teaching their position on the sacrament to their parishioners. The Zurich merchants also took offense at the term corporaliter (or its German equivalent, leiblich), which the Zurich pastors firmly rejected, and at Myconius’s claim that Oecolampadius agreed with Luther. In fact, the term leiblich does not occur in the manuscript sermon, but Myconius did write that Christ’s body was present in, and not absent from, the sacrament—a small but significant difference. Likewise, Myconius asserted that there was only an agreement between Oecolampadius’s position on the Lord’s Supper and what Luther had written following the Wittenberg Concord, not that the two men had generally agreed on the sacrament. These examples show how easily what was said in a sermon could be misunderstood, especially by those who were not familiar with a particular preacher.62 There are striking similarities between this account of Myconius’s sermon and its reception and another incident some thirteen years earlier in the town of Waldenburg in Basel’s rural territory. Johann Lu¨thardt, a former Franciscan who had been appointed as Spital preacher after the Reformation, had preached the sermon at the wedding of a ‘‘Herr Peter’’ in Waldenburg in May 1530. Soon after the wedding, a neighboring pastor heard rumors that in his sermon Lu¨thardt ‘‘had publicly preached and taught that it was better to do it with a dog than to commit adultery.’’63 The matter came to the attention of the Senate, which questioned a number of people who had heard the sermon. The more educated witnesses, including three pastors, a senator, and two other burghers from Basel, reported that Lu¨thardt had never made such a statement but that some in the audience had misinterpreted his words. As one might expect from someone trained within the Franciscan order, Lu¨thardt was a popular and gifted preacher. His sermons had helped win many Baslers to the evangelical cause in the mid-1520s.64 The guests who heard his wedding sermon recognized his eloquence. Several of them acknowledged that the sermon had started well, and one added that he had ‘‘rarely heard such sermons from a priest.’’ This comment is particularly revealing, since Waldenburg’s parish pastor, Peter Widmer, had been warned at the first two synods that he needed to improve his knowledge of Scripture

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and was threatened with deposition at the third if he did not show some significant improvement at the next synod.65 The text of the sermon, Matthew 19:3–9, was appropriate for a wedding, and its mention of adultery as the sole grounds for divorce provided the obvious stimulus to Lu¨thardt’s statements. According to the witnesses, Lu¨thardt had begun with a condemnation of the Anabaptists, and then moved to the subject of marriage, preaching ‘‘that marriage was instituted by God, that man was the head of the woman, but not so that he should despise his wife; rather he should protect and shield her, show her love and friendship.’’66 Such statements are predictable in a wedding sermon and reflect the preacher’s familiarity with biblical passages on marriage.67 But Lu¨thardt had apparently worked himself into such a frenzy that when he turned to the subject of marriage, he had accused his hearers of adultery, drunkenness, and wife-beating, and had concluded by saying that such men deserved not wives but dogs. This was the statement that had been misunderstood.68 Lu¨thardt’s concern with the Anabaptists grew out of the perceived threat such sectarians posed to the city’s church. At the synod held the same day as the inquiry into the wedding sermon, the first concern raised by the pastors was the spread of Anabaptist teachings in both city and countryside. Even more worrisome, many local officials were themselves Anabaptists or at least sympathizers. In the previous two months, Anabaptists from roughly half of Basel’s rural parishes, including Waldenburg, had been interrogated or incarcerated in the city.69 Under these circumstances, Lu¨thardt grasped the opportunity presented by the wedding sermon to address Basel’s rural subjects on the dangers of Anabaptism. But his sharp condemnation of those who mistreated their wives seems to have countered the earlier part of the sermon, for only seven of the fifteen Waldenburgers who were asked about the sermon mentioned Lu¨thardt’s condemnation of Anabaptism.70 There are several parallels between these two incidents of preaching from 1530 and 1543. In both cases, an experienced preacher gave a sermon intending to teach an evangelical doctrine—in the one case the proper understanding of the Lord’s Supper, and in the other the Christian view of marriage. But in each case, the preacher was prompted by external circumstances to extemporize: Myconius to respond to what he perceived as slander, and Lu¨thardt first to counter the Anabaptist threat and then to condemn the moral failings of his listeners. The vehemence with which they presented their extemporaneous asides made that portion of the sermon the most memorable, but also the most likely to be misunderstood. Documentation of these sermons exists only because the misunderstandings caused such offense that complaints were lodged against the preacher. Both incidents illustrate the pitfalls of trying to assess the content of evangelical preaching on the basis of written sermons alone.71 These two incidents also raise questions about the adequacy of the transmission process for the evangelical message. To be sure, the preachers felt that they were preaching ‘‘the pure Gospel,’’ as required by the Reformation Ordinance. But ‘‘the pure Gospel’’ was broad enough to include not

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only the city’s official theological positions but also advice on political and military matters and, in Karlstadt’s case at least, the defense of a liberal education and a knowledge of geography. Moreover, there was the constant danger that an uneducated audience would misunderstand or misinterpret what was said from the pulpit, especially when it was spoken in the heat of passion. Countering this tendency was the fact that Basel’s citizens were required to attend church and would be repeatedly exposed to certain ideas and doctrines. Practiced sermon attendees, such as the city inhabitants who heard Lu¨thardt’s sermon, could understand and summarize the main ideas in a given sermon or, like Myconius’s Zurich visitors, recognize deviations from the accustomed terminology. These self-correcting tendencies would be less effective when the hearers were unfamiliar with the preacher and his particular style of preaching—hence the complaints against both Lu¨thardt and Myconius. In the final analysis, this description of preaching and teaching in Basel in the two decades after the Reformation leaves us with a very mixed picture. The religious message proclaimed via Basel’s official confessional documents was fairly general, although clearly evangelical. At the center was the focus on Scripture. In sermons, ceremonies, and catechisms, Basel’s pastors attested to the authority of God’s word in religious matters. But they did not limit their preaching to the exposition of Scripture or the evangelical doctrines drawn from it. They condemned the sins they saw in the lives of their parishioners; they expressed their views on the political issues facing the Senate; they rejected Catholic practices and warned of the dangers of Anabaptism. How well Basel’s populace received this message is open to question. Their primary means of hearing evangelical doctrine was through the Sunday morning sermon. The Senate’s edict requiring attendance at the Sunday service might have guaranteed that all Baslers were exposed to that doctrine, but there are indications that the edict was not rigorously enforced in the rural parishes.72 City inhabitants wishing more familiarity with the word of God could attend daily sermons and theology lectures, but this was optional. All Baslers were expected to be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and probably the Apostles’ Creed as well, but simple memorization did not guarantee understanding. Schoolchildren received formal instruction in the catechism, but for most Baslers catechism instruction was optional. Moreover, through most of this period there was no generally accepted explanation of the elements of the catechism, let alone a single officially endorsed catechism from which Baslers were to learn those explanations. One consequence of this patchwork of religious pedagogy in Basel was a tremendous variety in the level of religious knowledge, not only among the city’s inhabitants, but even more among urban residents and rural peasants. Basel’s church leaders recognized the need for a more standardized religious education, but they could do little to improve the situation, for in the two decades after the Reformation their energies were absorbed elsewhere. Before they could turn their full attention to the laity, they had first to put their

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own house in order. In practical terms, that meant working out a stable relationship with the city’s magistrate, improving the theological knowledge of the city’s pastors, and training a new generation of clergy. These were the most pressing tasks undertaken by the first generation of Basel’s reformed pastors.

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3 Building a New Church

Basel’s official adoption of the Reformation in 1529 ended a decade of religious controversy and popular unrest. At the same time, it brought new challenges to the leaders of the church. The bishop’s authority over the church’s institutions and personnel had been rejected, but the reformers and the magistrate had different ideas about how the new church should be supervised. Over the course of the 1530s, the leaders of church and city-republic struggled to establish the proper balance of ecclesiastical independence and magisterial oversight. Just as important as the relationship with the civil authority was the question of recruiting men for the reformed ministry. The reformers laid a great deal of emphasis on the qualifications and character of the men who held pastoral office. In particular, it was necessary to ensure that candidates for the ministry had sufficient knowledge of Scripture and of evangelical doctrine. The city’s university was potentially a tremendous asset for the education of the clergy, but it was closed temporarily in 1529 after a drastic decline in matriculations. Theology lectures had continued on an informal basis, but this was only a stopgap solution. The university was reopened in 1532, but if it was to prepare young men to serve Basel’s church, its curriculum would need to be reformed and its vacant positions filled with competent professors. The problems facing the new church were thus both urgent and tremendously important for its long-term survival. The church’s leaders had not only to meet the immediate needs of Basel’s inhabitants and subjects for religious services and pastoral care; at the same time, they were required to make weighty decisions that would shape the church’s institutions and personnel over the long run. The two decades after the adoption of the Reformation proved

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to be a time of instability, experimentation, and struggle, as various factions in the church, university, and magistrate tried to work out solutions to these two challenges. This chapter will look at each of these areas where short-term problems and long-term needs intersected.

An Uneasy Partnership: Clergy and Magistrate For humanist reformers familiar with the structure of the early church, the obvious means of governing the church and supervising its personnel was through frequent synods or gatherings of the pastors themselves. This was the model adopted by Zurich, and the example of that church was followed in other reformed areas of Switzerland, including Basel.1 From the beginning, Basel’s synods were intended to accomplish two goals. First, they provided an opportunity to supervise the performance of all of the city-republic’s pastors, especially those serving in rural parishes. Second, they allowed the clergy to consult together concerning the problems facing the church. These goals were not mutually contradictory, but the Senate and the pastors themselves differed considerably concerning the relative importance of these two tasks. Concern for the teaching and conduct of the evangelical clergy was uppermost in the minds of the Senate. The Reformation Ordinance of 1529 gave a committee of examiners, made up of ‘‘two or three scholars of holy Scripture’’ and ‘‘one or two most suitable senators,’’ the authority to examine all new ministers in both doctrine and morals. The ordinance also gave the examiners the authority to summon all pastors and their assistants to semiannual synods, to be held in April and November, where each minister would have the opportunity to report unacceptable beliefs or behavior on the part of his colleagues to the appropriate authorities.2 As specified by the Reformation Ordinance, the examination and approval of all pastors was a prominent part of the synods held in the years immediately following the introduction of the Reformation. The synodal minutes from the early synods certified that the forty or so clergymen attending the meeting were ‘‘suitable for preaching the word of God and accepted as pastors.’’ At each of the first three synods, a few pastors were approved only on condition that ‘‘they study further’’ and told that if they did not do better at the next synod, they would be removed from their posts.3 Over the course of the 1530s, however, the synodal certification of the pastors became a mere formality, and the emphasis of the synod shifted: the occasion to supervise the clergy became less important than the opportunity for all of the pastors ‘‘in city and territory’’ to discuss problems in their parishes and to present their grievances to the magistrate. This shift both prompted and was then accelerated by a change in the organizational structure of the Basel church. The earliest synods were jointly directed by the university’s two theologian-pastors, Oecolampadius and Paul Phrygio, and by two or three senators, always including at least one of the Ha¨upter (the city’s chief executive officers).4 These men performed the duties

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of the examiners (although that title was not used) as described in the Reformation Ordinance. As the discussion of church business became a more important part of the synod, and the list of problems presented by the pastors grew longer, the Senate realized that it needed a more efficient procedure for addressing the issues brought before the synod. Thus in 1532 it issued a new decree delegating the responsibility for spiritual matters to a group of ‘‘Bann- or Synodsherren’’ and gave them the authority to enforce all previously issued statutes and ordinances.5 At the end of that year, the Senate repeated its edict that those ‘‘appointed for synods and ban cases’’ were responsible ‘‘for all matters concerning the church and religion’’ and specified that they should meet quarterly to deal with church affairs.6 The Kirchenrat, as the new body was called, was made up of the city’s four parish pastors, the four Ha¨upter, eight senators, and four burghers.7 This commission was responsible for overseeing the church and served as the intermediary between the pastors assembled in synod and the Senate. For the rest of the decade, the secular members of this council presided over the yearly synods, although only about half of them attended in any given year.8 The existence of a commission responsible for addressing the problems raised by the clergy in synod reflects the importance attached to these yearly meetings as a means of overseeing the church. The synod officials apparently took their duty seriously, for they made it their practice to draft a written response to the clergy’s complaints that was then forwarded to the Senate for consideration. A comparison of the pastors’ complaints and of the official responses to them not only gives an interesting glimpse into the state of the newly reformed Basel church but also reveals the extent—and the limits—of cooperation between clergy and magistrate during the 1530s. Almost all of the complaints presented by the pastors stemmed from the difficulties they encountered in translating the provisions of the city’s Reformation Ordinance and related moral code into practice. The people, whether in the city or in the rural villages, did not heed existing legislation. They were not attending church, and they were guilty of religious sins such as blasphemy and swearing, as well as moral offenses like drunkenness and gambling. They showed no respect for the pastors, for the word of God, or for the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The pastors were especially concerned about the young people who did not attend catechism instruction; those who did come to the catechetical services were not old enough to understand what was being taught.9 The blame for these failings was implicitly placed on the magistrate: the church ordinances and other statutes were not being enforced, the rural officials were negligent in their duties, and the ban was not being imposed. The synodal lords were not unsympathetic to the pastors’ complaints. On the contrary, they originally seemed to agree with the pastors about the need for stricter enforcement and additional legislation. The creation of the Kirchenrat in 1532 was in part a response to the pastors’ complaint that the magistrate did not devote enough of its attention to church affairs. Shortly after the synod, the Senate reminded its rural officials to enforce all of its

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edicts and ordinances relating to ‘‘the spread of the divine word.’’10 Before the end of the year, it issued another edict admonishing district officials to stricter enforcement of the ban ordinance in the rural territories and imposing a fine on all who loitered in public places during the times of the Sunday and holiday sermons.11 A few months after the 1533 synod, the Senate issued a mandate imposing stricter penalties for adultery and other moral offenses and reminding all of its officials to enforce the existing laws.12 In December of that year, it sent yet another edict to its district officials, this time emphasizing their duty to work with the Bannherren of each parish in admonishing sinners and enforcing attendance at Sunday services.13 Again in 1535 and 1536, the synodal lords recommended issuing edicts to all rural officials holding them to stricter enforcement.14 At the same time, however, the synodal lords expressed a growing impatience with the pastors’ complaints, since, as they pointed out in 1536, ‘‘many ordinances and mandates to abolish sins have been established which cannot be improved.’’15 Their frustration with the pastors’ complaints came to a head the following year. At the 1537 synod, the pastors made their most direct criticism of the magistrate to date, charging that although they had presented their grievances at previous synods, the most important issues had not been dealt with. The Senate showed ‘‘no diligence or genuine earnestness in church affairs: they indeed listen to [the pastors’] complaints and accept the articles [submitted] as if they intended to amend the failings, but nothing is ever done.’’16 Part of the problem lay with the senators and with the district governors (Obervo¨gte) of the rural territories, some of whom were apparently not fully committed to the city’s new church. The pastors complained that no one distinguished ‘‘between those who love the Gospel and those who up until now have been opposed to it: they seek friendship with such, appoint them to offices in the rural districts, accept them in the Senate.’’ The pastors begged the magistrate to take a more active role in overseeing church affairs and to see that its officials in the rural districts were zealous. They also suggested that yearly visitations be conducted in the rural districts by the cathedral pastor so that reform measures could more easily be promoted there.17 The pastors’ grievances proved to be the last straw for the synodal lords. Soon after the synod, they issued a sharp rebuke to the pastors. They began with a rather remarkable acknowledgment of their own faults: [We are] not a little offended by the great complaints and announcements at the synod . . . and this not because we are unwilling to accept brotherly discipline and admonition or to bear it with Christian patience, or that we as sinful men do not need such discipline and believe that it is not necessary for us, but rather we confess and know well that unfortunately in church affairs we have not applied the seriousness and zeal that is necessary to build the church of Christ, and so we not only are not offended by this brotherly admonition and urging, but recognize it to be extremely necessary.

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This admission of their own negligence did not excuse the pastors, however. What provoked the senators was the fact that the pastors had not brought up their grievances in private at a meeting held before the synod but had chosen instead to criticize them publicly, ‘‘as if it were the fault of the Christian magistrate alone that the situation here is more scandalous and evil than ever.’’18 The senators were even more irate because the pastors had said not a word about their own faults but had instead given the impression that there were no problems either in their conduct of office or in their family life, so that no one might think other than that they all live in greatest innocence and that only the magistrate has sinned. But it cannot be denied that among those placed [in church office] are some who live a negligent life, others who are untalented in teaching, some who govern their wives and children so poorly, that many teach zealously from the pulpit but their actions produce little fruit, the church of Christ is not edified, and some, with their miserable lives, are a scandal to God’s church.19 The senators pointed out these problems ‘‘not that we hereby excuse our own negligence, but because it is good also to punish these faults, so that the one party, complaining of its own poverty, presents itself without guilt and thinks that only the magistrate has sinned.’’ Indeed, the magistrate had defended some of its less capable pastors before their parishioners and had shown patience with their faults.20 To justify their own concern for the state of the church, the senators responded to each of the specific grievances raised by the pastors. They then proposed introducing the mutual censure of all those who bore responsibility for the church, not only pastors but also Bannherren and all local and district officials, as a central part of all future synods. According to this proposal, each individual would leave the room, and in his absence the others present would point out any problems with his conduct so that he could be admonished if necessary. Only after such a censure had been performed would the senators discuss the pastors’ list of grievances with them.21 The mutual censure was indeed a powerful tool for supervising the conduct and effectiveness of both the clergy and the magistrate’s rural officials. It was also a new procedure for Basel’s reformed church, although it had been used in the synods of the Zurich church since their inception in 1528.22 The evaluation of the pastors’ doctrine and conduct prescribed by the Reformation Ordinance of 1529 seems to have been neglected after the reorganization of 1532 and the creation of the Kirchenrat. At the synod of 1535, the district officials had been asked to report on the pastors under their jurisdiction, but this was only a superficial attempt at oversight, and none of the officials had any complaints.23 The mutual censure envisioned by the synodal lords was much more detailed and, as a consequence, much more useful in determining problems both with individual clergy and with the performance of lay officials in the rural territories.

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No immediate action was taken on this proposal, but the senators’ rebuke obviously had an impact on the pastors. At the 1538 synod, the pastors again submitted a list of grievances, but its tone was markedly different from previous years. They began by saying that they did not intend to criticize or accuse anyone; rather, they were presenting their complaints in order to inform the magistrate of problems in the church. Although they repeated their (by now expected) complaint that the ordinances concerning religion and morality were not being enforced, the pastors attributed this to a larger problem: the pastors themselves were not properly respected, and they needed more support from the magistrate if their efforts were to have any success. One important component of the pastors’ authority was the use of the ban, which was being neglected because the Bannherren were often negligent.24 The senators were more open to this argument than they were to direct charges that the magistrate was unconcerned with church affairs. In their response to the complaints, they agreed with the need for new mandates that would punish those who did not hold either God’s word or those who proclaimed it in highest esteem. In order to detect such sinners, they recommended that guild officials be required to report anyone who spoke against God’s word. Bannherren and pastors should be reminded to proceed against sinners according to the provisions of the ban ordinance and told that the Senate would stand behind them if they were criticized or ignored by their subordinates. Those officials who had heretofore been negligent in their duties were to be admonished to greater diligence.25 These recommendations were all incorporated into a new edict issued by the Senate in August 1538, only a few weeks after the synod. The edict was intended to improve enforcement of existing morals legislation and the ban, but it also responded to the pastors’ earlier request concerning yearly visitations. Henceforth synods would be held only once a year, rather than semiannually, as the Reformation Ordinance had prescribed. To replace the second synod, a yearly visitation would be held in all of the rural districts ‘‘so that [the urban pastors] will learn what is necessary to amend the administration of the church, its ministers and anything else and be able to improve them.’’26 If carried out regularly, the annual visitations would be a useful tool for both the Senate and the leaders of the church, because it would yield much more detailed information about individual pastors and their parishes than did the synod. In accordance with the new edict, the first visitation was held in 1539. It was apparently done on an informal basis, since Wolfgang Wissenburg, the parish pastor of St. Theodor, was the only visitor, and no record was kept of the findings.27 The need for more formal guidelines resulted in the drafting of a brief ordinance in preparation for the second visitation, held in April 1541. The visitation was to be conducted by two senators and one of the city’s pastors. If this visitation followed the same procedure as all later visitations, the visitors did not go to every village but rather summoned the district governor and all of the pastors and local officials of that district to meet with them on the day specified. In each place visited, the pastor opened with a

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sermon, and then one of the senators addressed the audience, admonishing the pastors to serve as good examples and reminding the secular officials to further what was good and punish what was evil according to the contents of the Senate’s mandates.28 The most important element of the visitation was the censure, not only of the pastors but also of the Bannherren and other local officials. In essence, the visitations resembled synods held on the local level. There was one important difference, however, between the visitation and the general yearly synod held in the city of Basel: by extending the censure to include district and local officials, the visitation was as effective a tool for extending the Senate’s secular authority over its rural territories as for overseeing church affairs. In the meantime, however, the Senate continued to overhaul the mechanisms for supervising the church. In November 1539 it issued a new synodal and ban ordinance that placed the relationship between clergy and magistrate on a very different footing. The background to this edict was a bitter conflict that had broken out in 1538 over the revision of the university statutes. Among the many proposed provisions were the requirements that all of the city’s pastors matriculate in the theology faculty, and that all professors have the appropriate degree for the faculty in which they taught. These two proposals split both the ministry and the theology faculty. Andreas Karlstadt, the professor of New Testament and parish pastor of St. Peter, supported both requirements, as did Wolfgang Wissenburg, pastor of St. Theodor. The cathedral pastor, Oswald Myconius, was adamantly opposed to the matriculation requirement, fearing that it would mean the loss of the church’s independence. He was supported by Marcus Bertschi, the pastor of St. Leonhard, Basel’s fourth parish church, and the theology professor Simon Grynaeus, who rejected academic degrees as a matter of principle. The conflict was fueled by strong personal animosity between Myconius and Karlstadt, and by the fall of 1538 had became so destructive that the Strasbourg reformers Wolfgang Capito and Martin Bucer were invited to Basel to act as mediators. They failed to settle the issue, and in the end the new statutes were adopted over the strenuous objections of Myconius and Grynaeus.29 The bitterness and factionalism that resulted from this conflict persuaded the Senate that it needed to take a more direct hand in church affairs. Most significantly, the synods were to be transformed from an occasion where the pastors could speak collectively for the church into a means of subordinating the clergy to the magistrate. The new synodal ordinance adopted in November 1539 specified in a very straightforward manner how the yearly synods were to be called and conducted. It began by prescribing the summons announcing the synod that was to be sent out, requiring the attendance not only of all the pastors but also the district officials. Although the summons mentioned that the synod would include discussion of problems facing the church and how to deal with them, it was clear that the primary purpose of the gathering was to examine the teaching and conduct of each pastor. Ministers who did not attend the synod, who were found sorely lacking as a result of the examination, or who refused to accept admonition given at the synod were to be

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removed from their posts. This emphasis on the examination of the clergy was justified by referring to the Reformation Ordinance; the procedure prescribed by the new synodal ordinance was an attempt to bring ‘‘those synods which are held in the future, into accordance with the first institution as [established] with the advice of that faithful, God-fearing man, Dr. Oecolampadius of blessed memory.’’30 The synod was to open with a speech by one of the senators appointed by the magistrate, who was to remind the pastors of their duty to preach the pure word of God according to the true understanding of Scripture, and otherwise to avoid insults, name-calling, or any other kind of offensive talk from the pulpit. They were certainly allowed to denounce sin, but in doing so they should avoid pointing to individual sinners or using ‘‘defiant and rude words that are not edifying.’’ Moreover, in their conduct and in their clothing, whether in public or in private, and with their wives, children, and servants, they were to live ‘‘honorably and inoffensively,’’ avoiding all ‘‘irresponsible associations, taverns and taprooms,’’ and spending their time instead ‘‘sitting with their books and studying, and training themselves in Scripture, so that they can lead the people that much better.’’31 Following the senator’s address, the presiding officials would conduct the mutual censure of the clergy, beginning with the four parish pastors in the city, then their assistants, and finally all the rural pastors. The censure was to include either an oral or written report from each of the district governors presenting the concerns of individual parishes in their districts. The examiners were also to give each newly appointed pastor a text from a Latin Bible and ask him how he would explain the passage to his parishioners. In examining the adequacy of his learning, they were particularly to note what he believed about the two sacraments and how he viewed the visitation of the sick and dying— questions clearly intended to detect Catholic or Anabaptist tendencies. Only after the clergy had been examined would the Senate’s delegates listen to the pastors’ concerns and suggestions ‘‘for the improvement of the church.’’ They would then pass on their own recommendations to the full Senate. Finally, the pastors were to be reminded that rather than criticizing the magistrate from the pulpit and ‘‘stirring up the whole community,’’ they were to bring problems directly to the H€ aupter, who would refer the matter to the full Senate.32 Almost in passing, the ordinance abolished the Kirchenrat created in 1532, so that in the future, church business would be the responsibility of the entire Senate ‘‘and not of particular individuals.’’33 It would be too burdensome for the entire Senate to concern itself with ecclesiastical affairs, however, and so in practice they delegated their authority to the Deputaten, the three senators who had oversight of Basel’s university and schools. Since the 1539 university statutes had placed the pastors under the authority of the university, it was only natural that that they should, by extension, come under the supervision of the Deputaten. This was only one part of the broader redefinition of church government. A month earlier, the Senate had decided that henceforth the responsibility for church matters would rotate among the four parish pastors, rather than

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resting in the hands of one man, in order to avoid the introduction of a ‘‘new papacy.34 The pastors were also excluded from the administration of church discipline. Sinners who did not heed three successive admonitions by the lay Bannherren were to be reported directly to the H€ aupter, ‘‘and to no one else,’’ who would then decide whether the case should be brought before the full Senate for further action.35 Myconius complained bitterly about these changes, which transformed what had been a partnership between pastors and magistrate into a more hierarchical relationship, with the magistrate clearly in control. The innovations ran counter to the practices Oecolampadius had instituted in the newly reformed church and contributed to the contempt of the ministry that was apparent in the city, while the modifications to the disciplinary process led to the rapid disintegration of morals in the city. He blamed these innovations on Karlstadt’s attempts to increase his own influence in Basel, with the support of many of the senators.36 The first synod to follow the procedures outlined by the new ordinance was held in early 1540. Only a list of participants has survived, but it can be surmised that its primary purpose was to carry out the censure of the clergy.37 At the next synod, held in June 1542, the pastors had more opportunity to protest the changes—in a very cautious but nonetheless clear way—to the Senate.38 After the formal opening of the synod, pastor Marcus Bertschi gave an oration in which he praised the holding of a synod ‘‘as a sign that the kingdom of God is among us’’ but then went on to point out problems, from the pastors’ point of view, with the provisions of the 1539 synodal and ban ordinance. To begin with, they were concerned that, although the Reformation Ordinance gave them the authority to denounce sin from the pulpit, their criticisms had been attributed to ‘‘fleshly motives’’ rather than ‘‘Christian zeal.’’ They were indeed willing to bring such cases to the magistrate privately, as the synodal ordinance decreed, but they did not want to be so strictly bound by its provisions that their freedom to preach was eliminated.39 The pastors were also aggrieved by the ordinance’s statement that the synods of the previous years had deviated from the pattern established by Oecolampadius by omitting the examination of doctrine and conduct from the agenda and instead had begun to discuss matters that more properly belonged before the Senate. In response, Bertschi pointed out that the examination of the clergy had never been held during the synod itself but rather in a more private session held two or three days before the synod. During the actual synod, the pastors never intended to discuss anything other ‘‘than what was discussed in the first synods during Oecolampadius’s time and in all Christian synods,’’ those matters ‘‘that concern the faith and the administration of the church, the implanting of a Christian life and elimination of sins,’’ including the administration of church property for the benefit of its ministers, for the poor, and for the support and maintenance of schools and the university. Finally, Bertschi asked that the ban ordinance be better enforced and, since so much rested on the character of the Bannherren, that the pastors be given some voice in their selection.40

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The senators listened patiently to Bertschi, and then asked the pastors to submit their grievances in writing. Three months later, the senators drew up their response. In it, they pointed out that they had always tried to defend and protect the pastors, and they would continue to do so. For their part, the clergy were to moderate their criticisms of the magistrate from the pulpit, since it gave the impression that ‘‘nowhere are things worse than here, we no longer have a church, everything is falling apart, there is no punishment and sins are increasing out of hand.’’ All of this was manifestly untrue, because ‘‘although it is true that we have many contrary and stiff-necked people, it is also true, God be praised, that regarding the affairs of religion, and Christian life and conduct, things are in a better state here than in many other places, both under the papacy and where the Gospel is preached.’’41 The Senate certainly did not mean to prevent the pastors from preaching against sin in the abstract, but where the sins of specific individuals were unknown to the general public, the matter should be brought to the attention of the magistrate, so that the problem could be handled privately and in a more peaceable fashion. The Senate also defended its modifications to the ban ordinance, arguing that citing sinners to appear before the Senate actually helped the pastors, since it made clear to all that the ban was imposed with the knowledge and approval of the magistrate.42 As if to underline their response to the pastors, the Senate issued an edict ‘‘improving the ban ordinance’’ toward the end of September. The administration of church discipline remained firmly in the hands of the lay Bannherren and the Senate, although the pastors together with the Bannherren were to proclaim a sentence of excommunication after the Senate had approved it. The edict did, however, accept the pastors’ role in the selection of the Bannherren, by giving them the right, when a position became vacant, to nominate two or three candidates to the Senate (for the city’s Bannherren) or to the district and local officials (in the rural parishes), who would then choose the replacement.43 The 1542 synod witnessed the last attempt by the pastors to stand up to the Senate. Despite the clergy’s protests, the synodal ordinance remained essentially unmodified. Perhaps as a result, the synods and visitations held over the next decade lost some of their importance for both the clergy and the Senate.44 The pastors complained about the same problems as before, but their complaints were not as shrill, and they seem to have become more resigned to the situation. The secular officials, too, were on the whole content with the pastors’ performance. Although there were occasional comments that an individual was not particularly capable, for the most part the officials said that they knew of no problems with the pastors in their districts. Moreover, the readiness of the Senate to cooperate with the pastors that was apparent in their official responses to the synodal articles of the 1530s was now replaced by a feeling that perhaps the situation was not as grim as the pastors had presented it. While it was still willing to hear their grievances, the Senate seems to have been generally satisfied about the level of religious observance in both city and countryside.

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In the immediate aftermath of the Reformation, Basel’s clergy and magistrate had seen themselves as partners working together, as the mandates often repeated, to edify the church and to establish a Christian life among Basel’s subjects.45 The cooperation between the two deteriorated over the later 1530s. The clergy became increasingly frustrated with what they saw as the Senate’s failure to take concerted action against religious and moral lapses in city and countryside, while the Senate grew impatient with the clergy’s constant criticism, combined with its apparent unwillingness to deal with problems within its own ranks. The conflict sparked by the revision of the university statutes, with its devastating consequences for both church and university, proved to be the last straw for the magistrate. The synodal ordinance of 1539 made clear that the pastors were the junior members of a partnership that was responsible for the city-republic’s spiritual well-being. The Senate had no desire to take over the responsibilities of administering the church, but neither would it allow the clergy to tell them how to administer the state, especially when the pastors were proving incapable of maintaining peace among themselves. Myconius may have been unhappy about the church’s new subordination to the magistrate, but he and his colleagues had brought about that subordination by their own actions.

Recruiting a New Protestant Clergy The effort to define a working relationship with the magistrate was only one of the tasks the first generation of pastors faced. An equally important question for the long term, and one that became more urgent as time passed, was the issue of recruiting new pastors to replace those who died. In this task, Basel’s church proved scarcely more successful than it was in maintaining an equal partnership with the Senate. The official adoption of the Reformation brought few changes to the composition of the city-republic’s clerical corps. A comparison of the twenty-one men appointed to either urban or rural parish posts in the decade after the Reformation with those in office in 1529 shows a good deal of similarity.46 Those whose geographical origin can be identified came from the region surrounding Basel, primarily within the Empire but also from Switzerland (table 1.1). Eight of them had at least matriculated at a university, and five of these had earned at least one university degree (table 1.2). Although the professional backgrounds of eight of these men cannot be determined, all but one of the rest had been secular or regular clergy either in Basel itself or in other territories before coming to Basel. The only exception was Oswald Myconius, who had been a schoolmaster for many years before becoming a pastor in 1531 (graph 3.1). Over the course of the 1540s, another twenty-four men were appointed to parish positions in the Basel church. Again, this group was similar in composition to its predecessors in terms of geographic origin and education. Whereas the appointees of the previous decade had come from Germany, the

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largest proportion of new pastors during the 1540s were Swiss, including four native Baslers. Not quite half of them had some university education. Onethird of them had been pastors outside of Basel before receiving positions in the Basel church, and half of these were former Catholic priests who had embraced Protestantism. Two had taught at the university, and a third had been a teacher before entering the ministry. Another had worked as a compositor for one of Basel’s printers before becoming pastor.47 There were at least two—and possibly five more—younger men, born since the beginning of the Reformation, who entered the ministry during the 1540s (table 3.1). Most of the pastors appointed to posts during this decade were already middle-aged, however. Nine of them had spent at least ten years in other occupations or as pastors in other areas before receiving parish posts in Basel. Hence, although well over half of the pastors in office in 1529 served the church for more than twenty years, roughly half of the appointees over the two subsequent decades had careers of ten years or less. Because a significant proportion of these new pastors were older men, they brought both experience and maturity to their new positions. The fact that the church relied on such men reveals a potential danger, however, for the church was failing in its efforts to prepare a new generation for the pastorate. The university served neither as the chief recruiting ground nor as the preparatory route for a position in the city’s church in the two decades following the Reformation. The low number of university students recruited for the ministry during these years can be linked with the larger crisis in education that grew out of the Reformation. To look only at developments in Basel, the number of yearly matriculations at the university plummeted during the 1520s, which led eventually to the university’s temporary closure. Even during the decade after the university was reopened in 1532, the number of matriculations each year only twice rose above thirty-three students, with the total matriculations averaging only twenty-nine students per year.48 Basel was not unique with regard to the crisis of matriculations. Other German universities experienced the same phenomenon during the 1520s, with matriculations declining even more spectacularly than they had in Basel: the university of Vienna fell from six hundred matriculations per year before the Reformation to less than thirty by the end of the 1520s. Nor was Basel the only university to close during this time. Both Copenhagen and Uppsala were shut down; the former reopened in 1537, the latter not until 1600. Instruction in Rostock came to a virtual standstill, and Greifswald’s situation was scarcely better.49 The drop in matriculations was accompanied by a crisis in educational funding. Before the Reformation, the ecclesiastical benefice system had been a major support for university education, both because those with benefices could be granted leave to study and because the most attractive benefices were increasingly reserved for those with degrees, thus providing an inducement for university study. The secularization of ecclesiastical property in Protestant areas in the wake of the Reformation ended the use of benefices both as

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scholarships and as incentives to study, and there were no ready alternative sources of funding. The virtual closure and slow recovery of many universities, and the crisis in funding for students, had grave consequences for the generation of young men who reached student age during the 1520s and 1530s. These teenagers had far fewer opportunities for a university education than those who came of age before the Reformation. In an effort to recruit promising boys to the ministry, many Protestant cities and territories established stipendiary systems to support students preparing for the ministry. Basel was among this group, and the city’s experience with its stipendiates illustrates the difficulties involved. In April 1533, only a few months after the university’s reopening, the Basel Senate resolved to use some of the funds from secularized church property to support students at the university ‘‘so that they could eventually be used in divine and civil affairs.’’ The Senate hoped eventually to support as many as twenty-four students as the death of pensioned-off clergy made more money available, but it had to start on a much smaller scale. After consulting with the teachers in the city’s schools, eight promising boys were chosen, placed under the supervision of a preceptor, and moved into the former Dominican cloister.50 The students made slow academic progress over the next decade. Three of the eight received bachelor’s degrees in 1538 and their master’s degrees in 1541, the first such promotions held after the university’s reorganization. A fourth received his B.A. and eventually his M.A. a few years after his comrades.51 The fact that it took five years or more for these students to receive their first degree reflects the difficulties the university was experiencing in staffing the arts faculty as well as the contemporary debate over the value of university degrees in general. It can also be attributed to the youthfulness of the students themselves, who had barely finished Latin school—the two whose ages are known were both thirteen when they matriculated. Moreover, the Senate received little benefit from this support, for only two of these eight actually went on to serve the church and university.52 Recruitment of additional students also proved to be a problem. After a visit to Basel to consult with the church’s leaders about the schools, Wolfgang Capito reported that although the cathedral’s Latin school had a good number of students, there were no more than three who were suitable for continuing their studies at the university.53 Despite Capito’s pessimistic report, over the next decade more students were accepted into what came to be called the Alumneum. Other difficulties surfaced over time. No record was kept of the new stipendiates’ names, and there seems to have been little supervision of either the students or the stipend program as a whole. In addition to one stipendiate from the original group of students, only two other known stipendiates entered the ministry. In view of the low return on the city’s investment in pastoral education, it can only be concluded that the stipendiary system was a failure.54

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University Reform and Theology Instruction The fact that so few future pastors studied at Basel’s university in the two decades after the Reformation points to a generally overlooked fact: theology instruction in Basel was intended not primarily for future pastors but rather for those pastors already in office.55 As mentioned earlier, many of the clergy appointed to posts in the two decades after the Reformation already had some pastoral experience, but they were not necessarily well versed in evangelical doctrine. The most immediate challenge faced by the church’s leadership was thus the remedial task of educating their colleagues. As a consequence, theology instruction during the 1530s and 1540s had a different character from the one it would assume in the second half of the sixteenth century. In the years immediately following the Reformation, Basel’s theology faculty was characterized by instability and experimentation, with teaching responsibilities divided among ordinary and extraordinary lecturers and relatively rapid turnover among those teaching. Basel’s theology faculty had two endowed chairs that were filled by Paul Phrygio and Johannes Oecolampadius in 1529.56 Both of these men also held positions in the Basel church—Phrygio as pastor of St. Peter, which was closely associated with the university, and Oecolampadius as the pastor of the cathedral parish. The two men lectured on the Old and New Testaments, respectively, following the model introduced by the Zurich Prophezei. Although the Reformation Ordinance of 1529 specified that the professors were to lecture on alternate days, by 1531 the lecture schedule had been changed to a biweekly rotation.57 Students thus attended a series of ten lectures on the chosen Old Testament book, and then heard lectures on the New Testament. The two theology professors were assisted by the professors of Greek, Simon Grynaeus, and of Hebrew, Sebastian Mu¨nster. Although the latter two men held chairs in the arts faculty, they worked closely with the two theologians, and in fact theology instruction during the early 1530s was a team effort. These four men were similar, in that they had all been well schooled in the traditional scholastic university curriculum but were ardent advocates of the new humanist approach to learning. Both Oecolampadius and Phrygio had received their doctorates in theology at Basel, while Grynaeus had received an M.A. in Vienna, taught for some years in Hungary, and spent a short time in Wittenberg before becoming professor of Greek in Heidelberg in 1524. Mu¨nster had received much of his education within the Franciscan order and was teaching both philosophy and theology in the Franciscan convent at Tu¨bingen at the outbreak of the Reformation; in the early 1520s, he took up a similar position within the Franciscan convent in Basel.58 Thus, although they rejected scholastic method in favor of the philological and exegetical emphases of the early humanists, all four of them had a deep familiarity with both the structure and the content of scholastic philosophy, and three had formal training in scholastic theology as well. Basel’s theology faculty weathered a series of personnel changes over the decade of the 1530s, beginning with Oecolampadius’s death in late 1531. Three

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years later, Simon Grynaeus was called to assist in reforming the university of Tu¨bingen. The Basel Senate reluctantly agreed to a short-term loan of the university’s most prominent faculty member. Grynaeus returned to Basel in 1535, but Phrygio was sent to Tu¨bingen as his replacement and never returned to Basel.59 Andreas Karlstadt, at that time a pastor in Zurich, had been invited to Basel in 1534 to lighten Phrygio’s workload. He was appointed to the chair in Old Testament in July of that year, and when Phrygio left Basel a year later, Karlstadt was given his pastoral post as well.60 Meanwhile, Oecolampadius’s position in the church and university was passed to Oswald Myconius. Unlike Oecolampadius and Phrygio, Myconius did not have a degree in theology, and his lack of any formal qualification for the post of theology professor contributed to the bitterness surrounding the revision of the university’s statutes at the end of that decade.61 Grynaeus assumed responsibility for lectures on the New Testament in March 1536, beginning with a series of lectures on Romans.62 After Grynaeus’s death in 1541, Myconius continued to lecture on the New Testament, but only as an extraordinary professor rather than from an established chair.63 The post in New Testament was instead given to Wolfgang Wissenburg. The son of a Basel weaver, Wissenburg had received his master’s degree in Basel before the Reformation and became the chaplain at the city’s hospital. He was one of the most outspoken proponents of the evangelical movement during the 1520s, and he was rewarded with the parish post of St. Theodor after the official introduction of the Reformation. In 1540 he received his doctorate in theology under Karlstadt, which provided him with the necessary qualifications for the New Testament position. He held the post until 1554, when he resigned, allegedly due to poor health.64 Both Karlstadt and Grynaeus died during the epidemic of 1541, the first of many instances when Basel’s church would be significantly affected by plague. The search for Karlstadt’s successor reveals the particular mixture of parochialism, parsimony, and political influence that continued to influence the university over the next century. After Karlstadt’s death, Sebastian Mu¨nster, the professor of Hebrew, assumed the responsibility for lecturing on the Old Testament. He did so only reluctantly and with the understanding that the increased responsibilities would last only until a suitable replacement could be found; in particular, he had no desire to obtain the theology degree that the statutes now required of its theology professors.65 The following summer an opportunity arose for the university to hire an outstanding successor for Karlstadt. The Italian Protestant refugee Peter Martyr Vermigli, who was both a highly trained theologian and a gifted Hebraist, arrived in the city with a commendation from Heinrich Bullinger, looking for a teaching position in the university. He was told, however, that Basel had a surplus of teachers and a shortage of students and so could not hire him.66 Although Vermigli apparently believed the rationale behind the Senate’s unwillingness to hire him, there were other factors involved. It was clearly cheaper for the Senate to have Mu¨nster perform the duties of both Hebrew and Old Testament professor, since they did not have to pay two

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different individuals. The Senate’s reluctance to hire a highly qualified candidate for the Old Testament chair may also have been a consequence of the rancorous controversy over the revision of the university statutes. Karlstadt had also been a highly qualified but personally unknown religious refugee who was hired on the basis of Bullinger’s recommendation. His quarrel with Myconius had deeply divided both the church and university. The potential parallels between Karlstadt and Vermigli were only too clear, and it is unlikely that either the professors or the Senate would willingly risk hiring another outsider.67 Instead, the post was promised to Sebastian Lepusculus, a former schoolmaster turned pastor in a village just outside of Basel, if he could meet the degree requirements. Lepusculus accordingly received his licentiate in theology in the summer of 1544, although his colleague Johann Gast was far from impressed with his abilities.68 Despite Lepusculus’s compliance with this requirement, the Old Testament position was given to Martin Cellarius or Borrhaus only a few months later. The Academic Senate had opposed Borrhaus’s appointment, but, as Gast reported to Bullinger, Borrhaus got the job because his new wife was related to two of the senators in charge of the appointment. In this situation, where there were two Basel-trained candidates, the one with family connections proved victorious, despite his questionable religious background.69 Cellarius, as he was originally called, had earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Tu¨bingen and began the study of theology in Ingolstadt.70 Attracted by the new religious ideas emanating from Wittenberg, he moved to that university in 1521. There he renewed his acquaintance with Melanchthon, but within a year his developing spiritualist views led to a break with the Wittenberg reformers. After several years of moving throughout Europe, Cellarius settled in Strasbourg in 1526, where his influence on Wolfgang Capito caused grave concern to that reformer’s colleagues. Over the course of the next decade, however, Cellarius moved to Basel, repaired his reputation, and changed his name. By the end of the 1530s he was teaching on Basel’s arts faculty. In 1549, five years after becoming theology professor, he received his doctorate in theology. Borrhaus held the post in Old Testament until his death in 1564, thus helping to provide the stability in personnel that the theology faculty had lacked over the previous fifteen years. It is difficult to generalize about either the form or the content of theological instruction in Basel in the first decades after the Reformation. The practice of lecturing as a team does not seem to have lasted for more than a few years. Nevertheless, the Zurich Prophezei continued to exercise significant influence, for the theology lectures included both a linguistic analysis of the original text and a doctrinal component that emphasized the text’s pastoral relevance. Grynaeus’s long absence in Tu¨bingen meant that Myconius was responsible for both the philological and exegetical components of the lectures on the New Testament. Grynaeus’s own approach to teaching Scripture was described by Jean Calvin, who recounted a conversation with Grynaeus in 1536, at the time that Grynaeus began his lectures on Romans. Both men had

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agreed that transparency and brevity were the most desirable qualities in scriptural exegesis, and that the teacher’s chief goal was to explain the mind of the text’s author.71 Perhaps the greatest insight into theology instruction comes from the pen of Andreas Karlstadt. In 1534, he told Bullinger that he both translated the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy and lectured on its contents.72 He described in more detail the procedure to be followed when interpreting Scripture in a memorandum written two years later. After explaining the passage’s correct translation, the professor was to consider both the author and the intended audience of the passage, to discuss the text’s literal meaning and explain any metaphorical language or figures of speech, to compare it with similar passages and reconcile any apparently contradictory passages. Last but not least, he was to apply the text to the present in a way that would ‘‘confirm good morals and break down Satan’s building that he has constructed with false doctrine or unrighteousness.’’ Karlstadt specifically mentioned the importance of the opening chapters of Genesis for teaching about Creation and original sin and the value of Leviticus and Deuteronomy for teaching about the priesthood and the nature of the sacrificial system, while the historical books taught how God rewarded the virtues and punished the sins of his people. The Psalms and Prophets were to be understood as pointing to Christ. With regard to the New Testament, Karlstadt recommended the Gospel of John, the Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles to the Romans, the Corinthians and the Hebrews.73 At least among Basel’s Old Testament professors, the concentration on Scripture itself was a reflection not only of their humanist concern with close textual analysis but also their spiritualist leanings. Myconius complained that Borrhaus, like Karlstadt before him, rejected the use of commentaries written by others and believed that Scripture should be interpreted only by comparing it with itself, and that proper understanding came through the Holy Spirit teaching internally, not through the works of other men.74 Vadian also commented on Borrhaus’s love of novelty, as reflected in his commentary on Ecclesiastes.75 With regard to their content, the theology lectures themselves had much in common with sermons because of their emphasis on practical application. Reflecting humanist text-critical interests, Oecolampadius’s published lectures began with an overview of the author, purpose, and historical context of the biblical book being examined. The lectures then proceeded through the book, a few verses at a time, with explanation of words and phrases from the original language, followed by a few brief comments on the theological content of the passage, sometimes with reference to patristic commentators. The lectures themselves were not rhetorically shaped, nor were they organized around a clear theme. Rather, they were all approximately the same length, and they could end abruptly, with the narrative picking up at the same point in the next lecture, which implies that Oecolampadius simply lectured on the text during the time available each day and stopped at the end of the hour.76 Oswald Myconius followed the same technique in his lectures on the Gospels

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given over the course of the 1530s and 1540s.77 Borrhaus’s commentaries on the Old Testament, published in the 1550s but based at least in part on lectures given earlier, also focused on words and phrases, emphasizing philology and historical context.78 The practical nature of theology instruction in the 1530s and 1540s reflected the mixed audience that attended the theology lectures: not only students who were being prepared for the ministry but also interested laity and the city’s clergy, both those with pastoral responsibilities and former Catholic clergy now receiving pensions, whose attendance was required by the Reformation Ordinance.79 The needs of these four groups were obviously very different, but in all cases the goal was to familiarize the audience with the content of Scripture. The lectures were thus at the same time remedial for the clergy in office, evangelistic for the priests still loyal to the Catholic Church, and both catechetical and practical for the laity. As a consequence of this mixed audience, the theology lectures could not be focused solely on the needs of students preparing for the pastorate. Nevertheless, the theology faculty did not abandon its university identity, and by the end of the 1530s it had reinstituted practices that predated the Reformation. Disputations were reintroduced as one of the requirements for a degree, and Basel’s Senate required Karlstadt to hold a disputation at the beginning of his university appointment. Karlstadt apparently hoped to publish a series of disputations on the theological loci communes, but only one set of theses was published before his death. Nevertheless, because of the small number of students, theological disputations could be held only infrequently, and, to judge from Myconius’s remarks to Bullinger, their quality left much to be desired.80 Students matriculated in theology and working toward a degree were required to lecture on the Bible themselves, especially during the summer vacation, when the regular professors did not give lectures.81 One Basel pastor, Heinrich Pantaleon, lectured on the Book of Jonah during July and August 1548, on the Gospel of Mark three years later, also during the summer break, and on Titus over the Christmas vacation of 1551. As with the lectures of Oecolampadius and Myconius, the emphasis was exegetical, practical, and focused on doctrines considered foundational for the faith.82 Despite these efforts to combine the Zurich approach to theology with older university traditions, theological instruction in Basel during the 1540s was neither very systematic nor very profound. Practical and pastoral concerns, rather than theological systematization, characterized theological instruction in Basel through the middle of the sixteenth century. As committed humanists, the men who taught theology in Basel endorsed the emphasis on biblical exegesis shared with Zurich. However, the bitter divisions caused by the revision of the statutes and the high turnover among the group responsible for teaching biblical languages and theology, particularly the loss of its two most prominent members in 1541, disrupted efforts to foster cooperation among the faculty and continuity in instruction. Theology instruction suffered as a result. In 1546, Gast recorded in his diary a quarrel that arose over a sermon

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in which Myconius allegedly criticized Wissenburg for the infrequency of his theology lectures. In the course of the argument, Myconius shouted at Wissenburg, ‘‘God damn you, you lie like a boot-licker!’’ and pulled out a knife. Gast noted that he did not know what would have happened if Wissenburg had not defused the situation by leaving the room.83 Conflicts of this nature could not have helped establish a positive learning environment. As with the introduction of evangelical synods and the establishment of the stipends for boys intended for the pastorate, the reformation of theology instruction at Basel’s university was undertaken with a great deal of optimism. And as was the case in their dealings with the magistrate and in recruiting candidates for the ministry, the reformers’ visions of how theology should be taught ran into roadblocks caused by established practices, procedural disagreements, and personal rivalries. At midcentury, Basel had a functioning university complete with a theology faculty, but the quality of instruction was not high. Though not a complete failure, the reformers’ efforts to reshape pastoral education could not be called an unqualified success.

Basel’s Church at Midcentury: The Generational Divide By the 1540s, Oswald Myconius’s letters were full of gloomy pronouncements about the state of Basel’s church and about the evangelical cause in general. He was not alone in his pessimistic views, for other reformers expressed similar sentiments. As these men approached the ends of their lives and looked back over their ministry, they must have been struck by the distance between what they had hoped to achieve and what they had actually accomplished. From the perspective of a single lifetime, the reformers may be said to have failed in their efforts to reshape the church and society.84 To judge the reformers on the basis of what they themselves achieved, however, is to misunderstand their fundamental importance for long-term developments. The changes introduced to church structure and pastoral education took more than one generation to bear fruit. The chief accomplishments of the first generation were to destroy essential elements of the old system and to lay the foundation for changes that the next generation of church leaders would put into effect. The energies of the first generation of reformers were to a large extent directed toward changing the outlooks and actions of their contemporaries. With the gradual passing of this first generation after midcentury, the emphasis shifted more clearly toward teaching future generations of pastors. In Basel, the first indication of this change was the emergence during the 1550s of a new group of pastors: native Baslers who had studied at the city’s university and then served briefly as professors in the philosophy faculty, as teachers in one of the city’s schools, or as pastors in the Protestant villages nominally subject to the bishop of Basel, before being appointed to either a rural or urban parish (graph 3.1). Seventeen of the twenty-eight pastors appointed to positions in Basel’s church between 1550 and 1559 fit this model.85

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There was a striking generational break between these newly appointed pastors and their colleagues already in office (table 3.1). Conspicuous in their absence are men born between 1510 and 1530. Even using an estimate that is likely to understate a pastor’s age at first appointment, the number of clergy born in each of these decades is significantly less than that for the decades of the 1500s and 1530s.86 The natural age progression of men in office had been broken by the crises in the church and in the educational system during the 1510s and 1520s. As we have seen, lack of educational opportunity and the failure of Basel’s stipendiary system contributed to the low recruitment of men from this generation. As a consequence, the pastors entering the ministry in the 1550s were an entire generation younger than their elders, born after the introduction of the Reformation. The fact that they had not grown up within a unified church, much less been priests within it, gave them a completely different understanding of both their own faith and that of the old church. Two anecdotes illustrate the strikingly different religious experiences of this generation. In his autobiography, the Basel physician Felix Platter described the first time he attended a mass, when he was about eleven years old and visiting a friend’s mother in a neighboring Catholic territory. When he came home from church, she asked him what he had seen, and he responded, ‘‘I saw someone in a long, beautiful red robe that had a white Swiss cross on the back. He ate and drank something and didn’t give any to anyone else.’’ Years later Platter recalled how his description of a priest celebrating mass made the woman laugh.87 A similar ignorance of Catholicism was cited by another young Basler, Theodor Zwinger, to justify his leaving home in 1548. In the letter he wrote to his parents, the fifteen-year-old said that one of his reasons for going to France was to learn about ‘‘papism,’’ because he wanted to become a preacher, ‘‘and how can I proclaim the Word of the Lord rightly, if I can’t point to the errors which one should guard against? No one knows very clearly what the light is unless he has first also seen the darkness. Since nothing opposes the Gospel more than the papacy, then it is truly most necessary that one knows about such roguery oneself, otherwise he will speak about it like a blind man does about colors.’’ Despite his professed ignorance of Catholicism, young Theodor did know that papist teachers were hypocrites, ‘‘able to deceive those who do not know of their evil natures,’’ and he told his parents that every faithful Christian should learn how to warn others of such errors.88 Zwinger may have been guilty of special pleading, but his arguments imply that for those growing up in Basel in the 1540s, Catholicism was a specter denounced in sermons rather than something personally experienced. Like Platter’s memories of his first mass, Zwinger’s letter reveals the significant experiential gap between the first and the second generation of Basel’s pastors. Neither Zwinger nor Platter became pastors in Basel’s church—both instead taught in the university’s medical faculty—but they had friends who became pastors and who probably regarded Catholicism in much the same way.89

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An important aspect of the religious outlook of this new generation was imparted through the city’s schools. Under the more stable circumstances of the 1550s and 1560s, the city was able to establish a more effective and stable system for educating a larger proportion of its future clergy. This system would continue to evolve over the second half of the sixteenth century, with major changes coming at distinct intervals, thereby encouraging generational differentiation. Part II will follow the course of that education and show how it contributed to the shaping of generational identity.

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part ii

Creating a System of Pastoral Education

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4 Laying the Foundation

The Basel pastors appointed to office at midcentury were the first group to be influenced by the large-scale efforts at pedagogical reform driven by the twin motors of Renaissance humanism and Reformation theology. Between 1520 and 1560, the existing universities of German-speaking central Europe were reformed and new universities and academies were founded in accordance with the priorities of both humanism and the Reformation. Territorial rulers created a new type of school that bridged the instructional gap between the older city Latin schools and the university level. The curriculum taught in the upper classes of these territorial gymnasia or academies was often similar to that offered by the arts faculties of existing universities, although they did not have the right to grant degrees.1 Most of these schools were established with the express purpose of preparing boys for positions as pastors, teachers, or civil servants. Johann Sturm spoke for an entire generation of educators when he wrote that the goal of his new school in Strasbourg was the inculcation of sapiens atque eloquens pietas. Basel was no exception to this trend. Religious instruction was a central component of the Latin school curriculum at every level, beginning with the catechism—first in the vernacular, then in Latin—and expanding in the upper levels to grammatical and exegetical study of the New Testament. Regular attendance at Sunday and weekday sermons was also required of all students. As a result of these measures, virtually all students at these schools, and not just those preparing for the ministry, received far more formal training in theology than had the vast majority of pastoral clergy on the eve of the Reformation. But the religious instruction they received in the Latin schools was only the beginning of a long process of education for the clergy.

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They also needed a university education, with specialized training in theology. The humanist curriculum, with its growing emphasis on the study of dialectic, became an essential prerequisite for the study of theology. The incorporation of religious instruction in the city’s Latin schools and a series of institutional and curricular reforms at the university that were put in place in the mid–sixteenth century contributed to the molding of a new outlook among the city’s future pastors.2 As we have seen, through the 1530s and 1540s the university produced very few men who entered the parish ministry. The reform of the city’s stipendiary system in the later 1540s changed this pattern, and from the mid1550s a growing number of Basel’s new pastors were university graduates who had been supported by civic or university stipends. The stipendiary system was thus important for funding the education of future pastors. It had another impact as well, in that stipendiates were generally required to live together in one of the university’s two colleges. The rhythm of daily life for college residents, as well as the additional expectations and obligations imposed on them, also helped create a shared mindset across the generations of future pastors who lived in these colleges. Common to all of these developments is the establishment of a new identity among Basel’s pastors, shaped by their education as students in Basel’s Latin schools and university. Nevertheless, changes within these foundational patterns of religious indoctrination, educational financing, moral oversight, and general education could create subtle but important differences between generations.

School Reform and Formal Religious Education At the time of the Reformation, Basel had several Latin schools that were associated with the cathedral and parish churches, as well as with both the Franciscan and Dominican convents. Reform of these schools was one of Oecolampadius’s many proposals linked to the official establishment of the Reformation in 1529, but over the course of the 1530s, the Senate’s attention— and its funds—was taken up by other matters. Only in 1540 could it begin the process of consolidating and reorganizing the Latin schools. The city’s educational system would undergo another major transformation some forty years later. Both of these reorganizations would involve reform of the curriculum, including religious instruction. They therefore had significant ramifications for the education of boys who were being prepared to enter the ministry. The increasingly comprehensive and systematic nature of religious instruction can be seen in the changes to the curriculum of the cathedral school, the largest and most important of the city’s Latin schools, as well as in the modifications and interpolations made to Basel’s catechism. The first steps to reforming the city’s schooling system were outlined by Bonifacius Amerbach, at that time rector of the university, in a memorandum written for the Academic Senate in 1540. Amerbach recommended that the

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city’s Latin schools be divided into three classes; a fourth, upper class, sometimes referred to as the Pedagogium, would be loosely associated with the university. Amerbach’s memorandum served as the model for the reform of the cathedral school the following year. A fourth class was added to the school in 1544, when Thomas Platter was hired as the school’s rector.3 Amerbach had recommended that religious instruction be included at every level of instruction, beginning with simple sentences taken from the Gospels once students had learned to read and write, and continuing with the study of the catechism in the upper classes. In 1546 Platter drew up a curricular plan that gives a more detailed description of the religious instruction that the schoolboys received at each level of their education. According to Platter, students in the first class were taught their prayers on Saturdays, although, in his words, the students ‘‘pray every day, morning and evening, in all classes.’’4 In the second class, students began the morning with a reading from Sebastian Castellio’s ‘‘Sacred Dialogues’’ during the week and the catechism on Saturdays. In addition to the Saturday catechism, the third class progressed to morning readings from the New Testament, a practice that continued in the fourth class, ‘‘although with somewhat more exegesis than in the third class.’’ Students in the fourth class also learned ‘‘one or two psalms’’ during their Friday afternoon music class, and their Saturday catechism instruction now included quarterly examinations. They evidently also studied the Gospels, for Platter specified that ‘‘when an Evangelist has come to an end, they should be read something from the Catechism, so that any new students will also be introduced to our holy religion from the ground up.’’5 In addition to the religious instruction they received in class, the students were also taken to church by their teachers. Every Tuesday morning they attended the morning sermon in the cathedral, and on Sundays they were present for all three services: in the morning, at noon, and at four in the afternoon.6 Supervised attendance at sermons, study of the New Testament, and concentration on the catechism provided structure to the formal religious education of students who entered Basel’s Latin school from the 1540s on and would eventually enter the ministry. As rector of the cathedral school for over three decades, Platter provided a great deal of continuity in the education of the next generation of Basel’s clergy. The content of their religious education was fairly static over the third quarter of the century. Platter’s retirement in 1578 left the school open for major changes, however. These were initiated under Platter’s successor and brought to completion in 1589, when the city’s two largest Latin schools were consolidated into a single gymnasium. The structural changes to the city’s Latin school were accompanied by significant curricular revisions as well, although the curriculum as a whole may have evolved more gradually over the previous decade. The curricular plan for each of the new gymnasium’s six classes reveals just how elaborate formal religious instruction had become by the end of the 1580s.7 Students in the first class began and ended each day by reciting the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Ten Commandments in German; they learned about

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the two sacraments on alternate weeks. In the second class, students started their day by learning several morning and evening prayers, and an hour was set aside on Wednesdays to review and memorize the parts of the German catechism that they had learned during the past week. In the third class, they had ‘‘the more obscure parts’’ of the German catechism explained to them, and they memorized the Latin translation; they also began to learn the Psalter. The school day for students in the fourth class began with the recitation of ‘‘longer Latin prayers taken from the Bible or elsewhere’’; during their catechism class, they translated the catechism from German into Latin. They also began to study the Nicene and Athanasian creeds. Students in the fifth and sixth classes began the day together with prayer and the singing of hymns or metric psalms. They then separated into their own classes. The fifth class spent the first hour of the day studying the New Testament in its original Greek: the study plan recommended Luke and John, Acts, Romans, and the pastoral epistles. Over the course of a week, the text was read, translated into Latin and memorized, its vocabulary and syntax were analyzed, and its chief argument was explained in German. Once a week they studied the catechism in greater depth, now supported by passages of Scripture, which were to be memorized. For students in the sixth class, the catechism was explained in yet more theological detail, ‘‘so that they may retain and spiritually understand, as it were, a brief and perspicuous curriculum of theological common places.’’8 Students were still expected to attend the three Sunday services and the Tuesday morning sermon with their teachers. Students in the upper classes could not let their attention wander during the preaching, for starting in the third class, the teachers prompted them to repeat what they had learned from the sermon, ‘‘according to their understanding.’’ The expectations concerning what the boys learned from the sermon were raised in each subsequent class. By the time they reached the fifth class, the boys were to repeat the contents of the sermon, in Latin, to their teachers. Students in the sixth class, who were at that time studying both rhetoric and dialectic, had to apply that knowledge, for they were also expected to analyze the rhetorical structure of the sermon they had just heard: ‘‘what type of exordium the minister of the word used, what had been proposed and how the subject had been divided into parts, and how he had confirmed the proposition with his arguments and handled each individual part, and many similar things that concern prudent invention and artful disposition.’’9 With its emphasis on the doctrinal content and scriptural underpinning of the catechism, the exegesis of the New Testament text and the analysis of sermons, the level of religious instruction in the new gymnasium differed by several orders of magnitude from the religious curriculum outlined in the 1540s. Whereas the pastors educated in Basel’s chief Latin school during the third quarter of the century had received a general religious instruction centering on familiarity with the Bible and knowledge of the catechism, those who studied at the gymnasium over the last quarter of the century were given much more rigorous training in the practical skills of philology and rhetoric. The students of Basel’s gymnasium during the last quarter of the century had

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a much more structured and formal religious education than did the previous generation. The curriculum of the gymnasium remained essentially unchanged for the next three decades. Continuity in instruction was promoted by continuity of personnel: some of the teachers appointed in the 1580s and 1590s remained at the school into the 1620s and even 1630s.10 By 1620, however, rising enrollments forced a revision and simplification of the gymnasium’s curriculum. Religious instruction continued to be an important part of the new curriculum. In their Greek classes, the students of the fourth and fifth classes studied the Gospels of Mark and of John, respectively, while those in the sixth class analyzed the epistles and translated them into Latin. Catechism instruction was limited to memorization of the questions and answers in the lower classes, while the upper classes were expected to learn the Scripture verses that supported the elements of the catechism. Students in the first and second classes learned Oecolampadius’s original German catechism; those in the third class learned Myconius’s longer catechism in German. The Latin version of the long catechism was introduced in the fifth class, and students of the sixth class concentrated only on the Latin text. To understand the significance of these reforms of the 1620s, we must look at the way the catechism was being taught in Basel’s gymnasium during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The doctrinal conflicts of the third quarter of the century and the increasing elaboration of confessional theology had made the text of Basel’s quasi-official catechism outdated by the 1580s. There were two possible responses to this: to provide the text with commentary that would explain the doctrines not clearly discussed in the original text, and to emend the text of the catechism itself. The latter solution was the one chosen by Johann Jacob Grynaeus after he became antistes. In 1590 he published a ‘‘new and improved’’ version of the catechism designed to make it more clearly Reformed.11 The changes were small but significant. Most of them concerned the Ten Commandments, which were now given the Reformed numbering and divided into two tables of four and six (rather than three and seven) commandments. The commandments themselves were cited according to the text of Exodus 20 rather than in the simplified paraphrase previously used. Within the creed, Christ’s descent into hell was linked with the previous description of his suffering and death, and it was explained as Christ’s total abandonment by God.12 Myconius’s original response, which was closer to the medieval interpretation than to those of other reformers, was thus replaced with the position that was taught by Calvin and had become the standard Reformed response.13 Finally, Grynaeus moved Oecolampadius’s discussion of baptism, which came between the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, to the front of the catechism, so that it now followed the section on baptism that Myconius had written. These changes corrected the glaring discrepancies between Basel’s catechism and other Reformed catechisms, but they were resisted by both the laity and by a few older pastors, who protested against the new ‘‘long’’ Tenth

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Commandment and saw no need to depart from the older teaching on the descent into hell.14 Popular loyalty to Oecolampadius’s catechism meant that for good or for ill, Basel’s church leaders were stuck with a text whose presentation of doctrine they considered insufficient for their needs. One solution to this problem lay in teaching the next generation of pastors and teachers to interpret the catechism’s text in a properly Reformed way. This was done with the aid of explanations of the catechism produced for gymnasium students. By 1587, a thirteen-year-old schoolboy could append as a supplement to his hand-copied catechism a commentary on its teachings. The commentary’s level of detail went far beyond that of the original catechism; for instance, it contained discussions of the nature of God and of providence, neither of which was explicitly addressed in the catechism itself.15 The process of reinterpreting the catechism continued into the early seventeenth century, when Timotheus Sturn, one of the teachers at the gymnasium, published his own set of commentaries in German on the portions of Basel’s catechism that were devoted to the creed, the Lord’s Supper, and baptism.16 In their extended titles, all three pamphlets proclaimed themselves to be explanations of what ‘‘the dear man of God Johann Haußchein [Oecolampadius] had taught in his catechism.’’ Sturn went through each of the catechism’s pairs of questions and answers, giving a longer explanation of each response that accorded with the fine points of Reformed theology. The answer to the catechism’s opening question, ‘‘When did you become a Christian?’’ was now glossed so that the original answer, ‘‘As soon as I was born and baptized,’’ could be harmonized with the doctrine of election: ‘‘I have been elected from eternity to be a Christian and afterward in time, that is, as soon as I was born in this body and then baptized as a sign and confirmation.’’ The gloss also reassured readers about the fate of unbaptized babies: ‘‘This should not be understood as if children of Christians who die in their mother’s womb or at birth should be lost because they are not baptized, for these are also included in God’s gracious election.’’17 Similarly, Sturn’s commentary on the Lord’s Supper reflected the development of Reformed Christology by glossing a simple reference to Christ’s death as ‘‘a true separation and cutting off of the soul from the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, but without injury to the personal union of both natures.’’18 Such interpretations guaranteed that children would be well indoctrinated with the most characteristic features of Reformed theology, but in the long run they were not as satisfactory as a clear statement of that theology in the text of the catechism itself. Hence the leaders of Basel’s church tried to wean the laity away from the catechism they had grown up with by providing them with alternative presentations of fundamental doctrine that clearly expressed the Reformed position. Grynaeus began the process by including with his published sermons short appendices describing ‘‘what the Lord’s Supper is, written for the dear youth,’’ or ‘‘A Christian instruction for pious and Godfearing fathers and mothers, when their sons and daughters have reached the age of reason and should appear at the holy Lord’s Supper for the first time.’’ These catechetical fragments all taught the proper Reformed interpretation of

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the sacrament.19 Most of them were written in question-and-answer form and could therefore be taught in the same way catechisms were. In the long term, these efforts to supplant the Oecolampadius/Myconius catechism were successful. At the urging of the city’s pastors, the Senate decreed in 1622 that all children were to be examined on the ‘‘five chief points of Christian religion’’ as explained in the catechism before they were admitted to the Lord’s Supper for the first time. To assist the pastors in examining the children, Antistes Johannes Wollebius wrote a ‘‘Preparation for the Lord’s Supper,’’ which reproduced the text of the Ten Commandments, the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Scripture verses that instituted Christian baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Wollebius made no effort to explain or interpret these traditional catechetical elements, however. Instead, the ‘‘chief points’’ were followed by a brief but systematic presentation of Reformed theology contained in forty questions and answers.20 Following the Heidelberg Catechism, Wollebius divided this doctrinal section of his catechism under the three headings of man’s misery, man’s salvation, and man’s gratitude. The questions within each section bore less similarity to the Heidelberg Catechism but followed instead the same general order of topics that Wollebius would use four years later in his Christianae Theologiae Compendium.21 The first section began by distinguishing between sin and the punishment of sin, then defined sin as against the love of God and against the love of neighbor, and finally taught the corruption of human nature through original sin. The second section opened with a definition of faith, and then discussed God’s person, particularly his triune nature, and the works attributed to each nature—creation, salvation and consolation. The section concluded with a discussion of the sacraments, ‘‘visible signs and deposits through which the promises of God are strengthened and our faith reassured.’’ The final section described the proper understanding of good works as evidence of gratitude toward God. All but a few of the questions and answers contained in the catechism were followed by at least one and sometimes three or four Bible verses to illustrate or support the answer.22 Wollebius’s catechism, like the revised provisions concerning catechism instruction in the city’s gymnasium, demonstrates the desire to simplify the memorization and comprehension of the most important parts of Christian doctrine. It also reflects the pastors’ conviction that even children should have a systematic and coherent understanding of the Reformed faith. Although the traditional elements of the catechism were still considered important, they were abandoned as a way to teach essential religious truths. Instead, the new catechism arranged the essential elements of Reformed theology in a way that made them more easily comprehensible to children. Earlier generations of children forced to study the increasingly detailed Reformed interpolations of Oecolampadius’s catechism may have learned to recognize the ‘‘correct’’ presentation of Christology, predestination, and other doctrines, but it is unlikely that they understood what they were learning. Wollebius’s catechism gave a much simpler outline of Reformed theology that did not place such high demands on children’s ability to understand.

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The curricular and catechetical reforms of the 1620s came too late to have any impact on the education of the men who entered Basel’s ministry before 1629, but they would shape the young men who would become pastors in the later 1630s and into the 1640s. They therefore contributed to a generational break similar to those of the 1540s and the 1580s. The curricular revisions created significant differences in both the content and the emphases of religious education at the primary and secondary level. Whereas the earliest reform of Basel’s schools instituted a pattern of religious education that emphasized general evangelical doctrine and knowledge of Scripture, the reforms of the 1580s reflected a much greater concern with doctrinal systematization that had a confessional slant. The three decades between 1590 and 1620 were the height of confessional indoctrination in the city’s schools. The changes of the 1620s reflect a shift away from indoctrination as memorization and greater sensitivity to what children were capable of learning and understanding. This investigation of religious instruction in Basel’s gymnasium has larger significance for the evaluation of pastoral education in the sixteenth century. Basel was typical in its emphasis on a thorough religious education focusing on familiarity with the Bible and knowledge of an increasingly more detailed catechism.23 By the end of the sixteenth century, students who attended a Protestant gymnasium or academy had been repeatedly exposed to the contents of the Bible, the distinctive elements of confessional theology, and the essential principles of scriptural exegesis. Although this religious education was not restricted only to future pastors, it was certainly important in preparing pastors for their careers in the parish. Studies of the Protestant clergy have concentrated on the amount rather than the content of their education, and they have emphasized university study while neglecting the importance of religious instruction at the level of the gymnasium or academy. Basel’s example demonstrates the importance of this religious education below the level of the university. Even at its most general, in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, religious instruction at the Latin school imparted a familiarity with both Scripture and doctrine that far surpassed what the medieval clergy were required to know at ordination. By the end of the sixteenth century, students were not only learning Greek but were practicing the philological analysis of Scripture in the upper grades of the gymnasium. They were also taught to recognize the rhetorical structure of sermons. There was obviously much more that they could learn by continuing their education at the university level, but by the 1580s the students who had only a gymnasium education were much better prepared for the preaching ministry than even those late medieval priests who had attended a university.24 The changes in religious education were not the only institutional innovations that would have a major impact on the preparation of future pastors. If the students were to continue their studies at the university, they needed financial support. This was provided through the reorganization of the city’s stipendiary system.

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Financing Pastoral Education: The Stipendiary System Although Basel had introduced a method of supporting the study of future clergy in the early 1530s, that system proved flawed. By the early 1540s, it was apparent that changes were necessary. The Senate made the first step in this direction in November 1544, when it transferred the responsibility for selecting stipendiates to the Academic Senate, the governing council of the university.25 Four months later, the magistrate issued new statutes that placed the Alumneum on more solid footing. Henceforth the Senate pledged to support twelve boys from the city and rural territories who were recommended by their teachers as talented, diligent, and advanced enough in their studies that they could attend university lectures. Oversight of the stipendiates now became the joint responsibility of the representatives of both city and university. No one could be accepted as stipendiate or released from the obligations that accompanied the stipend without the knowledge of the Deputaten and of the rector and Academic Senate. Stipendiates were also obliged to live in the place selected by the Deputaten and the Academic Senate, so that each ‘‘would be kept in good discipline and could be trained not only in their studies but also in an honorable, disciplined life.’’ Each stipendiate was also to have his own preceptor, who would prescribe the proper course of studies and watch over his conduct; disobedience to one’s preceptor could result in loss of the stipend.26 All stipendiates were required to attend lectures in theology, ‘‘so that if need be they could be used in the church and in the pulpit, whether in city or territory, wherever they are needed.’’ Students who chose not to enter the ministry were allowed to switch to another faculty, but only with the permission of the Academic Senate and the Deputaten. After completing their studies, the stipendiates were obliged to serve the magistrate, ‘‘either in the churches, the schools, or other honorable office.’’ Once they had agreed to the terms of the stipend, students who withdrew from the Alumneum without the magistrates’ permission were required to repay the amount they had received.27 The new statutes did not bring immediate improvement, and in November 1547, the magistrate gave the Academic Senate the responsibility of overseeing their enforcement. The first step was to summon all twelve of the Basel stipendiates, read the statutes to them, and inquire about their studies and their conduct. A few of the students received positive reports, but the overall findings were not encouraging: one student regularly attended lectures but lacked talent; another attended lectures only unwillingly; a third was described as ‘‘a vagabond, a lutenist, and indifferent toward progress in his studies’’; and a fourth had decided to become an apothecary and was not attending lectures at all. Two of the students, both of them pastors’ sons, said that they had no intention of becoming pastors themselves. After further investigation, it was decided that henceforth all stipendiates would have to swear to accept the Alumneum’s statutes and would be required to move into one of the university’s two colleges. Seven of the existing stipendiates took the required oath in early January 1548. They were joined by three new

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stipendiates, one of them a newly matriculated student who had been supported by the city while attending Latin school.28 Problems continued over the next few years. At the end of 1548, two students were deprived of their stipends because they had married without permission. The Senate decreed that in the future, married stipendiates would not only lose their financial support but also be required to repay money they had already received. Five years later, the Senate renewed its threats, after the Academic Senate complained that this provision was not being enforced.29 Despite these hitches, however, the system of civic support for future pastors finally began to function as intended. In striking contrast to the first group of stipendiates in 1532, seven of the ten stipendiates who took their oaths in early 1548 became Basel pastors, and an eighth eventually became the university Pedell, a type of administrative assistant for the rector. Complaints continued about lax enforcement of the stipendiates’ obligations;30 but there is also evidence that these students were held to their oaths. In 1550, for instance, Johannes Petri was deprived of his stipend because he had married without permission. He was not released from his obligation to serve the church, however, and soon thereafter he was appointed to a pastoral post in Basel’s territory. Of the sixty-three students who received civic stipends between 1548 and 1570, almost 60 percent did indeed serve the Basel church or university—most of them as pastors in Basel’s rural parishes.31 By 1570, however, the funding situation for future pastors was beginning to change in a significant way. One of the consequences of the severe outbreak of plague in 1564 was the creation of several new stipends from private bequests to the university. Ten scholarships were established over the course of the 1560s. Four of these endowments were substantial enough to support a student. The other six established smaller funds that were often used as supplements to the civic stipend.32 Over the next thirty years, eight more scholarships were endowed. The plague of 1610–11 resulted in yet another wave of endowments. Some of these were intended to support students directly, while others were given to the Upper College, where the stipendiates now resided, as an indirect means of student support. A number of smaller scholarships were established for students at the gymnasium as well.33 Many of the bequests establishing scholarships for the university specified that they were to be given to a student of ‘‘holy Scripture.’’ The scholarships were usually bestowed by some combination of the university’s rector, the Academic Senate, the deans of the four faculties, and sometimes the cathedral pastor or all four parish pastors, while the rector and Academic Senate were jointly responsible for overseeing how the monies were invested. These stipends were thus completely under the control of the university, and the magistrate had no voice in their distribution. A number of the endowments had conditions that potential recipients had to accept, with later endowments becoming increasingly explicit in their expectations. One of the earliest and largest of these scholarships was founded by Oberzunftmeister Jacob Ru¨din. Like the college statutes after which they were probably modeled, the terms of the endowment specified that the student

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had to study theology, regularly attend sermons, lectures, declamations and disputations, and live either in a college or with an ‘‘honorable citizen’’ if a foreigner or with a parent or relative if from Basel. Regardless of residence, he was required to ‘‘lead a disciplined life’’ and could not marry until he had received his master’s degree and been given his first position in the church. Students who did not live up to these conditions were required to repay the money they had already received from the endowment.34 This provision was fairly typical. A few endowments went even further and required gradual repayment, in small installments, once the student had a job—in essence, establishing student loans rather than scholarships. The Ru¨din scholarship was first awarded in the spring of 1565. Four of its first five recipients had also been civic stipendiates, as were the earliest recipients of two of the other major scholarships.35 By the mid-1570s, however, the new endowments were being used not to replace civic stipends but to fund students who had no other means of support. While it is not possible to determine whether the very best students received the civic stipends or if they were given university scholarships, we can determine the relative effectiveness of the two means of providing financial support for future pastors. Over the next fifty years, 164 students were supported either by a civic stipend or by one of the university endowments. Although the overall percentage of those who served as Basel pastors and teachers remained at the pre-1570 level of slightly over 60 percent for those who received university stipends, it fell to less than 50 percent among the civic stipendiates.36 Both the more rigorous conditions for reception of a university stipend and the closer supervision of the rector and Academic Senate may account for these differences. The acts and decrees of the Academic Senate in the years after 1570 show that an increasing amount of their time was taken up with the bestowal of stipends and the oversight of their recipients, and they had no qualms about withdrawing a student’s stipend for forbidden behavior.37 One special group of scholarships deserves to be mentioned here, although they did not contribute significantly to the support of future pastors in the early years of their existence. These are the stipends established by Erasmus’s will in 1536. From his estate the renowned humanist provided for the support of two students in the arts faculty and for one student in each of the three higher faculties. The Erasmianum differed from the later stipends in some fundamental ways, yet many of its provisions were echoed by later endowments to the university. The goal of the Erasmianum was to enable each stipendiate to complete the university degree for which he was funded: a master’s degree for those in the faculty of arts, and a doctorate for those in the theology faculty. The terms of the endowment specified a maximum length of study, up to four years for arts and as many as seven years for theology. Stipendiates were obligated to accept a number of conditions regarding their conduct, progress in their studies, and their esteem for Erasmus’s reputation; they were also encouraged, although not required, to pay back the stipend if they should later come into wealth. Students who transgressed against these terms were required to repay their scholarships.38

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The executors of Erasmus’s estate, first Bonifacius Amerbach and then his son Basilius, distributed the stipends, and their recipients owed nothing to either city or university. In particular—and in contrast to the civic stipendiates—the beneficiaries of the Erasmianum were under no obligation to enter the service of either the church or city of Basel. As a consequence, only two of the arts stipendiates became pastors, and both of them, Johannes Hospinian II and Samuel Koch, came from established scholarly families: their fathers were both professors and held pastorates in Basel’s church as well. Nor did the theology stipend contribute directly to the training of future pastors. It was clearly intended to support the training of professional theologians, and it was apparently used in part as a supplement to the salary of men who were already either pastors or professors. Johannes Hospinian I, the professor of logic (and father of the aforementioned arts stipendiate), received the theology stipend from 1547 to 1555, the full seven years; Severinus Erzberger, pastor of the church of St. Alban, received it for almost four years and was succeeded, beginning in 1561, by Johannes Brandmu¨ller, deacon of St. Theodore. Erhard Hahn, deacon of St. Leonhard, received the stipend in 1571 but died the following year. Of these four, only Brandmu¨ller actually completed a doctorate in theology, and that not until 1584, some twenty years after receiving the stipend.39 The aging and heirless Basilius Amerbach turned administration of the endowment over to the university in 1584, and from this point on the Erasmianum functioned more like the other university endowments. Stipendiates were chosen by the rector and deans of the four faculties and subject to the oversight of rector and Academic Senate. Both the arts and the theology stipends were now used more directly to support the church: almost all of the Baslers who received one of these three stipends and survived the plague of 1610 became pastors. The significance of the stipendiary system in providing personnel for Basel’s church is quickly demonstrated by examining the proportion of future Basel pastors who received some financial support, whether through the Alumneum or from one of the university scholarships (see table 4.1). Most of the pastors supported by stipends during the 1540s matriculated in the second half of the decade (eight of them in 1547 alone) and so benefited from the reorganization of the Alumneum: they were students at a time when there were several vacancies in the colleges waiting to be filled. Although the absolute number of future pastors receiving stipends actually fell in the decades between 1570 and 1589, the percentage of future pastors receiving financial support rose significantly, and through the rest of the period remained at very high levels. The lower turnover rate among the clergy meant that some of the students supported by stipends could not find pastoral posts and so served the city in some other capacity, often as teachers. These ‘‘surplus’’ students were available for the ministry when they were needed in the decade after the plague outbreak of 1610. The stipendiary system clearly was a successful means of providing the church with an educated clergy.40 Nevertheless, because of the slow turnover

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in pastoral positions, it took several decades before this system had a significant impact on Basel’s pastoral corps (see table 4.2). One of the very first civic stipendiates, Severinus Erzberger, was given a pastorate outside of Basel in 1542; a second stipendiate, Erhard Battmann, was appointed to a rural post in 1549. Both men, who had completed their master’s degrees, were transferred to positions in the city as soon as they became vacant. By 1559, 44 percent of the rural posts were held by former stipendiates, and the proportion had risen to above 50 percent a decade later. The proportion of former stipendiates among the rural pastoral corps remained at about this level for the rest of the century. Although the rapid promotion of both Erzberger and Battmann to city churches implies that such men were attractive to the church hierarchy, the longevity of the city pastors meant that it was much harder for stipendiates to be appointed to one of the thirteen urban posts. In 1559 there were only two stipendiates serving the city church. Thirteen years later, that number had risen to six former stipendiates, which was slightly less than half of the urban pastors, about the same proportion as among their rural counterparts. Just as it took a generation between the establishment of the Alumneum and the first stipendiates to become pastors, so it seemed to take a generation after the establishment of the university scholarships before the percentage of stipendiates among the pastoral corps rose again. This time it was the urban churches that benefited first: at the turn of the century, three-quarters of the city pastors were former stipendiates, while the proportion of rural stipendiates remained at about one-half. By 1609, however, the proportion in the country had increased to about two-thirds, and by 1619, over 80 percent of the pastors in both city and country had received a stipend of some kind. The plague that swept through Basel in 1610–11 contributed to this development, since it left several vacancies in both the urban and rural churches that were filled by students who were supported by civic or university stipends. The very gradual increase in the proportion of stipendiates over the course of the century explains why there was no sudden improvement in the educational level of the clergy after the Reformation. In Basel, it took several decades to create enough stipends to support the training of men to fill the majority of Basel’s pastoral posts, and it took even longer to educate the requisite number of stipendiates and then place them in the ministry as posts became vacant. Due to the slow progress made in providing reliable financial support for pastoral candidates, it was not until the 1560s that Basel’s church began to be influenced by a new generation of clergy specifically trained for the Protestant ministry.

Supervising Behavior: The University Colleges The requirement that stipendiates live in one of the university’s two colleges was one way the authorities could supervise both their studies and their conduct. Stipendiary programs created in other cities and territories commonly

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required that buildings be set aside to provide room and board for the students being educated at the government’s expense.41 Such provisions were themselves close in spirit to the requirement common in late medieval universities that students live in bursa under the oversight of a master. The drastic decline in university matriculations throughout Germany during the 1520s undermined the power of university officials to enforce such requirements, and in many universities the role of the bursa was assumed by docents who offered private instruction and assumed the responsibilities of oversight for those willing to pay them.42 In Basel, the earliest civic stipendiates were housed together in the former Dominican convent, which assumed the function of one of the medieval bursa. In 1538, after a scandal involving the kidnapping of some French students also living in the convent, the stipendiates were moved to the former Augustinian cloister.43 The Augustinian cloister was renamed the Upper College to distinguish it from the older university building, the Lower College, which combined the functions of student dormitory and lecture hall. Although the first civic stipendiates had lived together, their immediate successors were not required to live in a college, and during the 1530s and 1540s some of them did not. Only in 1548 did the Senate decree that all stipendiates reside in one of the colleges. After that date, new students accepted into the Alumneum were housed in either the Upper or the Lower College, depending on where space became available for them. In addition to the civic stipendiates, the colleges also accepted paying boarders and provided meals for some students who did not reside there.44 Like the stipendiary system, the colleges were apparently run on an informal basis for the first decade after the university’s reopening. There was concern, however, that the students were not being properly supervised, which led Bonifacius Amerbach to draw up a memorandum with recommendations concerning the government of the new college. It would be best, he wrote, if the college could have a ‘‘learned and prudent man, outstanding in piety and weighty with authority,’’ who would live in the college and oversee the students, as was the norm in other schools and academies. Since this was not possible, however, he recommended that the oversight of the students’ studies and morals be given to one of the professors on the arts faculty who lived outside of the college, while someone who had received an M.A. live in the college to deal with the concerns of daily life. In order to prevent students from wandering the streets and causing mischief after dark, he recommended that the doors of the college be locked after supper and no one allowed in or out until it was time to attend the early sermon the next morning.45 Amerbach’s proposals were incorporated into the statutes of the Upper College, which were adopted in 1543 and which in turn were the model for the statutes of the Lower College issued four years later.46 The statutes spelled out in detail the expectations for the residents’ conduct. On entering either college, students swore obedience to the dean of the arts faculty as well as to the heads of their college, whom they were to hold in the same reverence as their parents. Residents of the colleges were required to

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attend the lectures prescribed for them by their preceptor, as well as the disputations and declamations held in the colleges on alternate Saturdays, and they attended the sermons at the cathedral on Sundays and on Tuesday mornings as a group. They were also held to strict standards of dress and conduct. Their clothes were to be honorable and clean, and they were not allowed to wear martial regalia or carry swords. Students coming late to lunch or dinner without a good excuse were deprived of the meal. They were to speak Latin during mealtime, and their conversation was to be directed toward their studies, with newer students asking the more advanced students questions about lecture content. The college was opened at 6 a.m. and closed at 9 p.m. during the winter; the hours were extended by an hour in the morning and another in the evening during the summer. Students were not allowed to eat their evening meals or to remain overnight outside the college, nor could they bring guests into the college, without permission—and the presence of a ‘‘dishonorable woman’’ (inhonestam mulierem) was strictly prohibited. Punishment for infractions of the rules was meted out in regular weekly meetings and could range from fines and corporal punishment to a spell in the college’s jail or expulsion. The responsibility for oversight of college residents fell most heavily on the two coofficials placed in charge of each college. The most important figure for the daily operations of the college was the prefect, who lived in the college and supervised the college’s residents. The prefect had extensive rights to help him maintain both order and the physical property of the college. For instance, he could inspect the students’ rooms at any time and require the repair or replacement of broken furnishings. He was also responsible for practical matters such as providing meals and opening and closing the college.47 Turnover among these resident directors was fairly rapid: it was unusual for a prefect to remain in his post for more than two or three years. Almost all of the prefects were young men in their twenties and at the beginning of their careers; hence they would have been only a few years older than the students they were supervising. They had all recently been granted their master’s degrees, and most of them also taught Greek, Latin, or rhetoric in the Pedagogium, the first level of the arts faculty. A few of them were concurrently enrolled in one of the higher faculties. Many of them went on to other positions within Basel’s church or school, either being promoted to a chair at a higher level of the arts faculty or becoming a pastor.48 The second official involved with each college was the coregent or preceptor, who was responsible for guiding each student’s course of study and for overseeing his life and morals more generally. The coregent of each college was chosen yearly, at the same time that the university’s rector and faculty deans were elected. In fact, most coregents were reelected annually and served until they either died or were promoted to another position, either in the university or the church, that would not allow them to continue as coregent. Unlike the prefects, the coregents were older men who taught advanced university students. Most of the coregents of the Upper College held one of the chairs for logic at the higher level of the arts faculty.49

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Over the 1540s, there was increasing pressure for closer supervision of the college residents. The civic stipendiates, in particular, became subject to greater scrutiny. In 1550, the Academic Senate decreed that the colleges should be visited every semester by the deans and Deputaten. Although the visitors were told to inquire into the conduct and studies of all arts students, they were particularly enjoined to examine the progress of the civic stipendiates. Two years later, the Academic Senate specified that the names of newly appointed civic stipendiates were to be given to the heads of the colleges, so that if more than one student applied to fill a vacancy in a college, the stipendiates would have an advantage over their competitors.50 Through the 1550s and 1560s, the native and foreign civic stipendiates were randomly divided between the Upper and Lower Colleges. Foreign students who received stipends from their own territories, most notably the margraviate of Baden, were also housed in the colleges. One unintended consequence of filling the colleges with these foreign stipendiates was to bring future Basel pastors into closer contact with students from other parts of Switzerland and south Germany, thus retarding somewhat the movement toward provincialization among Basel’s clergy. At a time when confessional differences were becoming more intense, however, close contact between theology students from different areas increased the risk of doctrinal controversy. Over the course of 1570, several quarrels broke out in the Upper College between stipendiates from Lutheran Baden and students from Basel and other parts of Switzerland. As several Zurich stipendiates reported to their sponsors back home, a few German students had called Zwingli and his followers ‘‘arch-heretics.’’ On one occasion, the name-calling degenerated into a fistfight after a Basel stipendiate tried to defend Zwingli’s reputation. The conflict spread from the university to the church, resulting in divisions among the city’s pastors that took months to resolve.51 In order to prevent similar incidents in the future, the city’s native-born and foreign stipendiates were separated. From 1571, all Basel stipendiates lived in the Upper College, while foreign stipendiates lived in the Lower College. The statutes for the colleges were revised so that the students’ conduct was more strictly regulated. Because several of the quarrels had broken out during mealtime, students were no longer allowed free conversation but instead were to listen as one of their comrades read a chapter of Scripture and then explained its meaning. A different reader was chosen each week, and it was that student’s responsibility to draw up a list of theses from the day’s Bible reading for discussion during the meal. In addition to attendance at the morning worship service and ordinary theology lectures, residents of the college were to attend the additional theology lectures, disputations, and preaching exercises held in the college, and they were enjoined to apply themselves to the study of arts and languages so that they would receive their degree within the expected period of time.52 A generation later, the college statutes were again revised. As before, the revisions were intended to counter complaints about the students’ conduct. In

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this case, however, the chief problem was not theological differences but rather stemmed from charges that the students were roaming the streets at night and disturbing the peace. Cases brought before the Academic Senate over the course of 1594 indicate that college discipline was breaking down: one student was caught with a maid in his room, another was reprimanded for getting married, and several students had moved out of the college without permission.53 In response to these complaints, the Academic Senate adopted a new oath in July that was to be taken by all civic stipendiates. Two months later, the arts faculty approved new statutes for the colleges that tightened many of the existing provisions. Students were now to be fined if they arrived late at the morning sermon, and if they did not attend the sermon, they would not be given their dinner. Although the college’s opening hours remained the same, the college was now to be shut and locked by 7 p.m. in both winter and summer, and no one was to be allowed either into or out of the college without good cause.54 The statutes also created the new post of senior, an older student who was elected yearly by the arts faculty to aid the prefect in his duties and to oversee the college in the prefect’s absence. By the 1620s, the students elected to the post of senior were automatically given one of the university stipends as a reward for their efforts.55 The Alumneum and the Upper College became more closely connected in 1624, when the Academic Senate decreed that all stipendiates, regardless of origin, were to live in the Upper College. By 1628, there were no more students living in the Lower College, and the building was used only for lecture halls. The two institutions did not merge completely, since the Upper College continued to accept foreign students supported by their own governments as they prepared for the pastorate. Nevertheless, the closing of the residence hall in the Lower College strengthened the identity of the Upper College as a theological training ground by housing all those intended for the ministry in one building.56 There is no easy way to calculate what percentage of Basel’s clergy resided in one of the colleges, although given the close connection between the stipendiary system and the colleges and the increasing proportion of stipendiates among the clergy, that percentage was probably fairly high. In addition to the stipendiates who were obliged to enter the ministry, some of the residents of the two colleges who were not civic stipendiates also became pastors. Over time, then, the proportion of Basel pastors who were college residents at some point in their university career increased. The colleges thus played an important role in shaping the identity of Basel’s pastoral corps. There is no question that the colleges functioned as an important element within Basel’s system of preparing students for the ministry. At the very least, students who resided in the colleges were held to regular attendance at the morning sermons and at the lectures prescribed by the coregent. Theology students also benefited academically from residence in one of the colleges. The prefect’s presence in the college meant that he was available to beginning students who might need additional help with their studies. The private

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disputations and declamations held in the college gave students additional practice at speaking in front of an audience. It is more difficult to determine the precise role of the colleges in shaping the identity of Basel’s future pastors. Studies of the stipendiary systems established at other universities typically emphasize the strict regulation of the students’ daily life as a major component of college life.57 The college statutes certainly set high standards of conduct for the students who resided in the colleges, but it might be argued that those students who boarded with university professors, especially those on the theology faculty, were held to equally strict standards of behavior regarding attendance at worship and lectures, while at the same time they benefited from a more family-like atmosphere and better meals.58 The complaints about misconduct in the colleges indicate that the statutory provisions regarding conduct and regimentation of life were not rigidly enforced. Enforcement of college statutes and student discipline depended on the men who were chosen as prefects. The relative youthfulness of the prefects, as well as the rapid turnover, may have undermined attempts to institute a strict discipline among the college residents. The prefects had begun to climb the professional ladder within the university and ecclesiastical establishment, but they were still on the bottom rungs. Although this might tempt them to act as representatives of ‘‘the Establishment’’ when dealing with their charges, the fact that they did not yet have a full share in the power structure may also have given them greater sympathy with their younger charges.59 Indeed, because they were relatively close to the students in age, the prefects were ideally placed to serve not as parents, as the statutes envisioned, but rather as big brothers; that is, as mentors and role models to the boys under their supervision. The conflict between Heinrich Erzberger, a young Basel pastor, and Johann Fu¨glin, a somewhat older pastor who had been Erzberger’s professor and prefect of the Lower College while Erzberger lived there during the later 1550s, demonstrates that such mentoring relationships did exist. The two had originally been united in their opposition to what they saw as the Lutheran sympathies of the Basel church’s leadership. By 1569, however, Fu¨glin had adopted the Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper, which contributed to a bitter exchange of name-calling from the pulpit in early 1571. Erzberger’s account of their relationship reflects the sense of betrayal he felt as a result of Fu¨glin’s ‘‘apostasy.’’60 When looked at from this perspective, the colleges become not so much a place where church authorities imposed their standards on the students as one that provided the opportunity for future pastors to form bonds with their peers and to develop a collective identity that set them apart from other students. This is not to deny the importance of the role played by the professors who taught and supervised the students in guiding their studies and shaping their values, but it also recognizes the influence of peer relationships among teen-age boys. At a crucial period in their social, intellectual, and moral development, these boys were brought together to study and to spend their free time under the supervision of prefects who served as intermediaries

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between them and the men who taught and would eventually employ them. While the presence of foreign students, whether as stipendiates or as private boarders, kept the colleges from becoming too insular, the concentration of Basel stipendiates in the Upper College from 1571 on limited the boys’ exposure to outsiders and may even have allowed a rivalry of sorts to develop between the inhabitants of the two colleges. As with the development of religious education in the gymnasium, the stipendiary system and the regulated life of the colleges was not static over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Important changes in the number of stipendiates came in the later 1560s, accompanied by the division of Baslers and foreign stipendiates and the issuance of new college statutes in 1571. The statutory changes of 1594 were not so much a new development as an attempt to improve enforcement of existing regulations. The greatest impact of these institutional changes, then, would have been to create somewhat different experiences between those students who were stipendiates and/or college residents before 1570 and those who matriculated after. Other significant changes were taking place in the university as well during these years, as I will show when I examine the education that future pastors received in the arts faculty.

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5 The Arts Faculty and General Education

Basel’s future pastors were already learning theology while they were still gymnasium students. Nevertheless, these students were expected to continue their educations at the university for a number of years before they were deemed ready for the pastorate. As was the case with their secondary education, the content of their university education was as important as the amount. As students in the arts faculty, they developed the practical skills that they would need as pastors: the ability to interpret Scripture for themselves and then to put what they had learned in the form of a sermon. The tools for exegesis and preaching were rhetoric and dialectic, the core of the arts curriculum. Classical rhetoric and rhetorical dialectic together formed a theory of communication—of understanding the ideas of others and of passing those ideas on to one’s own audience—that made the two disciplines the foundation of education by the middle of the sixteenth century.1 Dialectic taught critical thinking, preparing future preachers to analyze the text of Scripture, and giving them the tools necessary to defend truth and refute error. Rhetoric also taught textual analysis, but it was even more valuable for purposes of persuasion and hence aided in the task of preaching. The humanist curricular reforms introduced into the German universities in the early sixteenth century emphasized both disciplines. While instruction in rhetoric remained fairly constant, dialectic evolved significantly over the course of the sixteenth century, going through several stages. During the first two decades of the century, the speculative logic of the late Middle Ages was undermined by changes in the Latin curriculum and by the humanists’ shift away from logic to rhetoric. By 1520, this older speculative logic was being replaced in both textbooks and university curricula by the

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newer rhetorical dialectic inspired by Rudolf Agricola. Rhetorical dialectic would dominate arts instruction for the remainder of the century, but it underwent two further developments. On the one hand, at the more advanced level of university training, emphasis shifted toward the later treatises of Aristotle’s Organon, which taught argumentation. On the other hand, Peter Ramus criticized Aristotelian dialectic and introduced and developed his own method of analyzing and generating discourse. Although Ramus published his first works on dialectic in the 1540s, his ideas continued to evolve and reached their final form only around 1570, at about the same time they began to spread in Germany. Thus these two developments in dialectic instruction were experienced in Germany as two successive phases. The third quarter of the sixteenth century was marked by a humanist dialectic that led to deeper familiarity with Aristotelian logic, while the last quarter witnessed the spread of Ramism, first as an alternative to Aristotelian logic and by the end of the century as a complement to it. These developments within the field of dialectic would have significant implications for pastoral education. Each of these stages produced a different attitude toward dialectic and particularly toward its use in theology. The result was to reinforce generational differences between pastors trained at different times over the course of the century.

The Evolution of Dialectic in the Sixteenth Century Humanism as it developed in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was fundamentally a literary movement. The studia humanitatis concentrated on the disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and ethics or moral philosophy. The goal of such study was the ability to express oneself not only correctly but also eloquently, in Latin that Cicero would have recognized.2 Because of their emphasis on the practical nature of learning, the humanists of the fifteenth century disdained the study of logic or dialectic as it was taught in the medieval universities. Scholastic logic was both formal and speculative, more interested in determining the validity of terms, propositions, and syllogisms than in persuasion and eloquent Latin style, which were both seen as the preserve of rhetoric. As a tool for analyzing language, scholastic logic required a technical vocabulary that was taught by the popular medieval grammars of Donatus and Alexander de Villadei. Humanist reform of grammar instruction undermined this technical vocabulary. Although there were attempts to reform dialectic instruction in the German universities in the first decades of the sixteenth century, these reforms did not go far enough, and by the 1520s they were replaced by a more radical approach to dialectic imported from Italy.3 Despite their distaste for the ‘‘barbarous’’ Latin style used in scholastic logic, some humanists realized that the discipline was too important for persuasive argumentation to ignore entirely. Lorenzo Valla was the first to propose a reform of traditional Aristotelian logic by combining it with principles

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of rhetoric taken from Cicero and Quintilian. Like much of late medieval logic, his humanist reform of logic was based on the logica vetus, the first treatises of Aristotle’s Organon, translated into Latin in late antiquity, which dealt with terms and propositions.4 Even more important for the combination of rhetoric and dialectic was the Dutch humanist Rudolf Agricola. Where Valla had reduced logic to a subset of rhetoric, Agricola incorporated rhetoric into his dialectic. Following Cicero, Agricola divided logic into invention and judgment, which were equivalent to the first two parts of oratory. Agricola identified the categories used for logical analysis with the rhetorical topics used to generate material for orations. Agricola not only provided lists of such topics or loci but also gave examples of how topical invention could be used to generate arguments and to analyze texts. Agricola’s rhetorical dialectic was consciously intended to be practical in nature, useful for argumentation and debate in the best Latin style.5 Agricola’s De inventione dialectica was eagerly seized upon by northern humanists, including Erasmus, when it was finally published in the early sixteenth century, and it was in turn the impetus for a flood of new dialectic textbooks.6 One of the most influential was Johann Caesarius’s Dialectica in decem tractatus digesta, first published in 1520 and frequently reprinted over the next seventy-five years. Philipp Melanchthon also contributed to this flood with three different versions of his own dialectic textbook. The final edition, the 1547 Erotemata Dialectices, became the standard dialectic text in Lutheran Germany for the remainder of the century. Although they shared the rhetorical concerns of Valla and Agricola, both Caesarius and Melanchthon were more faithful to Aristotle. Their texts followed the traditional Aristotelian order, beginning with a discussion of terms, following a procedure of definition, division into parts, and description based on the five predicables, the four causes, and the ten predicaments, and then continuing on to a consideration of propositions and to correct and fallacious argumentation.7 Perhaps the most important feature of the new humanist dialectic was the belief that it was a useful tool for both learning and teaching all other disciplines. This instrumental view of dialectic could be traced back to the most important medieval logic textbook, Peter of Spain’s Summulae Logicales, which defined logic as ‘‘the art of arts and science of sciences,’’ but it was given new significance by practically and pedagogically oriented humanist educators. Enhanced by an appreciation of style and technique derived from a deeper understanding of classical rhetoric, humanist dialectic could easily be applied to the study of texts from other disciplines. The joining of rhetoric and dialectic into a method for textual analysis reflects one of the chief concerns of humanists at the mid–sixteenth century.8 Depending on the structure of the school, these disciplines could be introduced in the upper level of the Latin school or in the first year of university study. The study of rhetoric was sometimes begun before that of dialectic, but more usually the two were introduced to the students at the same time. The full course of dialectic lasted several years and, at least in theory,

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culminated with the reading of Aristotle’s logical works, preferably in the original Greek. In practice, however, Aristotle was generally read in translation, if he was read at all. The availability and comparative clarity of the dialectic textbooks produced during the sixteenth century often made them preferable to the direct study of Aristotle and could thus contribute indirectly to the neglect of the Philosopher’s works.9 This tendency was countered by another development, however: the specialization of knowledge that resulted from appointing professors to teach specific areas, rather than expecting them to teach in all areas. Melanchthon is in many ways the exception that proves the rule: he was unusual in the range of courses he taught, but the textbooks he produced, particularly the final edition of his dialectic text, reflect the growing appreciation for Aristotle that grew directly from his teaching.10 The disciplines of rhetoric and dialectic were quickly coopted by Protestant theologians for the training of future clergy. Melanchthon played a key role both as teacher and as textbook author in showing how rhetoric and dialectic together were essential for the proper understanding of Scripture. In his first rhetoric textbook, published in 1519, Melanchthon used scriptural examples to illustrate the principles of rhetoric. In subsequent editions, he developed even further the combination of rhetorical and dialectical analysis that would be used for scriptural exegesis. His commentaries also functioned as models in the application of rhetorical and dialectical analysis to the biblical text. Regardless of their theological viewpoints, Melanchthon’s students all followed their teacher to a greater or lesser degree in using the tools of rhetoric and dialectic for explaining Scripture.11 It took somewhat longer for Reformed theologians to embrace the application of rhetorical dialectic to theology. Simon Grynaeus was well trained in dialectic—in addition to teaching it in Basel, he published a Greek edition of Aristotle’s Organon—but he kept dialectic separate from scriptural exegesis. Although Zurich’s new academy had faculty skilled in teaching languages and literature, its reputation suffered because it lacked someone to teach dialectic. As late as 1568, Bullinger expressed some hesitation at the mixing of philosophy and theology. Other Reformed theologians embraced the study of dialectic with enthusiasm, however. In his De recte formando Theologiae studio, first published in Basel in 1556, the Marburg professor Andreas Hyperius argued that the study of logic was particularly necessary for future theologians, although he felt that it was sufficient for students to know the proper method of ‘‘definition, division, and argumentation’’—in other words, the fundamental principles of Agricolan topical dialectic—and did not need to devote more time to studying the logical works of Aristotle. In Geneva, both Beza and his colleague on the theology faculty, Lambert Daneau, vigorously defended the value of dialectic for theology.12 At the same time that rhetoric and dialectic were being applied to the study of theology, dialectic itself was changing. The rapid expansion of humanist education put new strains on traditional methods of pedagogy. By midcentury there were now many more boys who needed to be taught as quickly and efficiently as possible. This pedagogical pressure helped prepare the way

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for the next major development in dialectic instruction, that associated with the name of Peter Ramus. Ramus published his first dialectic text in 1543, and he continued to revise his ideas to counter the attacks of critics until his death thirty years later. Ramus’s ideas were neither as innovative nor as revolutionary as he (and his critics) claimed but rather were influenced by the Agricolan topical dialectic brought to Paris by Johann Sturm, among others. Ramism acquired its polemical edge from Ramus’s disenchantment with the way Aristotelian logic was taught in Paris during the 1540s.13 At heart, Ramism was not so much a system of logic, or a means of determining the truth or falsehood of propositions, as a system of classification, ordering axioms accepted as true in a way that made them easy to teach and easy to remember.14 Ramus and his followers taught that dialectic consisted of two parts: invention, by which all arguments or simple concepts were identified, and judgment, by which these arguments were arranged in the proper order, moving from most general to most specific, according to a system of dichotomies. As part of the task of classification, Ramus argued that all propositions should be allocated to a single discipline rather than two or more disciplines. Thus all that pertained to invention, disposition, and memory, three of the five traditional tasks of an orator, were assigned to dialectic. As a consequence, Ramist rhetoric was reduced to elocution and pronunciation, while dialectic assumed even greater importance as the art of communication par excellence. Like all humanist dialectic, Ramist dialectic was, above all, intended to be practical, useful for the interpretation of existing texts and the production of new texts, following Ramus’s prescriptions for analysis and genesis. All discourse, whatever its genre, could be analyzed or broken down into its component parts and understood according to dichotomous tables. Likewise, someone producing any form of discourse would begin by identifying the components and arranging them in the proper order, again moving from general to specific. In his dialectic texts, Ramus illustrated his famous (or infamous) single method of discourse with examples taken from the Latin poets and from Scripture, and he published a series of works showing how this method could be applied to each of the liberal arts. Ramism proved to be the most controversial pedagogical innovation of the later sixteenth century. Ramus’s advocates argued that his single method of dialectical analysis was much easier to learn than the dominant Aristotelian or Melanchthonian dialectic, while opponents charged that Ramus was more concerned with method than philosophical truth.15 Despite its controversial nature, Ramism spread into central Europe during the 1570s and was quickly adopted by teachers, particularly in the new territorial gymnasia and academies. Public lectures on Ramism were prohibited at the universities of Helmstedt, Leipzig, and Wittenberg, in part because Ramist method was not considered adequate for university-level instruction, but it was eagerly adopted at the gymnasium or preuniversity level as a simple and effective way to teach the essentials of dialectic to young students. As a result, although Ramism was excluded from the university, it found an entrance through students who

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were trained in it before they matriculated and rose through the arts faculty and went on to the higher faculties. The dichotomized tables characteristic of Ramist method eventually began to appear in works by professors of law, medicine, and theology.16 Recent studies have questioned the traditional view that Ramism was particularly congenial to Reformed theology, pointing out that it was rejected by Reformed academies in France and the Netherlands, as well as by the two most influential Reformed institutions, the Geneva Academy and the University of Heidelberg. Conversely, Ramism gained a foothold at the Lutheran universities of Copenhagen, Uppsala, and Dorpat, and won followers even in those German universities where it was prohibited.17 Nevertheless, Ramism had a much greater impact on the educational institutions of Reformed territories than it did in Lutheran areas. While teachers in Lutheran academies continued to use Melanchthon’s dialectic, those in Reformed schools were more open to the new approach of Ramism. Many also belonged to the amorphous group of dialecticians, called variously ‘‘semi-Ramists’’ or ‘‘Philippo-Ramists,’’ who attempted syntheses combining elements of Aristotle, Melanchthon, and Ramus. Several of these men began as teachers of dialectic but were eventually appointed to chairs of theology, which strengthened the association of Ramist or semi-Ramist dialectic with Reformed theology. By the end of the sixteenth century, then, dialectic had become confessionalized.18 Another factor that led to the confessionalization of philosophy instruction at the turn of the century was the reintroduction of metaphysics into the university curriculum. Instruction in metaphysics had disappeared from most German universities as part of the humanist reforms introduced during the 1520s and 1530s. Shortly before 1600, however, lectures in metaphysics were introduced in Helmstedt, and other universities quickly followed suit. The renewed interest in metaphysics was linked to confessional debates: Lutheran theologians, in particular, needed a deeper understanding of metaphysics to explain the Christological consequences of the real presence of Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper. As the seventeenth century progressed, metaphysics became the dominant philosophical discipline, and dialectic was reduced to propaedeutic status.19 The now classic studies of Hans Emil Weber and Paul Althaus describe the relationship between philosophy and both Lutheran and Reformed theology in the seventeenth century, and this study does not need to follow later developments.20 Before leaving the topic, however, it is important to clarify a few points essential to the proper understanding and evaluation of the relationship between dialectic and Protestant theology, and particularly to the development of Protestant scholasticism. First, any discussion of the influence of Aristotelian philosophy on Protestant theology in the sixteenth century must define specifically what is meant by ‘‘Aristotelian philosophy.’’ From the 1520s on, Melanchthon and other textbook authors demonstrated that dialectic was an important tool for Protestant theologians. Although they differed in their faithfulness to Aristotle, all forms of sixteenth-century dialectic, even that of Ramus, were indebted to the Greek philosopher. The study

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of metaphysics, on the other hand, was neglected until its terminology and its methodology were adopted for confessional polemics at the end of the century. Through much of the sixteenth century, then, Protestant theology made use of Aristotelian dialectic but not Aristotelian metaphysics.21 Second, pedagogical necessity drove the evolution of dialectic over the course of the sixteenth century. This had important consequences for pastoral education. The newly reformed churches needed an educated clergy familiar with the contents of Scripture, able to study and interpret the text correctly on their own and then to explain what they had learned to an audience that included a high proportion of the illiterate and uneducated. A large number of students had to be taught both the knowledge and the skills that would enable them to communicate the Protestant gospel—and this as quickly as possible. This pedagogical imperative made Ramist method particularly appealing to those responsible for training future ministers. It was easy to teach and simple to learn: a frequent boast made by Ramists was that one could learn within a matter of months what took several years to master when following Aristotle. This was an attractive claim for teachers required to provide a constant supply of pastors for a territorial church.22 Ramism combined the tasks traditionally divided between dialectic and rhetoric into one skill useful in both learning and teaching. The technique of analysis and genesis seemed tailor-made for preachers, who had first to analyze the Scripture text, and then generate their own sermon to explain Scripture to their parishioners. Last but not least, Ramist emphasis on practical use appealed to theologians who were concerned with teaching their hearers to apply biblical truths in their daily lives. Over the course of the sixteenth century, then, dialectic in both its Agricolan/humanist and Ramist form was put to the service of pastoral education. An analysis of Basel’s arts curriculum and of the future pastors who studied there will make clear the implications of the evolution of dialectic.

The Arts Curriculum as Preparation for Theology The institutional structures put in place in Basel by the mid–sixteenth century guaranteed that from the 1570s, the majority of Basel’s pastors spent several years as university students, earning both their bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the arts faculty and then receiving a thorough grounding in theology before they entered the ministry. This common experience was an important unifying factor among the pastoral corps. At another level, though, the years as university students could also separate the different generations of pastors. The evolving nature of university instruction during the sixteenth century meant that the type of education received by the pastors who entered the ministry in the first part of the seventeenth century was quite different from that received by their predecessors a century earlier. It was considered essential that future pastors master the principles of both rhetoric and dialectic. In Basel, changes in the instruction of dialectic played a significant role in creating generational differences among

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the city-republic’s clergy. To understand what those differences were, we must look more closely at the place of both rhetoric and dialectic within the arts curriculum. As young students, Basel’s future pastors followed a course of study that was increasingly regulated and systematized. The Studienordnung, or curricular plan, adopted in 1540 specified that students preparing for their baccalaureate were to study grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and mathematics. The oratorical precepts and exercises of Aphthonius and Cicero were the basis of rhetoric instruction. Students received their introduction to dialectic via the text of ‘‘Caesarius or another,’’ which the professor was to lecture on for the course of a year. After finishing his lectures on Caesarius, the professor spent the next six months on the logical works of Aristotle. Students also attended lectures on mathematics and cosmology. In addition, they were required to attend the disputations and declamations held on alternate Saturdays, and on Sunday they learned the catechism.23 Public examinations were held in the spring and fall. Those who passed could proceed to the next level of instruction, although they did not need to go through the formalities of obtaining a bachelor’s degree.24 Students working toward their master’s degree continued their study of rhetoric and dialectic, attending the lectures on the remaining parts of Aristotle’s logic. The professor was to complete these lectures within an eighteen-month period. The students continued their study of mathematics and of rhetoric via the works of Cicero, and they began the study of natural philosophy and ethics. Like the students working toward their bachelor’s degrees, the master’s candidates were to participate in the disputations and declamations held alternately on Saturdays and catechism instruction on Sundays, and those preparing for the ministry were required to attend theology lectures as well. The study plan described by the statutes rather optimistically envisioned that a student could complete the entire course of study, from matriculation through both arts degrees, within a period of three years. It quickly became apparent that many students were not sufficiently prepared for the level of instruction outlined by the ordinance, let alone able to complete it within the prescribed period. In 1544, the study ordinance was revised to require that all students be examined and their course of study established according to their level of preparedness. The curriculum was now divided into three levels or stages. The first level, called the Pedagogium, emphasized Greek and Latin grammar and Latin literature.25 Although the statutes emphasized the importance of competency in Greek, the lack of any statutory requirement regarding Hebrew meant that the study of that language was largely neglected. The university had two renowned Hebraists on its arts faculty at different times: Sebastian Mu¨nster until his death in 1552, and Johannes Buxtorf, from 1590 to 1629. Even with such renowned scholars, though, the lectures in Hebrew attracted few hearers.26 Students were expected to complete the remedial linguistic instruction offered in the Pedagogium over the course of a year’s study. Once they had mastered the languages, they moved to the second level, where they were

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introduced to Greek literature, Latin rhetoric, and elementary dialectic. Their texts for rhetoric were the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes, as well as the Rhetorica ad Herennium; for dialectic they attended lectures on the text of Caesarius. As before, arts professors were to complete their lectures on the required texts within an eighteen-month period. Compared to the earlier statutes, the revision prescribed a more regulated sequence of courses taking more time and covering less material. New students were not introduced to dialectic until they had passed out of the Pedagogium, and they had an entire eighteen months, rather than a year, to study Caesarius’s dialectic text. Students were not exposed to Aristotle’s logical works at the baccalaureate level. This came as they were preparing for the master’s degree. The curriculum for this level was the least changed. Students were expected to master Aristotle’s Organon, physics, mathematics, and ethics. At the end of eighteen months, the student was, at least in theory, ready to take the examinations that led to the master’s degree.27 Seven years later, the statutes were revised once more. The background to this third revision was a conflict between the arts faculty and Thomas Platter, the head of the city’s largest Latin school. The arts faculty complained that Platter was teaching disciplines, including dialectic, and literary works that more appropriately belonged to the university curriculum than to a school. Platter was eventually forced to accept the claims of the arts faculty and to reduce dialectic instruction to one hour a week in his highest class, but the statutes of 1551 reflected Platter’s view that students could be introduced to dialectic at an earlier age. Students in the Pedagogium now began to study dialectic, using the textbook by Jodocus Willichius. The new statutes also specified that these students were to use Melanchthon’s Latin grammar and the Greek grammar of Ceporinus. As before, the curriculum for the Pedagogium was to be completed at the end of a year.28 The curriculum for the bachelor’s and master’s students showed little change in basic structure, but the new statutes gave more precise regulations regarding texts and made more clear the different emphases of the two levels. At the second level (which led to the bachelor’s degree), students were no longer required to study mathematics but concentrated entirely on rhetoric and dialectic. Lectures on the dialectic text were now to be completed within the year; for the remaining six months the professor was to lecture on the works of other authors that might be useful to the students. Caesarius’s dialectic text was still recommended, but the text of Jodocus Perionius could also be used. This provision reflects some debate concerning the most suitable textbook for dialectic instruction. Although Caesarius’s text had been prescribed in 1544, an unpublished curricular ordinance from the second half of the 1540s recommended using Melanchthon’s dialectic, and there is evidence that Johann Sturm’s dialectic text was also used. All of these dialectic textbooks attempted to a greater or lesser degree to blend the rhetorical approach to logic with Aristotle. Melanchthon’s text differed from the other two primarily in its more overtly theological nature; for instance, through its analysis of Scripture texts as examples.29

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The 1551 statutes made the distinction between bachelor’s and master’s degree candidates more obvious by moving the disputations and declamations for the former to Thursdays, when no lectures were held. Disputations for master’s students continued to be held on Saturdays. Students at the third level also focused more exclusively on the study of philosophy in a narrow sense. The curriculum centered on the works of Aristotle: his logical, scientific and ethical works were all specified in the study ordinance. In addition, students were to attend lectures on Euclid and on astronomy.30 While the Pedagogium and bachelor’s course still reflected humanist priorities in their concentration on languages and literature, the master’s course reflected the older university tradition concentrating on the study of Aristotle and the quadrivium. Aristotle’s importance within the curriculum for the master’s degree is attested in another way. Unlike most universities, which had only one or two chairs for dialectic, Basel’s arts faculty had three positions: one at the Pedagogium, one at the bachelor’s level, and a third, specifically on Aristotle’s Organon, at the master’s level. While turnover among the holders of the two lower level dialectic positions was fairly high, the chair for Organon was held by one man, Johannes Hospinian, through the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Hospinian supplemented his teaching by publishing several dialectic texts and a Greek and Latin edition of Aristotle’s Organon.31 The curriculum set forth in the 1551 statutes remained the prescribed course of study for all Basel students until close to the end of the sixteenth century. At the end of the 1580s, a series of reforms were introduced in association with the creation of the new six-level gymnasium. The effect of the reorganization was to make the Pedagogium redundant, because the sixth class of the gymnasium now concentrated on the study of rhetoric and dialectic. In response to these changes in instruction at the secondary level, the arts curriculum of the university was also revised. The Pedagogium was eliminated, reducing the arts curriculum to two stages, ending, respectively, in the bachelor’s and the master’s degree.32 The curriculum for each of these degrees remained essentially unchanged. The transfer of the Pedagogium to Basel’s gymnasium demonstrates that the curriculum that was once seen as appropriate for university students was now regarded as preparatory for university study. It also implies that the arts faculty felt that it was no longer necessary to offer this lower level of instruction in languages and literature, even to students who came to Basel from other areas. In other words, the degree of preparation for university study was improving not only in Basel but in other areas as well.33 The statutory revision of 1589 was the last change to the university’s arts curriculum during the period under consideration. New statutes were issued for the university in 1632, but until then the curriculum established for students preparing for their arts degrees remained essentially what was laid down in the mid–sixteenth century. This had two important consequences for the teaching of philosophy at Basel. First, Basel did not officially reintroduce the study of metaphysics as a degree requirement. In this Basel differed from

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most universities throughout Germany, where metaphysics reappeared in the curriculum at the turn of the century. The existence of two printed disputations on metaphysical subjects, from 1608 and 1614, demonstrates that Basel students were not entirely ignorant of metaphysics, but the fact that a course in metaphysics was not required of master’s candidates would have automatically given this discipline a lower status than those disciplines with a firm place in the arts curriculum.34 Because of the close connection between metaphysics and theology in the early seventeenth century, this relative neglect may have been a disadvantage for Basel-trained theologians. The curricular statutes not only hindered the introduction of metaphysics; they also slowed the study of Ramist dialectic at the university level. In this respect, Basel’s curriculum was similar to that of other universities. Basel did not forbid the study of Ramism, as did some Lutheran universities, but neither did it encourage its study. The university’s curricular requirements concentrated instead on Aristotle. This does not mean, however, that Ramism had no influence on Basel’s students. The closure of the Pedagogium and the transfer of introductory dialectic study to the gymnasium gave younger students easier access to Ramist methodology. The infiltration of Ramism was evident even in the study plan for the sixth class, which was drawn up in the form of a Ramist table. It specified that the students were to study ‘‘logic, whose most necessary precepts should be conformed to the method of Aristotle’s Organon, with familiar examples drawn from the orators, poets, theologians’’—a characteristically Ramist approach to the study of dialectic, despite its mention of Aristotle.35 Within the university itself, Ramism had been advocated as early as the 1570s by the mathematics professor Christian Wurstisen, the physician Theodor Zwinger, and Johann Thomas Freigius, who briefly taught rhetoric and eventually became one of Ramus’s most devoted publicists. The influence of Ramism only increased at the turn of the century, and from 1611 the convinced Ramist Ludwig Lucius held the chair in Organon.36 The significance for the education of the city’s pastors of the changes to Basel’s curriculum over the course of the sixteenth century can be most fully appreciated when the curriculum is considered in relation to the ages of those students and the length of time they spent at the university. Information on those pastors who matriculated before 1539 is very sketchy, but an examination of the pastors who matriculated between 1540 and 1629 reflects the gradual stabilization of the educational system in Basel. Both the mean and the median age at matriculation rose gradually over this period, from about fourteen to a high of seventeen years of age before falling again to fifteen (see table 5.1).37 There is an increase in the matriculation age of future pastors after 1589, which might be expected as a result of the reorganization of the gymnasium and the separation of the Pedagogium. But a more significant rise in matriculation age occurred two decades earlier, during the 1560s. The relatively low average age of Basel’s future pastors at matriculation during the 1540s and 1550s may be the consequence of incomplete data, and we cannot conclude anything about the average matriculation

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age in general on the basis of those students who became pastors.38 Nevertheless, even the lack of data tells us something about recruitment for the pastorate in the 1540s and 1550s, since almost all of the boys matriculating during these years whose birth dates are known were native Baslers who had attended one of the city’s Latin schools. Two of the five students who matriculated at age thirteen during the 1540s were given civic stipends at the time of their matriculation. Their matriculation at the university with civic support was an indication that they had already fulfilled the curricular requirements of the city’s schools and were considered ready to begin university studies. The most likely reason for the lower age of students matriculating during the 1540s and 1550s, however, is the still unstructured curriculum and lack of uniformity among Basel’s Latin schools during this period. It may be a coincidence that the average matriculation age began to rise in the years that the stipendiary system was assuming a stable form, but it is also conceivable that slightly older students were preferred over their younger colleagues when the stipends were allotted, and these stipendiates then entered the ministry.39 Although the age of matriculation rose over time, the average age at which a student began the study of dialectic remained at fifteen over the course of the century. The fourteen-year-olds who matriculated in the 1540s spent at least a year as Pedagogium students before starting the course in dialectic; the fifteen-year-olds who matriculated in the 1560s and 1570s began their study of dialectic in the Pedagogium; the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who matriculated after 1590 had been introduced to dialectics in the top class of the gymnasium during their last years there. The decision in 1544 to delay instruction in dialectic until students had reached the second level of the curriculum may be related to the fact that the students who matriculated in the years following the reopening of the university were still fairly young. Once the issue of dialectic instruction was forced by Platter’s actions at the Latin school, the arts faculty endorsed a text that was easier to understand than those used by the baccalaureate students. The decision to transfer introductory dialectic instruction back to the gymnasium in 1589 may have been a deliberate pedagogical decision to introduce a conceptually difficult subject in a setting where the students were subject to greater discipline and more closely supervised than at the university. It also reflected the growing dominance of the view that dialectic was indeed a preparation for university study rather than an integral part of the university curriculum. Perhaps even more significant than the rise in average matriculation age is the gradual narrowing of the range of ages at matriculation. Throughout the entire period, the great majority of future pastors matriculated when they were between fourteen and eighteen years old, but over time fewer students came from either end of the age spectrum. The concentration in the range of ages is linked to the significant curricular improvements introduced in the city’s Latin schools. A more precisely defined and graded curriculum at the level of the Latin school was more likely to move students of roughly the same age through the school together, so that they finished the curriculum at about the same time. Although there were a few new students over the age of

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eighteen who eventually became pastors during the earlier decades, in general the older university students were not recruited for the pastorate. The terms of the Alumneum statutes required teachers to single out the better students, and they may have been less willing to recommend older students for such financial support. At the other end of the age range were several boys from prominent families. The six future pastors who were under thirteen when they matriculated were all the sons of university professors, pastors, or senators. Most of them had received an accelerated education thanks to their fathers and were prepared for university study at an early age.40 There are also significant changes in the length of time it took for the future pastors to complete the requirements for a degree (table 5.2). The large number of future pastors matriculating in the period 1540–69 reflects the relatively high turnover in parish positions during those years, which created a greater demand for replacements, who were recruited from the ranks of the university students whenever possible. The number of future pastors who matriculated each decade leveled off at between twelve to sixteen after 1569. The one noteworthy exception occurred during the 1610s, when more new pastors were needed to replace those who had died in the plague epidemic. All students were required to pass an examination before they could study at the next higher level, whether or not they sought a degree, and all stipendiates were required to obtain degrees.41 Both the number of degrees earned and the time required to complete each stage give us useful information about the efficiency of instruction and the level of intellectual competence reached by the student. It is therefore striking that, although in theory the students were supposed to complete the requirements for either a bachelor’s or a master’s degree within eighteen months, most future pastors needed more time to do so. Up until the separation of the Pedagogium from the university, the students took between three and four years from matriculation to bachelor’s degree. After the separation, however, the interval shortened to less than two years, about what was prescribed by the statutes. It can thus be inferred that it took students on the average between one and a half and two years to complete the course in the Pedagogium, rather than the one year originally intended. Stipendiates preparing for the ministry and residing in one of the colleges had additional requirements concerning regular attendance at theology lectures and disputations and declamations held in the colleges. The additional courses may have slowed these students’ progress toward the bachelor’s degree, but their own lack of preparation for university level study, particularly in the earlier part of the century, was another important contributing factor. It is clear that many of the future pastors who matriculated before 1589 needed a significant amount of preparation before beginning courses at the baccalaureate level. Through the 1570s, no more than half of the future pastors received a master’s degree. For most of them, a bachelor’s degree was sufficient, and some of them did not even complete the degree requirements for a B.A. The training these pastors received thus reflected most fully the emphasis on

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linguistic competence, mastery of rhetoric, and an introduction to dialectic that characterized humanist education in the mid–sixteenth century. Their direct exposure to Aristotelian philosophy would have been limited, and their dialectic instruction based on dialectic textbooks rather than the Organon itself. In many cases, these future pastors may have attended the master’slevel courses after completing the bachelor’s degree and while waiting for a post to become vacant in Basel’s territory, but they were not examined or held accountable for learning this material. By the 1580s, however, almost all of the future pastors were continuing their education through the formal granting of a master’s degree. This implies that pastors entering the ministry after 1580 had a sound grasp of Aristotelian dialectic and natural philosophy. Although their familiarity with Aristotle was built on a foundation that emphasized humanist rhetorical and literary priorities, their study of philosophy was bound to create a different cast of mind, which would, in turn, affect their approach to and understanding of theology. The curriculum for the master’s degree was clearly a rigorous one. For much of the middle third of the sixteenth century, the future pastors needed almost four years, on the average, to complete the required course of study for a master’s degree. After about 1580, the average time needed to receive the master’s degree dropped to under three years, but it only approached the envisioned length of eighteen months by the end of the period under consideration. The eventual decline in the time to the master’s degree was linked with the reemergence of theology as a higher faculty at the end of the century. Until the mid-1580s, theology was treated as a component of an arts education. Future pastors attended theology lectures at the same time that they were attending the lectures required for their degrees.42 Indeed, as we have seen, master’s students were required by the university’s statutes to attend theology lectures if they were preparing for the pastorate. Given the large proportion of pastors who were appointed to parish posts before they could receive their master’s degrees, it was essential that they attend theology lectures as arts students if they were to receive any instruction in theology. One consequence of this approach to theology instruction was that only a small number of students matriculated in the theology faculty. Only ten future pastors did so during the entire period from 1532 to 1589, all of them with the intention of obtaining a higher degree in theology or in order to meet the terms of the Erasmian stipend for theology students.43 During the later 1580s, however, it became the practice for future pastors to matriculate in theology after receiving their M.A. Between 1590 and 1619, two-thirds of Basel’s future pastors matriculated in theology, and after 1620 virtually all of them did so. Although a small number of these students matriculated before completing their master’s degree, the majority did so shortly after receiving it.44 In effect, theology was no longer simply another discipline that pastors studied along with their other arts courses but gained an additional function, similar to its place in the medieval university, as a discipline for those who had finished the arts curriculum.

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The result of these changes was both a compression and an intensification of the curriculum over the second half of the sixteenth century. This can best be illustrated by a comparison of the education received by two different generations of pastors. A student preparing for the ministry in the 1550s matriculated at age fourteen. While at the Latin school, he had started learning Greek and had probably memorized the contents of Basel’s larger catechism. He spent the next seven or eight years as a university student, improving his Latin and Greek and studying humanist dialectic and rhetoric. If he received a civic or university stipend and lived in one of the colleges, he was also required to attend theology lectures and disputations at the same time that he was completing the requirements for his bachelor’s degree. Although he may have continued his studies for a short period after receiving the degree, he was more likely to be placed in a parish to begin his ministry. By the end of the century, the average student was slightly older, about sixteen years old at matriculation. While still a student at Basel’s gymnasium, he had acquired a basic competence in the classical languages, gained some practice in the philological analysis of Scripture, and been thoroughly indoctrinated with the principles of Reformed theology in the guise of catechism instruction. In the sixth class of the gymnasium he had been introduced to both rhetoric and dialectic. As a result of this intensive education at the gymnasium, he was able to complete the requirements for both the bachelor’s and master’s degrees within three or four years. His education would concentrate on rhetoric and dialectic at the bachelor’s level, but the focus would shift to advanced training in dialectic and in both natural philosophy and mathematics at the master’s level. Like his counterpart at midcentury, he attended theology lectures while a student in the arts faculty, but his more intensive training in this area came after he had received his master’s degree and matriculated in the theology faculty. Supported by his stipend, he could continue the study of theology until his professors decided he was ready to be proposed as a candidate for the ministry. The example of Basel has larger implications for interpreting the quantitative measures of pastoral education. As in Basel, there was a similar intensification and compression of the religious and literary curriculum as territorial schools and academies became established over the second half of the sixteenth century.45 The transfer of the Pedagogium from university to gymnasium at the end of the century reflects these changes. It was no longer necessary to have a remedial structure within the university, either for native Baslers or for foreign students who had come to study at the university. The three stages of grammatical/philological, rhetorical/dialectical, and philosophical/mathematical emphasis that corresponded in Basel to the Pedagogium, bachelor’s level, and master’s level had parallels elsewhere in the universities as well as in the non-degree-granting gymnasia and academies of Protestant territories. Each stage provided a pastor with certain skills that would shape his understanding of theology and his approach to preaching and teaching. The crucial question, therefore, is not how long or at what type of educational institution future pastors studied, but rather whether and at what point they

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moved from one stage to the next in their education. The most important transition came with the shift from the more literary and rhetorical focus of the first and second levels to the emphasis on advanced dialectic and philosophy at the third level. The theology faculty was not insulated from these changes in the education of its students. Over the second half of the sixteenth century, theology instruction in Basel underwent a major transformation as well.

6 Theology Instruction in Basel

In the eighty years between 1550 and 1630, theology instruction in Basel was a striking illustration of both general trends and the particular situation of the Swiss city-republic. On the one hand, the theology faculty reflected the broader institutional and intellectual developments that shaped higher education throughout central Europe. The movement toward increasing systematization and uniformity that we have seen within the arts faculty influenced the theology faculty as well, and changes in theological method were a natural consequence of the developments in dialectic instruction over the course of the sixteenth century. On the other hand, Basel was a small university, with only two theology professors. From the mid–sixteenth century on, all of these theologians had received most, if not all, of their education in Basel, and they had significant ties with the broader circle of Basel academics and pastors. The theology faculty and the church were closely identified because one of the two theology professors usually served simultaneously as the pastor of the cathedral parish, the most prestigious post in Basel’s church. As such, he was clearly in a key position to influence the next generation of clergy. The authority of the cathedral pastor had its limits, however. His colleague on the theology faculty, who could be a pastor or former pastor himself, also had considerable influence. The relationship between the two theologians was therefore vital, since each could either reinforce or undermine the influence of the other. As a consequence, theology instruction in Basel could be shaped as much by personality differences and by power

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struggles within the city as by larger institutional and intellectual trends. Last but certainly not least, Basel’s geographical position and its own recent history gave the sharpening political and religious differences between German Lutherans and Swiss Reformed a particular brisance that placed Basel in an extremely difficult position in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Any account, therefore, of the theological instruction Basel’s future pastors received must consider the interplay between these various forces. All of these factors combined to produce a generational pattern within the theology faculty that echoed that of the students in the arts faculty. This is scarcely surprising, considering that the students of one generation became the pastors and theologians of the next generation. In Basel, theology instruction in the century after the official adoption of the Reformation can be divided into four generations roughly corresponding to the careers of the men who served simultaneously as one of the university’s two theology professors and as the antistes. The beginning and end of each of these waves could overlap or be separated by a hiatus, depending on the physical and mental vigor of the men reaching the ends of their careers and on the experiences and energy of the younger men who replaced them. The gradual transition to the second generation came at midcentury, as the older theologians died and were replaced by younger men whose entire education had come after the Reformation. As both cathedral pastor and theology professor through the third quarter of the century, Simon Sulzer helped stabilize the institutional and curricular structures of church and university. His deteriorating health and the increasing outspokenness of his new colleague on the theology faculty, Johann Jacob Grynaeus, combined to weaken Sulzer’s position after 1575. The third generation came into its own when Grynaeus was elected to succeed Sulzer as cathedral pastor in 1585. Grynaeus’s influence over both church and university was augmented by his sonin-law and colleague on the theology faculty, the Silesian Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf. Polanus’s death in 1610 heralded the end of Grynaeus’s era and was the impetus for the rise of a new generation. The fourth generation of theologians took some time to become established, as the young men who replaced Grynaeus and Polanus gradually grew into their positions. Under Johannes Wollebius, both church and theology faculty attained enough stability that Wollebius’s early death in 1629 did not cause significant disruption. Under the leadership of these men and their successors, Basel entered fully into the world of international Calvinism. The development of the institutional structure and curriculum of the theology faculty parallels the developments in personnel. By midcentury, institutional patterns had been set that would be followed for the remainder of the period under consideration. The curriculum also became more formalized, structured, and specialized, reflecting both the greater expertise in dialectic and the changes within dialectic itself, particularly the increasingly prominent place of Ramism.

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Continuity and Nonconfessional Theology, 1550–80 The dominant theologian in Basel at midcentury was without a doubt Martin Borrhaus, who provided a measure of continuity in theological instruction between the first and the second generations. Borrhaus was a fitting successor to Andreas Karlstadt. Like that of his predecessor, Borrhaus’s theology seems to have become somewhat more conservative over time, but throughout his career he retained a marked spiritualist orientation.1 From the second half of the 1550s, Borrhaus published a series of commentaries on the Old Testament based on his university lectures.2 Borrhaus was concerned with helping his readers understand the relevance of the Old Testament for the church. Each of his commentaries had at least one preface addressing a broader issue of Old Testament interpretation: in his Pentateuch commentary he described the differences between the old and new covenants; in the preface to his commentaries on 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings he explained the usefulness of Israelite history for the present day; and in Isaiah he discussed the role of the Law and the Prophets as pointing to the Messiah.3 Borrhaus’s general preface to his commentary on the historical books of the Old Testament explained the Christological orientation of the Old Testament. It also contained a short description of the skills needed to interpret Scripture rightly and was clearly intended for theology students. These skills came from listening to ‘‘the wise dispensers of the mysteries of Christ,’’ from the assiduous reading of Scripture, from frequent comparison of Scripture with itself, and from prayer joined with repentance.4 On a less spiritual level, students also needed to be versed in the liberal arts. Borrhaus’s arguments in favor of a liberal education echoed the views of other theologians whose works prescribed a course of study for theology students.5 A knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew was fundamental for the interpretation of Scripture. Grammar, which taught how words were used, was also necessary. Students needed training in dialectic so that they could properly judge the arguments adduced by the Holy Spirit in Scripture through identifying genus, parts, and logical categories, and so that they would know how to use theological commonplaces. A knowledge of rhetoric enabled students to determine the type of address and hence its purpose and helped them to recognize the eloquence of the prophets.6 Borrhaus did not limit his praises to the disciplines of the trivium. He also endorsed the study of history, from which students learned where, when, why, and with what outcome events occurred. Physics taught students how to understand the nature of the universe created by God, while the mathematical disciplines, which included arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, and geography, taught the unity of the deity and the movement and significance of stellar motion, helped explain the songs contained in Scripture, and provided knowledge of other peoples and their customs. Finally, political and domestic sciences supported the teachings of Scripture concerning government and

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family relationships.7 All of these skills were thus tools used in the exposition of Scripture. Although he advocated a broad liberal education, Borrhaus himself made most use of grammar in his own approach to theology. His commentaries, for the most part, reflect the same philological and exegetical orientation as the first generation of Basel theologians. The commentaries are made up almost entirely of phrase-by-phrase examination of the scriptural text, with frequent discussion of the meaning of the original Hebrew. In comparison with the commentaries of many of his contemporaries, there are very few discussions of theological loci, and many of the loci that Borrhaus did include revolve around related subjects: predestination, election, and the rejection of free will, and the contrast between the old, fleshly nature and the new, spiritual nature.8 His treatment of these topics reveals a strongly dualistic spiritualism that set him apart from other Reformed theologians.9 Borrhaus may have disagreed with Basel’s Buceran eucharistic theology before his appointment to the theology faculty. By the 1550s, though, he had adapted his terminology to reflect the Wittenberg Concord. In his Pentateuch commentary, he taught that the sign and the thing signified—the bread/wine and the body/blood of Christ—were sacramentally joined, although he carefully specified that this excluded any possibility of local circumscription or local inclusion of the body in the bread.10 Even more important, he agreed with Bucer in rejecting the Reformed position that Christ’s body was locally circumscribed in heaven. In his commentary on Judges, he argued that the heaven to which Christ had ascended transcended both place and time.11 This passage led to an exchange of letters between Bullinger and Borrhaus between September 1557 and February 1558, in which the two finally agreed to disagree on the proper understanding of heaven.12 The disagreement was significant, however, for this rejection of the dominant Reformed position would help to establish Basel’s reputation as favoring the Lutherans. Borrhaus’s strong spiritualism and his understanding of heaven placed his positions outside the mainstream of theological discourse in Switzerland. Thus, although his skill as a Hebraist seems to have been valued, he ultimately contributed little to the larger development of Reformed theology. On the contrary, his idiosyncratic views contributed to the widening theological breach between Basel and the other Swiss Reformed churches, a breach contemporaries ascribed solely to the theological views of Simon Sulzer. Sulzer’s appointment to Basel’s theology faculty in 1554 marked the effective transition to the new, post-Reformation generation of theologians. Sulzer was the first Basel theologian to receive his education almost entirely at the hands of the Protestant reformers. Born in 1508, Sulzer had attended the Latin schools of Rubellus in Bern and Myconius in Lucerne until his father’s death forced him to become a barber’s apprentice. Fortunately for him, his situation was brought to the attention of Bern’s Senate, which provided him with a stipend to study in Strasbourg in 1530. There he learned Greek from Jacob Bedrot and attended the theology lectures given by Bucer and Capito. By the end of 1531, he had moved to Basel, and when the city’s university

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reopened in 1532 he was appointed to teach dialectic to those students who had completed their bachelor’s degrees. In late 1533 he returned to Bern, where he taught Greek, rhetoric, and dialectic and lectured on the Bible in the city’s new academy. In 1536, he was sent back to Basel as tutor for a group of Bernese stipendiates. Over the next two years he earned his master’s degree and lectured on Aristotle’s logic. Sulzer thus acquired his formal theological education from the theologians and linguists who followed the model of the Zurich Prophezei in Basel during the mid-1530s. As he reported to Bullinger in 1534, he did a good deal of independent study as well in preparation for his own lectures on the Bible.13 By the 1540s, Sulzer had become a pastor in Bern and one of the leading proponents of Bucer’s mediating position on the Lord’s Supper. After his removal from office in 1548, he returned to Basel and was quickly integrated into Basel’s church and university. In 1552, he became professor of Hebrew, and two years later he was promoted to the chair in New Testament. As had been the case with Borrhaus, Sulzer was aided by the fact that his wife had family members who sat in Basel’s Senate. When Borrhaus died during the plague epidemic in 1564, Sulzer moved to the chair in Old Testament. His fellow pastor and brother-in-law Ulrich Koch (1525–1585) succeeded him as professor of New Testament. Even more than Sulzer, Koch was entirely the product of Basel’s educational system, but the seventeen-year difference in their ages meant that Koch’s education was rather different from that which Sulzer had received.14 The son of the teacher at one of the city’s German schools, Koch matriculated in 1542 and finished his master’s degree in early 1546. The following year he matriculated in the theology faculty, while at the same time teaching, first, Greek and then dialectic to younger students. By the mid 1540s, Basel’s presses were publishing a variety of humanist textbooks in rhetoric and dialectic, including those prescribed by the earliest curricular statutes, and Koch would have benefited from the easier availability of these textbooks. As a young theology student, however, Koch did not have teachers of the same reputation as those with whom Sulzer had studied. Koch’s theological training suffered as a result, and his years of pastoral experience were probably just as important as his formal education in preparing him for the post of theology professor. He received his first pastoral position in 1552, and by 1564 he was senior pastor of St. Peter, the most prominent parish in the city after the cathedral. Six years after becoming the professor for New Testament, Koch was awarded his doctorate in theology, having fulfilled the statutory requirements for the post. Almost no traces of Koch’s pedagogical activity have survived; his most important legacy as a theology professor was his wholehearted support of Sulzer.15 Sulzer’s appointment to the theology faculty almost certainly led to an improvement in the quality of theology instruction in Basel. As a lecturer on Scripture, he followed the philological and grammatical approach of his teachers and of his colleague Borrhaus. From his earliest lectures on the epistles of Ephesians and Philippians, given in Bern in the 1540s, through his later lectures on Acts and Hosea, given in Basel during the 1570s, Sulzer’s method

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remained unchanged. He began his lectures with a brief rhetorical analysis of the book. Before beginning a new chapter, he paused to summarize the main thought of the preceding chapter and to relate it to what would follow. Most of the lectures consisted of a grammatical and rhetorical analysis of the Scripture text on a phrase-by-phrase basis, and there are very few extended discussions of theological loci in the lecture notes. Although Sulzer condemned heresies and sects in general, there is very little polemic of any kind in these lectures.16 Rather than interpolating systematic theology into his lectures on the text of Scripture, Sulzer apparently preferred to lecture separately on Melanchthon’s Loci Communes Theologici.17 These lectures were probably intended as an introduction to theology for younger students. The notes themselves are written in question-and-answer form, and it is conceivable that they were used as a form of catechetical instruction for students living in one of the colleges. Although Sulzer used the tools of dialectic to explain concepts, particularly in discussing causes, his discussion does not assume that his audience has more than a basic knowledge of dialectic. Sulzer was apparently as interested in using the structure of Melanchthon’s work to explain his own views as he was in familiarizing his students with Melanchthon’s theology. The earliest lectures, dealing with the nature of God and the Trinity, follow Melanchthon’s discussion fairly closely, but Sulzer diverged from the text to give his own position on issues where he disagreed with the Wittenberger. His discussion of free will, for instance, bore little similarity to the text of the Loci. Unlike Melanchthon, Sulzer rejected any human cooperation in salvation in order to emphasize divine grace, and he used the topic to compare the freedom of the will before and after Adam’s fall. As the lectures continued, Sulzer departed even more radically from Melanchthon’s text to discuss topics only tangentially related. His treatment of the third commandment (honoring the Sabbath) illustrates this nicely: the section included one excursus on the responsibilities of the ministry and the duties of pastor and parishioners to each other, and another on the festivals celebrated in the Old Testament.18 Sulzer’s series of propositions on a variety of theological loci provides another indication of his theological concerns.19 Each locus is explained in several theses and may have been the subject of a theology disputation. While several of the topics echo section headings within Melanchthon’s Loci, they do not follow the same order, and there is virtually no overlap in content. The loci themselves are notable for their generically evangelical content. Some of the propositions concerned with the nature and authority of the church and its ministers are aimed against either Catholics or Anabaptists, but on the whole the propositions are remarkably free from polemics. The largest number of topics summarize and defend patristic Trinitarian and Christological doctrines, although they rarely go beyond the statements contained in the creeds of the early church.20 Indeed, the single locus on the sacraments goes out of its way to bridge differences by quoting the statement on the Lord’s Supper written for the duke of Wu¨rttemberg in 1557 by Theodore Beza and Guillaume Farel in order to demonstrate the orthodoxy of the Francophone church. This

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so-called Go¨ppingen confession was accepted by the duke’s theologians, although it provoked strong criticism from Zurich once its contents became known there.21 Perhaps most significantly, despite his later reputation as a Lutheran, there is no indication that Sulzer taught explicitly Lutheran theology to his students. Instead, he continued to look to Bucer as his theological guide through the 1560s. In the summer of 1569, Peter Ramus, in Basel to oversee the publication of his works, reported to Rudolf Gwalther that Sulzer was using ambiguous terms to describe the Lord’s Supper in his lectures. When Ramus questioned Sulzer about his views, the Basel antistes gave him Bucer’s Gospels commentary to explain his own position.22 Bucer’s influence was also clear in the confession that Sulzer presented at the 1571 synod held in the wake of a conflict over the Lord’s Supper. Sulzer used Buceran phraseology in his description of the instrumental nature of the ministry, the sacramental union of the earthly and heavenly elements, and the distinction between the unworthy and the impious.23 Imitating the strategy of the Wittenberg Concord, Sulzer scrupulously avoided any discussion of oral manducation. He was forced to go beyond Bucer to address the Christological issues that were an important feature of the second eucharistic controversy. Here, though, Sulzer’s explanation of Christ’s presence in the Supper was closer to Melanchthon’s multivolipresence than to Brenzian ubiquity, while his rejection of heaven as a physical location echoed the positions of both Bucer and Martin Borrhaus.24 As a whole, the confession could not be classified as Reformed because of its clear rejection of Reformed Christology, but neither did it advocate those Lutheran positions that would be endorsed by the Formula of Concord. Sulzer’s opponents interpreted the confession as a deliberate attempt to obscure his true beliefs. Pastor Heinrich Erzberger, who had not heard the confession firsthand, reported that Sulzer spoke in ‘‘a rather crude way about the Lord’s Supper, in confirming the corporal yet not corporal eating, ubiquity, in twisting the article on the ascension, so that many of the brothers were greatly displeased, although a good number did not understand it.’’25 Erzberger’s hostile description of Sulzer’s confession betrays the fact that Sulzer was using terminology that was no longer favored by either side, whether Lutheran or Reformed. Seven years later Sulzer presented a somewhat modified German translation of his synodal confession to Basel’s Senate, after the church had been shaken by yet another dispute over the sacrament. He added a lengthy introduction emphasizing the harm caused to the evangelical churches by doctrinal disagreements, and he praised the concord efforts of Bucer and Capito, as well as of others who had labored to end the disputes.26 Coming as it did after the Formula of Concord, Sulzer was forced to address more directly in this confession those issues he had earlier avoided. His confession demonstrates his willingness to accept and reinterpret the formulations of others, if that was necessary for evangelical unity. In particular, his reinterpretation of oral manducation and his rejection of any natural or physical union of the

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body and blood with the elements of the Supper had a distinctly Buceran twist: The word ‘‘orally’’ . . . should not at all be understood as such a receiving, eating, and drinking of the body and blood of Christ as it happens with the signs of bread and wine, which are received naturally, visibly, locally and perceptibly with the mouth, but instead that with and in the way that the Lord’s bread and wine are received, so the true body and blood of Christ are also inseparably distributed and received with the visible signs, but not in a natural, local manner or character, but rather in such a way that the Lord knows and is able to do, and this freely is heavenly, which no human wisdom can understand.27 The impression left by these confessions, as well as by Sulzer’s extant lectures, is that of a theologian committed to a nonconfessional evangelical theology, who believed that unity was more important than doctrinal precision on the Lord’s Supper, and who saw the greatest dangers to the church coming on one side from anti-Trinitarians who rejected patristic formulations and on the other side from the claims of the Catholic Church. These concerns may have been well founded, in view of Basel’s reputation for harboring those suspected of heterodoxy during the 1550s and 1560s.28 Only when he had no choice did Sulzer address the most controversial theological issue of his day, and here he remained generally faithful to the mediating theology first proposed by his mentor Martin Bucer. The sharpening confessional divisions of the 1570s made this position untenable for the future, however. Sulzer’s successor in the theology faculty would end the mediating course that Basel had tried to follow and would steer the church instead back into the Reformed mainstream.

The Revolution in Theological Method, 1575–1610 Sulzer resigned his chair in theology in 1575 and assumed instead the chair of Hebrew in the arts faculty. Five years later, he suffered a stroke that left him largely incapacitated, and he resigned his university position the following year. Thus by the early 1580s he had little official opportunity to pass his own theology to the next generation.29 There seemed to be a growing sense among the city’s leaders that Sulzer should be honored for his long service to the church, but that once he died, the church would move in a different direction. This is precisely what happened with the election of Johann Jacob Grynaeus as Sulzer’s successor. At the time of his initial vocation to Basel in 1575, Grynaeus was the church superintendent of Roeteln, a district within the margraviate of Baden. He had studied in Basel between 1551 and 1558, although he was not formally awarded any university degree. He became a pastor in Baden but was sent to Tu¨bingen for further study in early 1563. There he attended the philosophy lectures of Jacob Schegk, one of the foremost defenders of Aristotle of his

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generation, and he studied theology under Jacob Heerbrand, Erhard Schnepf, and Jacob Andreae.30 He received his doctorate in theology in early 1565 and soon afterward succeeded his father as superintendent of Roeteln. Although trained in (or, as he later put it, ‘‘seduced by’’) the Lutheran view of Christ’s presence in the sacrament, by the early 1570s, Grynaeus was having serious doubts about the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity. His growing attraction to the Reformed position was encouraged by his wife’s guardian, Thomas Erastus.31 In the years following his appointment to the chair of Old Testament in Basel, Grynaeus became the dominant figure on the theology faculty and emerged as the leader of the Reformed opposition to Sulzer and Koch. His authority in Basel was increased by the fact that both Sulzer and Koch were periodically incapacitated by poor health. At the same time, Grynaeus’s reputation continued to grow outside Basel, and in 1584 Johann Casimir, regent for the new Palatine Elector, called him to help with the reintroduction of Reformed theology at the university of Heidelberg. The Basel Senate reluctantly gave him permission to go, and theological instruction was taken over on a makeshift basis by the pastor Johannes Brandmu¨ller and the arts professors Christian Wurstisen and Beat Hel.32 The sea change occurred in Basel the following year. Koch died in February 1585, and Sulzer four months later. Grynaeus was called back to Basel as the new cathedral pastor and professor of New Testament. He held these two positions until his death in 1617, although after 1596 he withdrew somewhat from his university responsibilities, entrusting them to the competent hands of his new colleague, Amandus Polanus. Grynaeus’s period of greatest influence on the theology faculty thus falls into a twenty-year period, neatly divided in half: the years 1575–84, when he was the junior partner in a church and university led by the aging Sulzer, and 1586–96, when as antistes and senior theology professor he could shape the direction of both church and university as he wished. Grynaeus’s appointment to the chair of Old Testament led immediately to significant changes in theology instruction. He already had ten years of experience as church leader and teacher in Roeteln, during which he regularly held synods, presided over disputations, and taught the pastors in his district.33 He continued his established practices of lecturing and presiding over disputations once he moved to Basel, introducing a heretofore unaccustomed degree of institutional structure, methodological rigor, theological thoroughness, and broad publicity. After moving to Basel in October 1575, Grynaeus began his Old Testament lectures at the very beginning, with the Book of Genesis.34 These lectures continued over the next two years, although Grynaeus interrupted or supplemented them occasionally with shorter series of lectures on other topics. During the summer vacation and continuing into the autumn of 1576, for instance, he held private lectures on how to study and interpret the Bible. These lectures are important both as Grynaeus’s manifesto for theology instruction in Basel and as an illustration of his own teaching method. Grynaeus published these lectures as the first part of his Epitomes of the Holy Bible

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in the fall of 1577 and dedicated them to two young students from Nuremberg who had recently matriculated in Basel after studying in Leipzig.35 Grynaeus’s dedicatory letter to these two Lutheran students reflects the tactics he would follow in his efforts to introduce ‘‘purer’’ Reformed teachings to Basel. He began by deploring the dissension that divided Christendom. The papists did not esteem Scripture highly enough, while among the Protestants, many younger theologians did not progress in the knowledge of Christ as they should. Grynaeus described two major impediments to such progress. The first was the temptation to waste one’s time by writing polemical works, disregarding Christ’s command to love our neighbors. The second was the tendency to spend all of one’s time reading the works of both older and more recent theologians rather than Scripture itself. Grynaeus urged his students to apply themselves above all to the study of Scripture.36 While Grynaeus’s words seem irenic, they rest on a hidden agenda that is clarified by a comparison with Grynaeus’s description of his own theological development. There he said that when he was a young pastor in Baden, at the advice of others he had neglected the reading of Scripture, particularly where it concerned ‘‘the spiritual manducation of the flesh of Christ,’’ and devoured instead the writings of Luther, ‘‘to whom I bestowed more authority than all ancient writers from the time of the apostles.’’ Indeed, he confessed, ‘‘I would have taken it with a calmer spirit if anyone had told me that Peter the apostle had lapsed, than if they had asserted that Luther erred concerning the Eucharist.’’37 In urging his students to study Scripture rather than other theological works, then, Grynaeus hoped that they, too, would turn from Lutheran error and be led to embrace Reformed doctrine. His lament over the divisions among Christians was also somewhat disingenuous, since most of the polemics being published at the time were by Lutherans and aimed at other Lutherans. Grynaeus thus drew the attention of his students, as well as of his general audience, to a major failing within the rival Protestant confession. At the end of his dedication, Grynaeus said that he was publishing the lectures for two reasons. For the more learned, he wished to illustrate a method of arranging and explaining the text of Scripture; for young theology students, he intended to provide summaries of each book, as well as of each chapter within the individual books, and to show them how to draw points of application from the text.38 The lectures themselves fall into three groups. Grynaeus began with three lectures describing how to study Scripture. The next several lectures were devoted to summaries of each Old Testament book, stating its propositio, or theme, then dividing each book into sections or logical units. The final section again went through each book, this time chapter by chapter, listing those doctrines that could be found in each chapter, often with the aid of cross-references to New Testament passages.39 The Epitomes could thus be used on several levels. At the most theoretical level, it outlined a method of rhetorical and dialectical analysis that could be applied to any text of Scripture. More practically, it was a guide for pastors

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who intended to preach a series of sermons on a particular book of the Old Testament. At the most basic level, a pastor faced with the immediate task of preaching on a specific Old Testament text could use the book to identify what doctrines he should emphasize in his sermon. Grynaeus’s lectures on biblical hermeneutics, or the methodological principles of interpretation, were of most relevance to his audience of theology students. In his first lecture, he stressed the divine origin and authority of Scripture and reminded his students of the theses ‘‘on the epistle of God to human kind,’’ which had been debated in a disputation held two months earlier.40 In order to understand Scripture, one had to approach it synthetically, moving from first premises, identified as God’s internal and external works, to anthropology and the Fall and then to the restitution of humanity. This was the order followed by the divisions of the Apostles’ Creed, which followed the Bible and which could be illustrated by theological loci. Grynaeus applied his method to the Bible as a whole. The exegete had to consider the author, authority, time, and place where each book was written, as well as its usus, or practical application, both for individuals and in general. Grynaeus then discussed the Bible according to logical categories: causes, matter and form, cognata (things related: in this case, ‘‘the book of nature’’ and the sacraments), and so on. At the end of this section he included a table breaking biblical history into dichotomies. History itself could be either principal, concerning the church, or secondary, concerning individual kings and kingdoms. Principal history was further divided into two more levels of dichotomies, first distinguishing between the history of the church before and after the flood, then dividing the latter into the four historical periods of the Jews’ independence, followed by their subjection first to the Persians, then to the successors of Alexander, and finally to the Romans. Grynaeus then listed which books of the Bible were written during each period.41 This description of the content and form of some of Grynaeus’s earliest lectures in Basel demonstrates the impact of a generation of humanist pedagogy, in the first instance, on Grynaeus himself and, indirectly, on his students. Unlike those of his predecessors, Grynaeus’s lectures in theology were not easily understandable to students who did not have a strong grounding in Greek and dialectic. Grynaeus took it for granted that his audience knew Greek, for he often used Greek words, without giving any Latin synonyms or translations, at key points in his sentences. Those ignorant of Greek would have difficulty following his argument. Likewise, his lectures required familiarity with dialectic. In his lectures on theological method, Grynaeus relied particularly on analysis using logical categories, and this remained his most frequent form of dialectical analysis. However, in his exegesis of individual books of the Old Testament, he also analyzed propositions, demonstrated the use of syllogisms, and identified and refuted fallacies that either were used in the Scripture text or grew out of it. The Aristotelian structure of Grynaeus’s analysis makes his use of a dichotomized table rather surprising, and indeed, this was one of the few times Grynaeus used the dichotomies so characteristic

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of Ramist method. Their appearance here is noteworthy, in that it demonstrates that Grynaeus was not opposed to Ramism, although he did not often choose to use it himself. The method Grynaeus outlined in his lectures and applied to the Bible as a whole in his Epitomes was modeled for his students over the next several years in his lectures on individual books of the Bible. Although he held the chair in Old Testament, he gave a course of lectures on Romans that lasted from June 1577 to July 1578, and he did shorter lecture series on individual psalms. Over the next few years, he lectured on several of the minor prophets before moving to Heidelberg in the summer of 1584. After his return to Basel, he gave yet another set of lectures on Romans that lasted from August 1587 to September 1590, interrupted during the summer vacation of 1589 with a shorter series on the Lord’s Supper. Over the first part of the 1590s, he lectured on 1 John and Ephesians.42 Grynaeus published all of these lectures fairly soon after he first gave them. His energies were increasingly being turned in other directions, however, and he published no more commentaries after 1591. All of Grynaeus’s lecture series followed the pattern he had outlined to his students in 1576. He began by giving one or more lectures as an introduction to the book, describing its author and the historical period in which he lived. The rhetorical genus of the book (or the genera of its parts) would be identified, as was the status, or theme, and the book was described according to logical categories. If lecturing on a longer book, Grynaeus would approach each new chapter with the same kind of overview. Finally, he would proceed through the book, usually at the rate of one verse for each lecture. This verse would itself be subjected to logical analysis, particularly a description using causes and other logical categories, but also by means of syllogistic reasoning or refutation of fallacies. On occasion, Grynaeus would devote a lecture to a theological locus that arose from the verse being discussed, derive theses for disputation from it, or explain how the doctrine contained in the verse could be applied.43 Grynaeus’s theological method was in many ways the antithesis of the philological and text-based lectures of his predecessors. He almost never considered Hebrew or Greek terms in his lectures, and his practice of devoting one lecture to each verse had the consequence of loosening that verse from its larger textual context. Indeed, taken to its extreme form in the later 1580s, Grynaeus’s focus on the analysis of individual verses could lead to almost a complete divorce from context. Only in his rush to finish a book before the Christmas holiday or the beginning of the summer vacation did he usually cover two or three verses in the same lecture, and in these instances he would give two or three shorter lectures on each verse during the lecture time rather than discussing two or three verses at a time.44 Despite the obvious disadvantages such an approach has with regard to textual criticism, Grynaeus’s reliance on logical analysis of the text would have resonated with the type of education his students had received. The contrast between the old and new lecture styles would have been made even more

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obvious by the normal two-week rotation between lectures on the Old and New Testament. In comparison with Sulzer’s more philological, narrative, and discursive style of lecturing, Grynaeus’s lectures must have appeared to the brighter students as methodologically innovative, theologically rigorous, and intellectually challenging. It is only speculation, but Grynaeus’s dialectical analysis of Scripture might have attracted many of them not only to his method of exegesis but also to the Reformed doctrines that he taught using that methodology. The style of theology lectures was not the only thing that changed with Grynaeus’s coming to Basel. The disputations were also transformed into exercises that gave students a chance to practice for themselves the analytical method of thinking that they had learned in their dialectic lectures. During his first few years in Basel, Grynaeus wrote theses for several disputations that covered the central doctrines of Christianity. These were published together as collections and functioned as inexpensive introductory theology texts for his students.45 After 1580, Grynaeus no longer published these shorter disputation collections, but in 1584, shortly before leaving Basel, he published a larger collection of many of the disputations held during his nine years as theology professor.46 In the five years after his return to Basel, he published four more of these larger collections, and he included another group of disputations, all from 1590, in his commentary on 1 and 2 John. These later volumes had a different purpose from the earlier, shorter collections. Because of their size, they were more expensive and therefore not aimed primarily at students, who could instead buy (or receive as gifts) the disputations that were also printed individually.47 Rather, by giving a fairly complete picture of the disputations held in Basel during the later 1580s, Grynaeus was aiming for a larger audience outside of Basel and publicizing the type of theology that was now being taught there.48 After 1596, Grynaeus passed the responsibility of presiding over theological disputations to his new colleague on the theology faculty, Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf (1563–1610). Originally from Silesia, Polanus attended the gymnasium in Breslau, where he learned rhetoric and dialectic via Melanchthon’s textbooks. In 1583, after a brief period at Tu¨bingen, he matriculated in Basel and boarded with Grynaeus. When Grynaeus left for Heidelberg, Polanus moved to Geneva, where he became tutor to a young Bohemian nobleman. The pair moved to Heidelberg in 1588, but in 1590 Polanus returned to Basel, where he received his doctorate in theology. He spent most of the next six years either as a teacher in Bohemia or as a private tutor. In the latter capacity, he returned to Basel in the fall of 1592 and remained there for a little over a year. Although both Leiden and Geneva tried to recruit him for their schools, Polanus had his eye on Basel’s second theology chair. The incumbent, Johannes Brandmu¨ller, was a Basel pastor already in his fifties when he was appointed to the post, while Grynaeus was teaching at Heidelberg. Polanus had supervised several disputations during his stay in Basel, and Grynaeus was eager to have him as a colleague. With this in mind, Polanus began studying Hebrew with a rabbi in Bohemia, to polish his credentials for the

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post in Old Testament. In early 1596, Polanus returned to Basel. His timing was impeccable, for Brandmu¨ller passed away that March, and his position was offered to Polanus. Polanus gave his inaugural lecture at Basel in late August, and as an obvious sign of his close ties with Grynaeus, he married his new colleague’s daughter Maria in October.49 With Polanus’s appointment, Ramist method gained a firm foothold in Basel’s theology faculty. As he wrote in the preface to his Partitiones Theologica, Polanus learned from Grynaeus how to apply dialectic method to theology.50 Polanus also became acquainted with the ideas of Peter Ramus during his first stay in Basel, and his textbook on logic, first published in 1590, was a blend of Aristotelianism with Ramism. This textbook was expanded and published twice more with the same title over the next decade. The new title of the fourth edition, published in 1605, clearly stated its nature and purpose: Aristotelian-Ramist System of Logic, tailored above all for theological use.51 Polanus also published a number of biblical commentaries, based on lectures he gave between 1596 and 1610, as well as several other theological aids intended for students and future pastors. Like Grynaeus, Polanus was concerned that his students understood how to analyze Scripture and convey its contents through their own preaching. He thus wrote a handbook describing his method of logical analysis and demonstrating that method through an analysis of the first thirteen psalms. He also published a small homiletics text. His commentaries on Daniel, Hosea, and Ezekiel were derived from lectures given in Basel, while his Malachi commentary originated as a series of lectures he had given in Geneva immediately before taking up his position in Basel. It was Polanus’s custom, during the seasons preceding Christmas and Easter, to lecture on passages of the Old Testament that prophesied Christ’s birth, passion, death, and resurrection; two groups of these lectures were also published.52 Polanus’s most successful publications, however, grew out of his Partitiones Theologicae, a brief theology textbook that presented the fundamental doctrines of the Reformed faith as a chain of dichotomies. The Partitiones was first published by Grynaeus, without Polanus’s prior knowledge, as an appendix to a biblical concordance, the Enchiridion locorum communionum assembled by Isaac Feguernekinus (Fegyverneki) in 1589. The first edition was a twentyeight-page work divided into two books, a longer one on faith and a much shorter one on the works of faith.53 This shorter version was republished in the ten subsequent editions of Feguernekinus’s work, but the Partitiones was also expanded and published separately. In both structure and content, the Partitiones was the forerunner to Polanus’s much larger collection of excerpts from the writings of others, his Symphonia Catholica, published in 1607, and more specifically his final work, the Syntagma Theologiae Christianae, a massive twovolume systematic theology of over two thousand pages in quarto.54 Polanus’s debt to Ramism is apparent in two ways: in his consistent use of dichotomies to explain his subject, and in his emphasis on the usus, or practical application, of the material discussed. The text of his works is generally organized by dividing terms and concepts into two categories. One of these

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categories is then explained further, again by subdivision into two or more points. While this type of division can be easily followed when laid out in tabular fashion, Polanus rarely included tables in his works, relying instead on verbal descriptions of the dichotomies introduced. This devotion to Ramist division was unfortunate, because it often made his discussion confusing and hard to follow as he jumped from one level of division to another. Moreover, one of the two dichotomies would invariably be neglected at some point in the procedure as Polanus continued to subdivide the other half to its most detailed level. On a more positive note, if the dichotomous organization made the intellectual argument harder to follow, Polanus’s constant reminder of the topic’s usus made its practical application readily apparent to his readers.55 In his teaching, Polanus could be as guilty as his father-in-law was of imposing his own theology onto the biblical text. An analysis of the five lectures Polanus gave during Holy Week of 1604 demonstrates how elaborate that theology had become. The Scripture text chosen for all five lectures was Genesis 3:15 (God’s curse of the serpent: ‘‘I will put enmity between you and the woman . . . he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel’’). Polanus devoted his first lecture to the benefits of meditating on Christ’s suffering and death. He did this in the form of a syllogism: Whatever is useful for increasing faith, refuting error, correcting morals, and arousing love for God and the church should be meditated on. Consideration of Christ’s suffering and death teaches all these things; therefore one should meditate on them.56 Polanus began his second lecture by saying that Genesis 3:15 contained three prophecies: the eternal enmity between Satan and Christ, the incarnation of the Son of God, and Christ’s passion and death. Polanus hoped to cover the first prophecy at another time, and he reminded his hearers that he had discussed the second prophecy in the Advent lectures he had given the previous December.57 The third prophecy could itself be divided into five questions: who suffered and died; according to which nature; what was the efficient cause; whether Christ truly suffered; and what were the effects and fruit of his suffering and death. The remainder of this lecture, answering the first question, was a lengthy disquisition on Reformed Christology, describing the relation of Christ’s divine and human natures and refuting both early church heresies such as Sabellianism and Patripassianism and the contemporary error of ubiquitarianism.58 Polanus proceeded similarly in the remaining three lectures, considering, among other questions, whether God willed that the Jews killed Christ, whether Mary’s suffering was prophesied by this passage, and whether Christ suffered in both body and soul. Because the verse also predicted the suffering of Christ’s members, the church, Polanus interjected a discussion of the woman and the dragon and of the heavenly Jerusalem portrayed in Revelation. At the end of each of these four questions, Polanus took pains to show the usus of his argumentation, and most of his discussion of the fifth question was devoted entirely to a practical application of Christ’s death, whether doctrinally, polemically, or pastorally.59 In the case of these Holy Week lectures, the scriptural text was merely an excuse for Polanus to teach systematic theology. The lectures reflect the same

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erudition, and the same polemical purpose, as his Symphonia Catholica. They are peppered with citations from patristic sources, some of them quite lengthy, all supporting Polanus’s position in opposition to Catholic theologians ranging from Peter Lombard to Francisco Suarez.60 Although appropriate for the lecture hall, this style of teaching could not be a model for future pastors to follow in their own preaching and teaching. Fortunately for his students, Polanus did advocate a more useful method for interpreting Scripture text and applying it to the lives of Christians, a procedure he described in his treatise ‘‘on the method of fruitfully reading authors, especially of sacred [works] and discerning their proposition, themes, and arguments.’’ For his students, Polanus explained that the proposition was the purpose or intent of a text. The theme could be either simple, as in the declarative statement ‘‘Faith comes from hearing,’’ or complex, in which the statement was either supported or refuted by argumentation, for example, ‘‘No one is justified before God by works of the law.’’ Polanus then described how the Ramist categories of topical invention used in argumentation could be applied to understanding the Scripture text. For instance, if the text used adjectives signifying quantity or quality, or had passive, neutral, or deponent verbs or participles, then one must consider the category of adjuncts to analyze the passage.61 After he had described the general method of analyzing Scripture, Polanus demonstrated its application to the first thirteen psalms. The exegesis of each Psalm began with a philological explanation of the text, followed by a longer logical analysis that identified theme and arguments and concluded with a discussion of the practical application. In his commentaries on individual books of the Old Testament, Polanus generally followed this same procedure, looking first at problems of understanding the Hebrew text, then explaining the contents, generally by means of dividing it into Ramist dichotomies, and finally pointing to one or more usus to be derived from the passage.62 Polanus’s three-step method of interpretation, analysis, and application had the benefit of being simple and easy to learn. It combined the philological and exegetical interests of the first generation of reformers with the rhetorical and dialectical interests of late humanism and reflected the concern for praxis common to both. The merging of rhetoric and dialectic into a single method of analysis heavily dependent on the use of dichotomies was the inheritance of Ramism, and the emphasis on usus made the method extremely helpful for young men who would be required not only to understand the biblical text but also to teach it to their parishioners. It is, therefore, not surprising that Polanus’s method was taken up with enthusiasm by Basel’s next generation of pastors.

Polanus’s Heirs, 1610–29 Polanus continued to dominate the theology faculty through the first decade of the seventeenth century. Grynaeus was now in his sixties and suffered from

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failing eyesight. It was clear that Basel’s church would soon need someone to replace him. Fortunately, the university had a number of promising young theology students whose names appeared regularly in the public disputations, as well as in the private disputations held within the colleges, and the theology faculty could afford to be selective in training the next generation of theologians.63 But disaster struck in 1610, in the form of one of the worst outbreaks of plague the city had experienced. The epidemic claimed only a relatively small number of its pastors, in comparison to previous outbreaks, but it had a devastating impact on the university. Among the plague’s victims were Polanus and Heinrich Just, who was both pastor of St. Peter and the professor of Aristotle’s Organon, as well as several of the advanced theology students. Their deaths left Basel’s church in a precarious state: the university had lost not only its leading theologian but also a number of those students who were being prepared to succeed Grynaeus.64 Despite his physical limitations, Grynaeus turned his energies to a restoration of Basel’s church and schools. After a hiatus of nine years, he began supervising disputations, including those of three Baslers—Sebastian Beck, Johann Georg Gross, and Wolfgang Meyer—held in conjunction with receiving their doctorates in theology.65 Over the next decade, these three men would assume responsibility for theology instruction in Basel. Beck was officially elected as Polanus’s successor in 1611, while the other two men, who also held pastorates in Basel, functioned as extraordinary lecturers in theology. A pamphlet publicizing the reestablishment of the university in 1612 described the curriculum being offered in the theology faculty. Grynaeus would lecture on Galatians, while Beck would begin a series of lectures on Genesis. On Saturdays he would also ‘‘analyze and explain’’ the Gospel text for the coming Sunday, as well as teach the catechism, if time remained. Gross and Meyer shared the responsibility for teaching systematic and controversial theology: the former concentrated on topics related to ‘‘Christ’s prophetic office, i.e. questions concerning Scripture, against human traditions,’’ while the latter taught topics related to ‘‘Christ’s royal office, i.e. controversies concerning the church militant and triumphant and its members.’’ Both would assume responsibility for dealing with ‘‘Christ’s priestly office,’’ with Gross teaching about the sacraments, while Meyer would cover the benefits of redemption and questions about ‘‘predestination, sin, law, free will, faith, good works, and justification.’’66 In addition to the theology lectures, the pamphlet announced that Beck would preside over the ordinary or obligatory theology disputations, held once a month, while Gross and Meyer would preside in alternation over the extraordinary disputations, to be scheduled for those weeks when there were no ordinary disputations. Finally, theology students would be required to give public orations in Latin and sermons in German. This description of theology instruction in Basel as it was reestablished in 1612 is noteworthy for what it reveals about the components of a pastor’s education. The lectures on the Bible continued to play a prominent role, as they had in the early years of the Reformation, but there was also official recognition that students needed more systematic instruction both in theology

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and in the practical task of preaching. Unlike other Reformed churches, Basel’s rural church had retained the traditional yearly cycle of Sunday Gospel readings. The Saturday lessons on these pericopes were thus a very practical introduction to the material Basel’s future pastors would be expected to preach on. Lectures on the catechism served the same purpose, since every pastor was expected to teach the catechism to the children of his parish. It is probable that these Saturday lectures were intended especially for recently matriculated theology students; they were, in a sense, an extension of the requirement that gymnasium students be able to recall and analyze the Sunday sermons. As the announcement implied, Sebastian Beck now bore the chief responsibility for teaching theology. When Grynaeus died in 1617, a young pastor named Johannes Wollebius was elected to succeed him as antistes. Beck moved to the New Testament chair, and—continuing the tradition of joining one of the theology chairs with the leadership of the church—Wollebius was elected to the Old Testament position. Wollebius did not yet hold a doctorate in theology, but he was awarded it two years later. All four of these men were members of a new generation of Basel’s clergy. Born between 1577 and 1586, they had each attended the city’s gymnasium before matriculating at the university at the age of fifteen or sixteen. Gross and Meyer had received university scholarships, while Wollebius had been given a civic stipend. Only Beck—whose father was a senator—did not receive financial assistance and was therefore not required to study theology or enter the service of city or church.67 Meyer came from a well-connected Basel family. His father, Jacob, himself the son of a Basel cloth merchant and senator, had been pastor of St. Alban in Basel since the 1560s. His mother was Agnes Capito, the daughter of Strasbourg’s reformer Wolfgang Capito and Oecolampadius’s widow, Wibrandis Rosenblatt. After receiving his master’s degree in Basel, Wolfgang Meyer studied theology at Cambridge, thanks to a stipend established for the family of his stepgrandfather, Martin Bucer.68 Returning to Basel in 1601, he matriculated as a student of theology and served as vicar for his aging father as well as for the pastor of St. Theodor, Sigismund Kien. When the elder Meyer died in 1604, Wolfgang was elected his successor. He served this church until 1630, when he was elected as archdeacon or associate pastor of the cathedral parish; he held this post until his death in 1653. The remaining three theologians received all of their education in Basel. After receiving his M.A. in 1604, Beck matriculated in theology and participated in the public and private disputations held through the rest of the decade.69 Gross was appointed pastor of the suburban church of St. Margaret in 1604. In 1607, he was promoted to the church of St. Elizabeth in the city, and four years later he was elected pastor of St. Peter. Wollebius’s first post in Basel was as common deacon, serving as temporary substitute for other Basel pastors who were incapacitated or needed assistance in some way. In 1611, he was elected Gross’s successor at St. Elizabeth. Both Gross and Wollebius were nominated for the post of cathedral pastor after Grynaeus’s death; after each candidate had given a sample sermon, Wollebius was elected to the position.

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As members of Basel’s theology faculty, these four men saw the training of future pastors as their chief responsibility. Unlike their predecessors, none of them published biblical commentaries based on their lectures. Beck, the only one of the four who did not have pastoral responsibilities, published only a handful of disputations over which he presided. Wollebius’s most important work was his Compendium of Christian Theology, a summary of Christian doctrine divided into two books, on knowing God and on worshiping God. The Compendium was intended as an in-depth catechism that theology students could memorize. Its brevity made it extremely popular, particularly in England and the Netherlands.70 Wollebius’s only other publications were disputations, sermons, and the new catechism he wrote for Basel’s church. Aside from an edition of William Perkins’s Prophetica sive de Sacra et unica Concinandi ratione tractatus, Meyer’s publications were also pastoral in nature. Only Gross published primarily for an academic market, and particularly for theology students. Of the four, Gross was also the most indebted to their common teacher, Polanus. He not only published a number of Polanus’s disputations posthumously but also several handbooks, including a short homiletics text, and encyclopedic works that were based on or derived from Polanus’s works. Gross acknowledged his debt to Polanus in his Theatrum Biblicum, a two-volume collection of quotations and excerpts from commentaries on all of the books of the Bible. In the preface, Gross told his readers that when he first began participating in theological disputations, he found it useful to note brief citations in the margin of his Bible that supported and defended the loci found there, a practice he had learned from Polanus. Over the years his collection of citations had outgrown the margins of his Bible, and he now wanted to make available for others those excerpts that could be used to vindicate each book of Scripture.71 Although Gross drew his citations from many different places, one of his chief sources, to which he alluded in the full title of the work, was Polanus’s Symphonia Catholica. Gross also drew upon his teacher’s massive Syntagma Theologiae Christianae, as well as his other theological works. Although he did not have a regular chair in theology, Gross held a key position in the theology faculty as the professor who taught the introductory course in theology to newly matriculated students. His Compendium Theologiae Sacrae, published in 1620, gives us a view of what a new theology student was expected to learn in Basel a century after the Reformation. The Compendium, part of a larger encyclopedic work that dealt with all four university faculties, was itself made up of three parts: an introduction to the study of theology and expositions of the Basel catechism and the Basel Confession.72 The first and the last sections originated as lectures over the course of 1618– 19, while the lectures on the catechism dated from 1615 to 1616. Gross’s introduction to theology was itself divided into three parts. The first dealt with the principles of theology, which Gross defined as wisdom concerning divine things communicated by God to man. The remainder of this section was an overview of the Bible as a whole, followed by a description of each book of the Old and New Testament. The second section, on the object

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of theology, concerned ‘‘what we should know about and what we should worship in God’’—the same division followed by Wollebius in his Compendium.73 The material presented in Gross’s lectures follows the order used by Wollebius as well, but it also betrays the influence of Polanus’s Syntagma. For instance, in describing the attributes of God, Gross followed the order of presentation in the Syntagma, though he omitted much of the detail.74 In the third section, on the duty of theology, Gross taught his students what would be expected of them as theologians. He distinguished between two types of theologians. The teacher’s duty was theoretical only: he was to interpret Scripture analytically and to teach its contents synthetically, first in the form of a catechism, and then more elaborately through a system of theological commonplaces. The pastor’s duty was also to teach, but beyond this, he was also to touch the consciences of his hearers with regard to ‘‘the teachings of the truth and the discipline of piety.’’75 Gross then looked more specifically at the duties of the pastoral office. Again he divided his discussion into two parts. The ‘‘theoretical’’ responsibility of the pastor was to preach God’s word, whether through catechization or through preaching. Catechization was instructing children, uneducated adults, and converts to Christianity on the basics of the Christian faith, which Gross listed: ‘‘God; creation; the image of God; the Fall, or sin and its punishment; the promise of the Messiah, the blessed seed; the gratuitous covenant of God and its signs, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; true faith in Christ; a blameless and pious life both in preparation for a pious and happy death and for the Last Judgment; and eternal life.’’76 This listing of theological loci was certainly a much more elaborate presentation of doctrine than the simple presentation of justification by faith alone contained in Oecolampadius’s 1526 catechism. Gross also gave a brief overview of how pastors were to preach. Preaching was divided into three parts, corresponding to Polanus’s three-step method of exegesis: reading the word of God, interpreting it for the audience, and applying it to their lives. Gross stressed that the sermon was always to be based on canonical Scripture, which should be read to the audience in the vernacular. The interpretation was done using logical analysis, which involved identification of the author’s goal or purpose and the declaration and demonstration of his theme. More obscure passages were to be explained by comparison with other portions of Scripture. The application of the text consisted in teaching, refutation, correction, instruction in morals, and consolation.77 Gross then considered the practical duties of pastoral office, distinguished as ceremonial and moral. The ceremonial duties consisted of properly administering the sacraments and other worship services. The pastor’s moral duty concerned oversight of his spiritual charges, which had three components. Inspection was carried out through both parish and household visitation. Correction ranged from private admonition to public warning to full excommunication. Strengthening the weak was done through consolation in the face of general calamity as well as private misfortune.78

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Though perhaps lacking in finesse, Gross’s relentless dichotomization of the duties of a pastor was an extremely effective way of helping Basel’s future pastors learn and remember what was expected of them once placed in office. Before considering further his significance as a teacher, however, we must first look at another element of theology instruction in Basel: the theological disputations that were an integral part of every pastor’s education from the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

Theological Disputations at the University of Basel In the fifty years after Grynaeus’s appointment as professor of Old Testament, almost six hundred theological disputations were printed, either as individual disputations, in collections ranging in size from three to over one hundred, or as appendices to other works (graph 6.1).79 Although not all of the disputations held in Basel were published, those that were printed represent the general theological trend of instruction. This is particularly true for the years 1588–90, for which almost all of the public disputations were published.80 The published disputations fall into three groups, determined by the theologian who presided over them.81 All but one of the disputations between 1576 and 1585 and most of those from 1586 to 1595 were held under Grynaeus, while almost all of the disputations dating from 1596 to 1610 were supervised by Polanus.82 The number of printed disputations dropped sharply after 1591, as Grynaeus’s attention increasingly turned away from the university to broader church affairs. After Polanus joined the theology faculty, the number of printed disputations again rose, but the character of these disputations differed somewhat from the earlier group. While all of Grynaeus’s printed disputations were publicly held, about half of the printed disputations supervised by Polanus were private disputations held within one of the colleges. These were published after Polanus’s death by Johann Georg Gross.83 After 1610, the number of published disputations fell off rapidly. Grynaeus supervised several disputations in the months following Polanus’s death, but by the summer of 1611, the three newly minted doctors of theology assumed all responsibility for the disputations. This arrangement did not last long; by the end of 1615, Beck was the only theologian supervising disputations. Circumstances again intervened to change the situation, for in the fall of 1618, Beck and Meyer traveled to the Netherlands as Basel’s representatives to the Synod of Dort. During their absence, Johannes Wollebius presided over the disputations. After his return, Beck again assumed responsibility for most of the disputations, but Wollebius continued to supervise about a third of the disputations held over the next several years. Because all theology students, and especially the stipendiates, were required to attend them, the disputations served as review sessions where students heard presented in a different way some of the same material they were learning from their lectures. The theses for debate could vary considerably,

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depending on the student who would be defending them, as well as the occasion for the disputation. In general, theses for the newer theology students were fairly simple, often one sentence, and few in number. Likewise, the private disputations held in the colleges were fairly short and simple, sometimes consisting of only one or two statements. Thus Polanus had his students reject the canonicity of one of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament or defend single theses, arguing, for example, that Christ’s soul did not descend locally to hell or that there is no purgatory.84 The disputations of advanced students, however, could be lengthy and often contained several major theses, each of which was analyzed using all of the dialectical tools available. The disputations also reflected the theological emphases and methods of their authors.85 The disputations supervised by Grynaeus, for instance, are virtually interchangeable with portions of his theology lectures printed as biblical commentaries. Thus, in a disputation on justification by faith, the student Paul Crocius laid out his disputation by considering first a general definition of justification. He then distinguished between different types of justification and discussed its causes, its effects, and what was opposed to it.86 A disputation on the question whether the elect could be sure of their salvation opened with the ‘‘testimonies of Scripture’’ that supported the proposition. This was followed by two separate demonstrationes proving the truth of the proposition.87 Josiah Jeger examined the question of church order by identifying the efficient, final, and formal causes of that order.88 Polanus’s disputations, like his commentaries, are characterized by dichotomies. Johann Heinrich Zeller also participated in a disputation on justifying faith, which was first divided between that which existed in adults (which could be either strong or weak) and in children. Justifying faith was then considered according to its efficient, organic, material, formal, and final causes, and finally described according to the Ramist predicables of effects, subjects, and adjuncts.89 The future pastor Cyril Oes analyzed the Basel catechism as a series of dichotomies, beginning with the distinction between one’s initiation into the church and one’s duties as a Christian. Initiation or baptism was considered, first according to its nature, and then its necessity; its nature was further divided into the subject, matter, and causes. The duties of a Christian were likewise described as either general or specific. A Christian generally owed obedience (itself dichotomized as doing good and avoiding evil) and perseverance (considered according to its causes and its subject). The duties of a Christian were also divided according to their effects (as set forth in the Apostles’ Creed) and their confirmation (via the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper).90 Polanus’s students Beck, Gross, and Meyer also constructed their disputation theses according to Ramist dichotomies. Categorizing the disputations by decades allows us to examine changes in focus and content over time. I have analyzed the 597 printed disputations by dividing them into six categories according to the emphasis of each disputation. Those in the category ‘‘doctrinal Protestant’’ deal with doctrines common to both Lutherans and Reformed, while those in the ‘‘doctrinal Reformed’’ category argue more clearly for specifically Reformed positions on issues disputed

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with the Lutherans, especially the Lord’s Supper, Christology, and predestination. The ‘‘polemical’’ disputations are concerned chiefly with refuting the positions of theological opponents. These tended to be aimed at Anabaptists, anti-Trinitarians, and early church heresies. Very few openly criticized Lutheran doctrine, although some of the condemnations of early Christological heresies were covert attacks on the Lutherans. The number of polemical disputations concerned with Catholic doctrine merits a separate category. The ‘‘pastoral’’ category contains disputations that deal primarily with the application of doctrine to life, such as whether it is allowable for Christians to flee an outbreak of plague, while the ‘‘exegetical’’ disputations focus on philological and textual questions rather than doctrinal ones—for instance, how the Greek word for ‘‘how’’ is used in the New Testament. The distinctions between these categories can be narrow. It is not uncommon, for instance, for a disputation to begin with a presentation of a generally Protestant doctrine such as justification by faith, and then move to a refutation of the opposing (Catholic) view. In these cases, I have placed the disputation in the category that receives the greatest emphasis. Over the fifty-year period examined, there was a marked shift from a more general Protestant theology to clearly Reformed doctrine (table 6.1). During Sulzer’s last decade and Grynaeus’s first decade in Basel, almost 60 percent of the disputations concerned general Protestant topics, while specifically Reformed positions made up another 14 percent of the total. Fifty years later, these proportions were almost reversed: 53 percent of the total dealt with Reformed topics, while generally Protestant disputations had sunk to less than 10 percent. This shift in the ratio of disputations with a more positive presentation of doctrine was accompanied by a dramatic increase in the number of polemical disputations. Over the fifty-year period, the total number of polemical disputations rose from just under 20 percent to slightly less than one-third of all disputations. The number of anti-Catholic disputations jumped significantly around the turn of the century. Although the number fell back during the following decade, the proportion of generally polemical disputations—those aimed at Lutherans, Anabaptists, and other radicals, as well as Catholics— rose significantly during the same decade. For most of the period, the number of exegetical disputations remained fairly constant, at about 6 percent of the total. Most of these disputations were held in series devoted to the analysis of an individual New Testament book— on the epistle to the Galatians under Grynaeus, and on the epistle to the Colossians under Polanus. The brief upturn in the proportion of pastoral disputations deserves special comment. It might seem misguided to expect a disputation to be pastorally oriented, but such a presupposition mistakes the purpose of the disputations themselves. They were not intended solely to teach the art of argumentation, but were more generally an opportunity for students to identify doctrinal applications and to practice the logical analysis their professors demonstrated for them in the lecture hall. Just as their teachers drew practical applications

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from the scriptural text, so students were expected to be able to identify and defend prescriptive and consolatory doctrine. Perhaps one of the most poignant examples of this use was a disputation over which Grynaeus presided in 1590 that considered why children died prematurely. At the end of this rather cut-and-dried disputation, which lists several theologically grounded responses to the death of a child, are poems by three of Grynaeus’s students mourning the death of their teacher’s daughter Susannah.91 In presenting the Reformed answer to an existential question, this disputation was clearly intended to console a grieving father. We can obtain a sharper picture of each professor’s priorities by examining the proportion of disputations they wrote within each category (table 6.2). Roughly two-thirds of Grynaeus’s disputations were doctrinal in nature, with general Protestant topics outnumbering specifically Reformed ones by a ratio of not quite two to one. There is, however, a clear difference in Grynaeus’s presentation of doctrine between his first decade in Basel, when Sulzer was his colleague, and the decade after his return to Basel as antistes. As mentioned earlier, Grynaeus presided over all but one of the disputations held between 1576 and 1585. These disputations were even more heavily skewed toward generally Protestant content. Over 70 percent concerned doctrine, and less than 20 percent were specifically Reformed. After Grynaeus’s return to Basel, the proportion of generally Protestant and specifically Reformed disputations was roughly equal; together they made up not quite two-thirds of the total number of disputations. The proportions of the other types of disputations remained roughly the same.92 Polanus’s disputations display a clear bias toward Reformed doctrine and a significant increase in polemic. Doctrinal disputations make up about 56 percent of the total, but the proportion of specifically Reformed to more generally Protestant ones has risen to three to two. Although the proportion of generally polemical disputations remained roughly the same, the proportion of disputations aimed specifically against Catholic doctrine more than doubled, making up over one-third of the total number. Many of these disputations were inspired by the material in Bellarmine’s Controversies: the cardinal’s name occurs in at least a quarter of Polanus’s disputations. Moreover, Polanus’s anti-Catholic polemic differs significantly from that of earlier generations. Where Grynaeus had been content to condemn Catholic teaching, Polanus wrote disputations defending specifically Reformed doctrine against the charges of Catholic polemicists.93 The trend toward more specifically Reformed content continued with the disputations supervised by Sebastian Beck. The overall proportion of doctrinal and polemical disputations remained roughly the same, but specifically Reformed disputations now outnumbered more generally Protestant ones by a margin of five to one. Although the balance between general and specifically anti-Catholic polemic shifted, the difference is more apparent than real. In fact, most of the generally polemical disputations contained specifically anti-Catholic sections; what increased was the number of attacks aimed at Lutherans and anti-Trinitarians, particularly Socinians.

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While there are too few disputations by either Gross or Meyer to make conclusive statements about their priorities, it is striking that a high percentage of their published disputations were polemical in nature. The number of printed disputations supervised by Wollebius is also small, but they indicate a tendency to deal with specifically Reformed topics. One final development in the practice of disputations should be noted: the influence of theological systematicization on the disputation topics. Although Grynaeus’s printed disputations from the 1570s were grouped according to a central theme or were organized so as to present an overview of Christian doctrine, he discontinued this practice in his disputations of the 1580s. With a few exceptions, each disputation bore no relation to those that preceded or came after it. Likewise, Grynaeus did not, as a rule, link his disputation topics to material he had recently covered in his lectures. Because none of the weekly private theological disputations held in the colleges during the 1580s and early 1590s have survived, it is impossible to tell if these covered various doctrines in a more systematic way. By the end of the 1590s, however, the private disputations were being used as a tool to teach systematic theology. Polanus’s weekly disputations followed roughly the same organizational scheme as his theology textbooks, beginning with the doctrine of Scripture and continuing on to the characteristics of God, the nature of the Trinity, and so on.94 Although he did not preside over many disputations, Wollebius also grouped his disputations around a common theme, whether anthropology, Christology, or the doctrine of Scripture.

The Evolution of Theology Instruction This consideration of the changes in the contents of Basel’s theological disputations brings us back to the larger question of the evolution of theology instruction in Basel over the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Although Basel’s theologians in the 1550s and 1560s were clearly teaching a different audience from their predecessors, one made up of young students rather than experienced pastors, their method of instruction was not radically different from that offered a generation earlier. Basel’s theological course, which would take it away from the mainstream of the Swiss Reformed churches, was set in the later 1530s, with the city’s acceptance of the Wittenberg Concord. Borrhaus’s appointment as theology professor also contributed to Basel’s gradual estrangement from the Reformed tradition, for his theology differed both in its spiritualistic orientation and on specific doctrinal issues that would be enshrined in the Second Helvetic Confession. During the 1550s and 1560s, at least, the Basel church was not Lutheran, or even ‘‘Lutheranizing,’’ but was consciously striving for a nonconfessional Protestantism that allowed greater theological latitude than was allowed elsewhere in the Protestant world. Grynaeus’s appointment to the theology faculty brought a decisive change to the practice of theological education in Basel. Grynaeus’s first innovation

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was to publish the theological disputations held for his students. Although the staging of regular disputations was not new, publishing the theses gave greater visibility to this element of theological instruction. The printed disputations increased student accountability, by associating their names with the theses they were expected to defend. Grynaeus’s second innovation was the introduction of a more rigorous theological method. He could do so because by the early 1580s the average theology student had already spent several years studying dialectic and was capable of applying the principles of Aristotelian logic to the text of Scripture. The scholarships created in the 1560s contributed indirectly to this development, because they had made it possible for students to remain at the university for a longer time, thus gaining the advanced training in dialectic that was an unacknowledged prerequisite for Grynaeus’s theology lectures. Finally, Grynaeus directed Basel back into the mainstream of Reformed theology. This was not as sharp a break in Basel’s confessional development as it has sometimes been portrayed. Basel’s university certainly remained open to a wider spectrum of theological opinion in the decade between 1575 and 1585 than was possible in other places. The more clearly Reformed emphasis of Grynaeus’s disputations after his return to Basel in 1586 implies that he was not entirely free to teach as he wished during the years before his move to Heidelberg. Nevertheless, theology instruction during this decade cannot simply be characterized as Lutheran. The reports of hostile observers that Koch was promoting a ubiquitarian Christology in the theology faculty at the end of the 1570s must be balanced by the fact that Grynaeus was also supervising disputations on characteristically Reformed doctrines during the same period.95 Moreover, it is doubtful that by the 1580s either Koch or Sulzer had much influence on theological education, simply because of their age and poor health. In fact, Grynaeus’s vocation to Basel in 1586 signaled the city’s final endorsement of a confessional identity that had become inevitable over the course of the preceding decade, and Grynaeus met no opposition from the university as he actively promoted Reformed doctrine. By the end of the century, Basel’s theology faculty was not only committed to the Reformed mainstream but in Polanus had a theologian who contributed to the formulation of Reformed Orthodoxy. The theologians who succeeded Grynaeus simply followed in his footsteps. Although both the form and the content of theological instruction continued to evolve, the theologians of the next generation were heirs, not innovators. Polanus brought a transition from Aristotelian to semi-Ramist method. His chief contribution was to refine and codify what Grynaeus had introduced, so that it could more easily be transmitted to the next generation. Polanus’s students simplified his theological method even more by emphasizing the classification of knowledge rather than the demonstration of its validity; they thought in dichotomies rather than syllogisms. Theological doctrines were worked out to the last ramification, but in the process they were also systematized in a way that could be simplified and thus more easily learned. Wollebius’s Compendium of Christian Theology was a lightweight

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version, both figuratively and literally, of Polanus’s Syntagma—but it also sold a lot more copies. Gross and his colleagues were not primarily theologians, for they produced no original theological works themselves and did not encourage theological creativity in their students. But they were extremely effective teachers who turned out a steady stream of pastoral candidates trained in the same theological tradition that they had themselves learned as students. Gross acknowledged the shift from doing theology to teaching it in the verse he composed as an introduction to Wollebius’s Compendium: Calvin instructed [instituit] many as learners and as teachers, So that his book acquired this renown: Beyond the apostolic writings, after the times of Christ No age has produced the likes of this book. Polanus by his method elucidates the famous Syntagma: Dead, as while alive, he teaches our multitudes. Whatever each of these teaches, Wollebius will teach With learned brevity, capably saying much with few [words].96 Gross’s praise of Calvin, rather than Basel’s own reformer, Johannes Oecolampadius, reflects the weakening of local tradition and the Basel church’s self-conscious adherence to Reformed Orthodoxy. Polanus had played an important role in developing the full expression of Reformed theology, but despite Gross’s claims, his Syntagma was not suitable for teaching most students. Hence the need for Wollebius’s work, which condensed his predecessors’ accomplishments into a brief and convenient textbook. The systematicization of theology and the codification of a method for both studying and teaching the scriptural text ultimately streamlined the production of pastors in Basel. It also contributed to generational differentiation within Basel’s clerical corps. The statistical analysis of Basel’s pastors presented in the first chapter indicated a high degree of homogeneity in social and geographical background and educational level among those men who entered the ministry between 1580 and 1610, but the evolution of theological education separated this generation from those who both preceded and succeeded them. That evolution also created distinctions within this generation. The pastors who began their study of theology after Grynaeus came to Basel in 1575 were trained in a fundamentally different way from their predecessors, with dialectic, rather than philology, serving as the most important component of theological method. Some of these men were appointed to parish positions in the 1580s, and they were the dominant group to enter the ministry during the 1590s. The younger cohort of this generation, those who began the study of theology at the very end of the 1590s, were much more influenced by Ramist dialectic than were their older colleagues. They had first been exposed to Ramism while still students at the gymnasium, and from Polanus they had learned how to apply Ramist dichotomization to theology. These young men entered the ministry in the first decade of the seventeenth

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century, and the vacancies created by the same epidemic that claimed Polanus meant that several more were appointed to posts over the next few years. Of the twenty-four pastors appointed to the ministry between 1610 and 1619, fifteen received their first parish between 1610 and 1613. The pastors appointed later in that decade were younger and would have received most of their education not from Polanus but from his successors. All of these young men would differ from the pastors appointed to the ministry during the third quarter of the sixteenth century in their deeper commitment to Reformed theology, their greater skill in theological polemics, and their advanced training in dialectic. They differed among themselves in their exposure to Aristotelian, as opposed to Ramist, dialectic and in their personal connections to the two men who raised the reputation of Basel’s theology faculty to international prominence. These differences in training would, in turn, influence the way they applied their theological knowledge to the task of preaching; this will be the focus of Part III.

part iii

The Reformed Art of Preaching

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7 The Development of Reformed Homiletics

One major component of pastoral training has been conspicuously absent from the discussion of the education of Basel’s future clergy. Where, when, and how did these young men learn how to preach? The question is not easy to answer, because preaching is a complicated task whose components were acquired gradually over the course of the boys’ education. Moreover, the understanding of what was involved in preaching—and in homiletic instruction more specifically— changed over time. The reformers assumed, perhaps rather naively, that as their fellow pastors attended theology lectures and became more familiar with Scripture, they would gain the knowledge they needed to become better preachers themselves. The problem with this assumption, though, was that Basel’s pastors could not postpone their sermons until the theologians had lectured on all of Scripture. The pastors needed to know how to interpret Scripture for themselves. This involved not only analyzing the text but also placing its contents in relation to other Scripture passages and to fundamental theological concepts such as law, grace, and justification. In other words, preachers needed training in some form of systematic theology. But understanding a Scripture text and the theological concepts derived from or supported by it was not enough to make a good preacher. Pastors also needed to know how to convey the message of the text to their audience in such a way that the hearers both understood it and could find it in some way applicable to their lives. Effective preaching, then, required two different but related types of knowledge: familiarity with the Bible’s contents, and with the larger theological concepts drawn from it. It also involved two types of skill: those of textual analysis for the exegesis of Scripture, and those related to composition and delivery of an oral message. Central to

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both of these types of skill in the sixteenth century were the two disciplines of dialectic and rhetoric. Together they formed the method used in the study and the interpretation of texts, including Scripture; their precepts were also fundamental for preachers in composing their sermons. Dialectic would eventually become the more prominent of the two, but at the time of the Reformation, much more emphasis was placed on rhetoric. As instruction in theology, dialectic, and rhetoric evolved over the course of the sixteenth century, instruction in the art of preaching, or homiletics, evolved as well. The preacher’s two tasks of exegesis and sermon composition were more clearly distinguished, and greater attention was given to each. Rhetoric and dialectic remained closely intertwined, but dialectic gradually emerged as the dominant discipline for exegesis, while rhetoric continued to influence discussions of how a sermon was to be composed and delivered.

Rhetoric and Protestant Homiletics Rhetoric was an essential part of the humanist program from its inception, and its core remained essentially unchanged over the fifteenth and into the sixteenth century. The fundamental components of rhetoric instruction were taken directly from classical Ciceronian rhetoric. There were a handful of key concepts or procedures that all schoolboys learned. They began with the five tasks of the orator: invention, or the generation of material for the speech; disposition, or the arrangement of that material; elocution or style; memorization; and pronunciation, which covered all aspects of delivery. Orations themselves were classified according to the three categories or genera: deliberative, intended to persuade or dissuade; demonstrative, which praised or blamed persons, things or events; or judicial, intended for the courtroom. Each oratorical genus had its own method of presentation and argumentation. Once an orator had determined the genus of the oration, he could follow the specific set of topics and procedures for that genus to ‘‘find’’ or generate the content of his oration. The oration itself had six parts: the exordium, the narration, the proposition and division into parts, the confirmation, the refutation, and the peroration or conclusion. Rhetoric textbooks of the sixteenth century differed in the amount of space they allotted to each of these features, but they all taught the same basic concepts.1 Rhetoric instruction, like that of other disciplines, was based on the principles of precepta, exempla, and imitatio. Students studied the rules that underlay oratorical competence from classical texts such as the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium or from contemporary textbooks by authors such as Erasmus and Melanchthon. They analyzed both classical orations and the declamations, orations, and sermons of their contemporaries to see how experts followed those precepts, and they applied those precepts and imitated the models they had studied in the exercises they themselves produced.2 The early humanists prized rhetoric, above all, for its practical value. The civic humanists of the early fifteenth century had used their rhetorical skills

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in the service of the city-republics they served. The ability to present one’s views clearly and persuasively was essential for representatives of civic or princely governments. At the same time that the opportunities for obtaining a humanist education were increasing, however, the opportunities that oratorically trained humanists had to influence policy were decreasing. By the late fifteenth century, the emphasis within the study of rhetoric had moved away from production of speeches to rhetorical analysis of texts. The same methods used to produce an oration were used to identify the genus and structure of any type of text, not only speeches but other types of literature as well.3 By the mid–fifteenth century, rhetoric was also influencing the art of preaching in Italy. Preachers at the papal curia made use especially of the demonstrative genus to praise the deeds of God, the examples set by the saints, and the classical and Christian virtues and to condemn particular vices.4 The Italian attempt to redefine preaching using the principles of classical rhetoric spread north of the Alps at the turn of the century, but it was itself significantly modified. Johann Reuchlin’s Liber Congestorum de arte praedicandi focused not so much on the appropriate genus for preaching as on the modification of the classical parts of the oration to fit the pattern of preaching derived from the medieval ars praedicandi tradition.5 Erasmus would take the application of rhetoric to preaching to new levels in his Ecclesiastes, published in 1535. This lengthy work, made up of four books, not only modified the basic structures of rhetoric for the use of the preacher but also considered the duties of a preacher and provided a collection of theological and ethical loci for the preacher’s use.6 The work went through ten editions over the next decade, but it had one major drawback. Its learnedness and eloquence made it popular with reform-minded humanists, but these qualities also hampered its acceptance outside of humanist circles. The book’s length, as well as its largely theoretical nature, meant that it was not of much practical use to a parish pastor suddenly confronted with the regular task of preparing sermons twice a week. Erasmus’s work would therefore influence the development of preaching in the sixteenth century, but only indirectly, as it was filtered through the texts of later Protestant and Catholic homileticists. The earliest Protestant homileticists also drew on classical rhetoric, but they simplified it radically, so that their texts became practical how-to manuals. Already in 1519, Melanchthon had included a short section on preaching in his rhetoric textbook, and the first Protestant homiletics text claimed Melanchthon’s authority. An anonymous work entitled ‘‘Brief Method of Preaching,’’ attributed to ‘‘a learned and pious preacher who is a friend of Melanchthon,’’ was published in Ulm in 1535, together with Melanchthon’s discussion of the duties of a preacher.7 These two works were reprinted five years later in Basel, along with Melanchthon’s Brevis Discendae Theologiae ratio, Reuchlin’s Liber Congestorum, and another short treatise on preaching, by the Hamburg pastor Johann Aepinus, entitled De Arte Concionandi Formulae. From the point of view of a pastor required to preach regularly, these brief treatises were extremely practical, for they were short and to the point,

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explaining in just a few pages how to give a sermon on a topic such as justification or the law.8 Common to all of these treatises was the method of adapting classical rhetoric to preaching. The five tasks of the orator were directly transferable to preaching: invention, or finding material on which to preach, was equated with exegesis, while disposition applied to the writing of the sermon. In comparison to these two tasks, the topics of rhetorical style, memorization, and delivery received very little attention from these early homileticists. The sermon itself was to be structured according to the six standard parts of an oration. The three classical oratorical genera were also applied to preaching, but with some modification. Melanchthon rejected the use of the genus iudiciale for preaching and had strong reservations about the genus demonstrativum. However, he endorsed the genus deliberativum, which he found useful for moral exhortation, and he introduced a new genus didascalicum (or dialecticum), appropriate for teaching doctrine. The didactic genus adapted a rudimentary form of topical dialectic, in which the first steps of the dialectical analysis of a term—its definition, its division into parts (in which the different meanings or uses of the term were described), and the identification of its causes (efficient, formal, material, and final)—were used to structure a sermon around one or more theological loci.9 In its most basic form, a didactic or topical sermon was devoted to a simple theme or locus, such as ‘‘righteousness’’ or ‘‘the law,’’ which was defined and then described according to its parts, its causes, its effects, and its application. A sermon could contain more than one locus, whether discussed serially as different topics within the sermon or combined to form a complex theme, such as ‘‘righteousness does not come through the law.’’ The topical method of preaching developed by Melanchthon remained closely tied to Scripture, in that the loci discussed were derived from the biblical text that was the basis of the sermon, and Scripture itself was cited within the sermon as confirmation of an argument or refutation of other views. In essence, however, such sermons were thematic rather than strictly exegetical. As this discussion suggests, composing a sermon was only half of a preacher’s task. In order to write a sermon based on a Scripture text, the preacher had first to analyze that text itself. In this task the application of elementary dialectic to homiletics had one other important advantage, for students were already being taught to apply such dialectical analysis to Scripture. Particularly important to this aspect of preaching was the development of another type of selfhelp manual, the guide describing how to study theology. The earliest of these were brief works intended to help pastors already in office deepen their knowledge of the Bible and of evangelical doctrines as they studied on their own. Melanchthon’s Brevis Discendae Theologiae ratio, which described how to study the Bible as well as how to benefit from other Christian and pagan writings, was an influential early example of this genre. Its practical intent is reflected by its inclusion in De Arte Concionandi Formulae discussed earlier. Increasingly, however, these study guides grew in length and were aimed more clearly at students. Heinrich Bullinger’s 1528 Ratio Studiorum was one

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of the earliest study plans to consider in great detail how a student should prepare for the ministry, beginning with a general arts education and then proceeding through the study of theology. As these study plans became more detailed, their recommendations concerning how to study the Bible expanded to deal with issues such as resolving grammatical and linguistic difficulties, interpreting obscure passages, and reconciling apparent contradictions. In addition to providing rules for the exegesis of Scripture, they also listed other works useful for theologians, including a wide range of patristic authors, church histories, conciliar decrees, and contemporary theologians. Even Catholic standards, such as canon law and Peter Lombard’s Sentences, could be useful for Protestant theologians, if read with caution.10 The authors of these study plans recognized the difficulties young theology students might have in remembering all they had read so that they could use it in their own preaching and teaching. They therefore followed the example set for them by Melanchthon’s theological masterpiece and recommended that students assemble their own books of theological loci communes by organizing Scripture passages and extracts from other authors under topical headings.11 The Danish follower of Melanchthon Nils Hemmingsen (Nicolaus Hemming) was one of the first to link explicitly the tasks of exegesis and organization of material with the larger issues of theological method and the art of preaching. The second book of his De Methodis Libri Duo was devoted to those precepts that theologians needed to know in order to learn and to teach doctrine. In the preface to this second book, he told his readers that just as God had created all things to have a natural order, so theology had its own order to be followed in interpreting Scripture and composing sermons.12 In his discussion of how to identify commonplaces within a Scripture passage, Hemmingsen relied chiefly on the tools of dialectic. His discussion of preaching, on the other hand, owed much to Melanchthon’s application of rhetoric to homiletics, but it also reflected the new generation of Protestant homiletics texts that emerged in the 1550s. Just as the handbooks on exegesis and theological method were increasingly aimed at students preparing for the ministry rather than for pastors already in office, so the books on preaching published after midcentury were aimed especially at students who were already well versed in classical rhetorical theory. These treatments of preaching were written by the same individuals who were also concerned with the proper method of studying theology. Hieronymus Weller’s Libellus de modo concionandi, first published together with an exegesis of the Psalms in 1558, was reprinted three times in the 1560s, together with his Ratio formandi studij theologici. In his De Methodis, Hemmingsen actually concentrated more on the arrangement and composition of sermons than on the exegesis of Scripture. Andreas Hyperius, the author of one of the most detailed study plans published in the 1550s, also wrote a homiletics manual that went through several editions between 1553 and 1579. Hyperius emphasized the difference between the scholarly exegesis of Scripture, which relied on dialectic and was

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intended for students and taught in the schools, and popular exegesis, which made use of rhetorical devices and was intended for the broad public. In this respect, he argued, the preacher had more in common with the orator than with the dialectician. Preachers and orators were not identical, however, for the preacher was bound to the Scripture text in a way an orator was not. Nor could the principles of rhetoric be transferred automatically to the sermon. In his most influential deviation from classical rhetoric, Hyperius rejected the three traditional genera of classical oratory and proposed five new genera for preaching: doctrinale (teaching true doctrine), redargutivum (rejecting false doctrine), institutivum (teaching Christian virtue), correctorium (rebuking vice), and consolatorium (offering consolation). Although these five genera did not replace the classical genera, as revised by Melanchthon, in determining the form of the sermon, they were adopted by later homileticists for the purpose of analyzing the Scripture text. By the end of the century, Hyperius’s five genera had been transformed into the five ways of applying Scripture to a sermon’s audience.13 Because the homiletics texts of Hemmingsen and Hyperius owed more to Melanchthon and to classical rhetoric than to Luther, they could be used equally by Lutheran and Reformed theologians. Indeed, although he taught at Marburg, Hyperius was most influenced theologically by Bucer, and three of the six editions of his homiletics text were published in Basel. Likewise, there is no indication of confessional bias in the only homiletics text from this period written by a Swiss author. The schoolmaster Conrad Clauser, who taught first in Zurich and then moved to Brugg, published his Certa Declamandi et concionandi Methodus in 1555. Clauser attempted to combine the approaches of both expository and topical preaching in his method of sermon construction. He identified the first part of the sermon, the explanation of the text, with narration, which could itself be either historical or philosophical. His description of philosophical narration, in turn, was similar to Melanchthon’s use of elementary dialectic for preaching: it consisted of definition, division, and discussion according to the four Aristotelian causes. Once he had explained the text, the preacher proceeded to the relevant locus drawn from it, whether in praise or blame, as in a demonstrative oration, or exhortation for or against, as in a deliberative oration.14 Despite its attempt to link sermon composition with the principles of dialectic and rhetoric taught to schoolboys, Clauser’s brief text had no imitators in the Reformed world. The confessional neutrality that marked the Protestant homiletics texts published after midcentury did not last. By the 1580s, confessional polemic had begun to influence homiletic theory. In his De Ratione Concionandi of 1582, the Stuttgart court preacher Lucas Osiander cited several examples from Calvin’s commentaries to demonstrate that the Genevan reformer’s approach to scriptural exegesis was ‘‘not only inept, but impious.’’15 For their part, the Reformed homiletic manuals that began to be published at the turn of the century criticized Lutheran preaching practices, particularly the retention of the traditional lectionary as the basis for Sunday sermons and the publication and misuse of Postillen, or sermon collections keyed to those pericopes.16

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Polemics aside, a more fundamental difference existed between the Lutheran and the new Reformed homiletics written toward the end of the century. Although later Lutheran manuals paid more attention to the text of Scripture and taught that sermons should contain a paraphrastic explication of the Scripture text, the discussion of theological loci still remained the central part of the sermon.17 Reformed homiletics texts, in contrast, emphasized the expository aspect of preaching. Wilhelm Zepper, the first continental Reformed theologian after Clauser to publish a homiletics manual, distinguished between exegetical sermons, which treated some book or a smaller section of Scripture, and methodical sermons devoted to the loci communes that were drawn from Scripture. Although he acknowledged that the latter had their place, he preferred exegetical sermons.18 The terminology used by Reformed homileticists also distinguished them from their Lutheran counterparts. Lutherans continued to adapt the structure of the classical oration to the sermon. The heart of the sermon, the paraphrase (or paraphrastic exposition) and discussion of the loci, was placed within the classical confirmatio. Reformed homileticists were more likely to use their own terminology, replacing confirmatio with tractatio, and dividing the tractatio into exegesis and application.19 In fact, since Lutheran homileticists taught that the loci should be applied to the audience, and the Reformed believed that application included teaching doctrine, the actual differences between the two were not so great. Nevertheless, at a time when confessional boundaries were becoming ever more rigid, terminology was an important distinguishing mark between Lutherans and Reformed. The Reformed terminology also points to a more fundamental difference with Lutheran homiletics: the influence of Ramism. Ramist preoccupation with method encouraged the development of practical guidelines for composition that could easily be applied to preaching. Ramus transferred the two chief parts of rhetoric, invention and disposition, to dialectic. Those who studied Ramist dialectic were thus well prepared for the twin tasks of Scripture exegesis and sermon composition, both of which required identifying the most important contents of discourse and then arranging them in a specific order. The emphasis of Ramist dialectic on organization of content rather than on rhetorical style also made it inherently attractive to preachers whose chief concern was to present the most important features of the sermon passage in a way their audience could both understand and remember. Because Ramist rhetoric was in essence reduced to style and delivery, it had less influence on Reformed homiletics, which devoted very little space to these areas.20 One of the earliest specifically Reformed homiletics texts, William Perkins’s Prophetica sive de Sacra et unica Concinandi ratione tractatus of 1592, was Ramist in both its organization by dichotomies and in the method it prescribed for preachers.21 In good Ramist fashion, Perkins began by discussing first the object of preaching, Holy Scripture (which could conveniently be dichotomized into Old and New Testaments), and moved on to the parts of preaching: interpretation and composition. Perkins’s prescriptions for sermon

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composition were fairly brief and general, falling under the two headings of dialysis, or discovering the theological loci contained in the Scripture text, and application, in which the doctrines so identified were accommodated to the audience and circumstances of the sermon, as either teaching or exhortation.22 Perkins published his book in 1592. Ten years later, it was reprinted in both Hanau and in Basel. In the meantime, Bartholomaeus Keckermann had published his Rhetorica Ecclesiastica, also organized by dichotomies and proceeding from more general principles to specific canons or rules according to his own adaptation of Ramist method.23 Keckermann first divided the task of preaching into composition and delivery. Composition was, in turn, subdivided into invention, which concerned the material of the sermon, and disposition, which governed its form. Like Perkins, Keckermann described the core of the sermon as the explication of the text, to which he added the amplification or expansion on its contents, and its application or accommodation to the audience. Keckermann readily cited various sources for his ideas, ranging from classical rhetoricians, patristic authors, and contemporary Reformed and even Catholic homileticists. But he did not name any Lutherans, other than Luther himself, even though his discussion of didactic passages in Scripture was clearly indebted to the Melanchthonian homiletic tradition.24 Although his work was not as heavily influenced by Ramism as those of Perkins and Keckermann, the Lausanne theology professor Guillaume Le Buc (Bucanus) also presented his prescriptions for sermon composition within a Ramist framework. Le Buc retained the terminology of classical rhetoric when discussing the parts of a sermon, but he fit those terms into his Ramist structure. The propositio, or sermon thesis, came at the end of the exordium, while the tractatio, or body of the sermon, was divided into narratio, exegesis, and applicatio. Le Buc did not discuss the procedure for interpreting a Scripture passage separately from the principles of sermon composition but subsumed it under his discussion of the exegetical portion of the sermon. He devoted particular attention to application, giving both general rules about the application of doctrine and special rules governing the different ways doctrine could be applied.25 The incorporation of Ramism into Reformed homiletics is yet another example of the way the evolution of rhetoric and dialectic affected pastoral education and increased the gulf between the confessions. Ramism was in many ways ideally suited to the needs of preachers, for its single method of textual analysis and genesis could be used first to interpret the Scripture passage and then followed in the composition of the sermon based on that passage. The wave of Reformed homiletics texts published at the turn of the century also reflected the penetration of Ramism into the curriculum of Reformed gymnasia and academies. Boys who had learned Ramist dialectic at these schools could easily transfer its methods to the art of preaching. The impact of Ramism on homiletics instruction can clearly be seen in developments in Basel over the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century.

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Homiletic Instruction in Basel Paradoxically, although preaching was acknowledged to be the central task of the evangelical preacher, it took several decades to develop a formal system of training preachers in Basel. The generation of pastors who entered the ministry at midcentury were given little academic instruction specifically in sermon preparation, for until the end of the sixteenth century, there was no formal instruction in homiletics or the art of preaching. Instead, future pastors were expected to draw on what they had learned from other disciplines. The skills a preacher needed were taught in the arts faculty. The extensive study of Greek prepared future pastors to read the New Testament in its original languages, and they at least had the opportunity to learn Hebrew so that they could read the Old Testament text as well. Humanist dialectic taught them how to analyze a text, while classical rhetoric provided both the rules for public speaking and examples of effective oratory. Theology lectures deepened the knowledge of Scripture gained through study of the biblical languages. Increasingly over the third quarter of the century, those lectures also provided a systematic framework to help students make sense of what they learned, by providing doctrinal headings or loci to help organize and remember the contents of Scripture. These loci could then be called on in composing and delivering a sermon. Whatever expertise in preaching these students acquired came through practical experience gained as vicars or as pastors in entry-level posts in or near Basel.26 Over time, the university instituted measures aimed more specifically at preparing young men to preach. Residents of the university’s colleges were required to attend the declamations, held every other week in alternation with the disputations. These declamations were orations in Latin given to a learned audience on an assigned topic, rather than sermons in German made to a popular audience on a passage of Scripture. Nevertheless, the method followed in composing an oration according to the principles of classical rhetoric could easily influence young pastors as they began preaching—particularly since Melanchthon’s rhetoric text, which they studied, drew clear parallels between orations and sermons.27 The two colleges also established regular practice sessions (concionum exercitia) in which students took turns at speaking extemporaneously, a necessary skill for young men who would be expected to give hour-long sermons every Sunday. By the end of the century, stipendiates who had received their masters’ degrees were preaching on weekdays according to a fixed rotation in the Franciscan church, where they shared the pulpit with the Spital preacher. Last but not least, when the university reopened after the plague epidemic of 1610–11, the description of the curriculum specified that theology students were required to preach German sermons in alternation with the Latin declamations that had long been a part of the university curriculum.28 The most important preparation for preaching that Basel’s students had was their regular attendance at preaching services, followed by the required

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analysis of what they had heard. While dialectic instruction was based on textbooks, whether those of contemporaries or the logical works of Aristotle, instruction in rhetoric relied heavily on the analysis and imitation of actual orations. It was therefore natural to transfer the methods of learning oratory in general to the specific task of learning how to preach. Just as students analyzed classical and contemporary orations to see how the precepts of rhetoric were applied, so they analyzed sermons—not only those they had heard but also printed versions—as models to imitate. The leaders of Basel’s church were not unaware of the importance of making their sermons available as models for the next generation of preachers, and several of them published sermon collections intended in part for theology students. These collections belong more properly within the discussion of preaching in Basel, however, and they will be examined in the next chapter. The remainder of this chapter will look instead at the homiletics texts available to Basel’s theology students. Basel’s publishers turned out a variety of preaching aids for those students to purchase. Several homiletics texts were published in the city over the course of the sixteenth century. These ranged from the short but practical guides of Melanchthon, Aepinus, and Dietrich combined in the De Arte Concionandi Formulae, published in 1540, to Erasmus’s much lengthier and more theoretical Ecclesiastes, which went through six Basel printings in the two decades after 1535. Hyperius’s De formandis concionibus sacris was also reprinted three times in Basel. To the extent that Basel’s future pastors studied these works, they would have learned a different method of preaching from the more purely expository style also modeled by the first generation of Reformed preachers. The sermons published in Basel during the 1570s demonstrate that the topical sermon advocated by these texts had become common in the city.29 Basel’s printers were sensitive to changes in the market for preaching aids outside the city, however, and by the end of the century they were producing homiletics texts strongly influenced by Ramism. In 1589, the Danish Ramist Andreas Krag published a series of lectures on preaching originally given by his teacher Jacob Matthiae (Madsen). With regard to content, Matthiae’s lectures relied heavily on both Melanchthon and Hemmingsen, but the material was presented in dichotomized fashion, and the dialectical techniques advocated in the book were taken straight from Ramus.30 Fifteen years later, the theology student and future professor Wolfgang Meyer oversaw a Basel edition of the most explicitly Ramist homiletics text then available, William Perkins’s Prophetica. Meyer had studied under Perkins in Cambridge, and he published Perkins’s Prophetica as a mark of gratitude to his teacher and as an aid to other theology students.31 Although he did not say so explicitly, he certainly also hoped to impress Basel’s church leaders with his qualifications for a pastoral post. These two texts hint at the growing influence of Ramism on preaching in Basel, but there is even more conclusive evidence that young theology students were being taught to preach within a Ramist framework from the early

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seventeenth century. In 1604, Amandus Polanus joined the ranks of Reformed theologians who published a homiletics text for their students. As was standard for such preaching manuals, Polanus stressed that his book was intended particularly for beginners, who learned how to preach by combining study of the principles with frequent practice.32 To facilitate this task, his De Concionum sacrarum Methodo Institutio combined preaching precepts and sermon examples, proceeding by means of Ramist dichotomies. Polanus’s work differed from other Reformed manuals in including within its definition of the concio not just the sermon itself but also the liturgical prayers that preceded and followed it. In other words, for Polanus, the concio was the entire preaching service. Its exordium was made up of the prayers that opened the service, whether the standard ones used for most services or variable prayers used for church holidays or special events such as baptisms. Likewise, Polanus identified the conclusion or epilogue of the concio with the prayers and dismissal that closed the service. The central part of the service was the tractatio, or the sermon itself. It was customary not only in Basel but in other Reformed churches as well to refer to the entire service as the ‘‘sermon,’’ but Polanus was unique in structuring his homiletics text to reflect this broader meaning of the term.33 In his treatment of the actual sermon, Polanus followed his Reformed contemporaries by combining elements of classical rhetoric with an emphasis on exegesis and application, all in accordance with Ramist method. The model for preaching Polanus recommended as ‘‘the most excellent method that can be used by a preacher’’ corresponded to the parts of a classical oration. The sermon was to have an exordium, and then a summary of the Scripture text, followed by the proposition, or chief point of the sermon, which was divided into parts. The preacher then explained the theme and clarified obscurities in the text, confirmed his thesis, refuted errors, and concluded with a brief summary. Within this general framework, Polanus fell back into dichotomies. Scripture was to be explained and then applied; the method of explication varied according to whether the sermon dealt with an entire chapter of Scripture or only a small section; the proposition that shaped the sermon could be theoretical, leading to knowledge of the truth (whether concerning faith or good works), or practical, pertaining to the effects of the divine decrees. Polanus also pointed out that the proposition would often concern issues disputed ‘‘with papists, Arians, Ubiquitists, and other heretics, whether about faith, the worship of God, or the duties of a Christian.’’34 To illustrate his points, Polanus interspersed sample sermons into his description of preaching method, demonstrating how a specific passage of Scripture could be analyzed by dichotomies. After finishing his description of method, he reproduced an entire sermon on Psalm 51:7, discussing the nature of original sin. Each section of this model sermon is clearly marked, with the confirmation, or core of the sermon, presented in the form of a syllogism.35 After he had described the basic method for composing a sermon, Polanus suggested six ways of arranging its contents or disguising its basic structure. These variations could include asking and answering rhetorical

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questions about the chief doctrine, putting the refutation of false doctrine before the exposition of true doctrine, or describing the application before explicating the Scripture text. Although he did not acknowledge the source, two of his variations were typical of Lutheran preaching. The first recommended that the preacher draw one or more loci, ‘‘especially catechetical ones,’’ from the Scripture text and devote the sermon to those concepts. The second was a variation of the sermon on a complex theme relying on the principles of dialectic: the preacher was to treat first the subject, then to treat the predicate of the chief doctrine, and finally to consider the two parts of the proposition as a whole. Polanus also illustrated each of these types of arrangement with lengthy sermon models.36 Polanus approached the art of preaching as a teacher rather than a preacher, and at least some of his model ‘‘sermons’’ were delivered in the lecture hall rather than from the pulpit. In his model sermon on Genesis 3:15, for instance, he listed the three prophecies contained in the verse: the perpetual enmity between Satan and Christ, the incarnation of the eternal Son who would defeat Satan, and Christ’s passion. Polanus said that he would consider the first and third prophecies at another time but would now consider the second prophecy. In fact, Polanus gave these lectures on the first prophecy during the Christmas season of 1603, and he gave a set of lectures on Christ’s passion and death during Holy Week of 1604, all based on Genesis 3:15. Polanus used the technique of rhetorical question and answer in his Christmas lectures as well. It seems likely, then, that his model sermons were actually theology lectures.37 Since Polanus was not a pastor himself, it is perhaps not surprising that his advice for preachers would reflect his own teaching experience, but by virtually identifying sermons with lectures, he completely ignored the distinction between popular and scholarly exegesis made by other homileticists. This was in itself not a new development in Basel’s Reformed church—it was typical of the first generation of evangelical preachers as well—but both the form and the content of the lecture-sermons had changed drastically since the time of the Reformation. Where the reformers’ lectures had been closer to popular sermons in the nontechnical nature of doctrine and the emphasis on application, Polanus’s lectures and model sermons expounded the fine points of confessional theology. In both his theology lectures and his model sermons, Polanus frequently cited the church fathers, and he just as frequently condemned Catholic doctrines and those who defended them. Thus his sermon on Isaiah 53:1–6 rejected Robert Bellarmine and other Jesuits who taught that the merits of the martyrs established peace with God, and he defended the Reformed interpretation of Christ’s descent into hell, shoring that doctrine up with references to Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and various church councils—to name only a few of those he cited. Although his discussion of the passage was so long that it clearly exceeded the one-hour limit placed on Sunday sermons in Basel—not to mention the half-hour weekday sermons—Polanus provided no guidance about how to divide the text into shorter, more manageable segments for preaching.38

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Polanus’s insensitivity to the distinctions among theology lecture, declamation, and sermon may have contributed to his book’s lack of popularity: it was one of the few Protestant homiletics text written in the century after the Reformation that was not reprinted at least once.39 The book’s arrangement also differentiated it from other contemporary homiletic works. While Polanus interspersed his sermon examples throughout his discussion of the various methods of preaching, most homileticists first summarized, in relatively few pages, the steps to follow in writing a sermon, and then included several sermons as illustration. This type of arrangement made such texts particularly useful for students who wanted a quick overview of sermon preparation and clear models to study and to imitate.40 It is perhaps to be expected, therefore, that Polanus’s faithful disciple and popularizer Johann Georg Gross would produce a homiletics text that was a much-abridged version of Polanus’s text. In line with his goal of abridgement, Gross omitted discussion of the preaching service as a whole, focusing only on sermon composition. Using very simple language, he explained Polanus’s six variations of sermon structure and gave brief examples of each method, although he reversed the order in which he discussed the various methods of shaping a sermon: his first method was Polanus’s sixth variation, his second method was Polanus’s fifth variation, and so on. The usus, or application, was an essential part of the sermon, no matter which method was used. Gross did not include sermon examples in his abbreviated text, but he may have considered this unnecessary, since he had published a huge collection of his own sermons thirteen years earlier. He did, however, add some standard advice for the beginning preacher: he should be diligent in studying Scripture, he should always prefer depth of understanding to breadth of reading in his own study, and in his preaching he should be sure to allot enough time not only to write but also to practice delivering the sermon.41 Gross was able to write such a highly condensed homiletics text because he knew that his target audience, Basel’s theology students, was already well trained in both analyzing and composing texts using the skills of Ramist dialectic and classical rhetoric. The text’s focus on the various ways of arranging a sermon indicates that those students were competent and comfortable enough with the basic tasks of exegesis and sermon composition that they could move on to more advanced issues. Despite its abbreviated nature, Gross’s homiletics text was no more popular than that of his mentor Polanus—perhaps because it was so closely derived from Polanus’s work. Nevertheless, both works are instructive as illustrations of what Basel’s future pastors were learning about the art of preaching. By the early seventeenth century, Ramist method decisively shaped homiletics instruction in Basel perhaps even more thoroughly than it did in other Reformed churches. Although Polanus still prescribed the basic structure of a classical oration for writing a sermon, the contents of each part of the sermon consisted of dichotomies. For Polanus, as for his disciple Gross, Ramism provided the tools for interpreting the text of Scripture and then organizing that interpretation into a sermon to teach others. The same could be said with

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regard to other Reformed homileticists. To the extent that expository preaching had deeper roots within the Reformed tradition than in Lutheranism, Ramism was particularly appealing to those seeking to teach both Scripture exegesis and sermon composition. In homiletics, as in theology, Ramist method played a fundamental role in training future Reformed pastors. What impact did these Ramist homiletics texts have on preaching in Basel? If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then the best way to assess both the effectiveness of homiletics instruction and the impact of changes in that instruction over time is to look at the sermons preached by Basel’s pastors. The individual sermons and sermon collections published in the city over the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century not only reflect what each generation of pastors had learned about preaching; many of them were published specifically as models to help teach the next generation of preachers. An examination of these sermons provides concrete illustration of the evolution of Reformed preaching.

8 The Evolution of Preaching in Basel

In the fall of 1560, Basel’s Senate issued a stinging rebuke to its preachers. It began with a reminder that the synodal ordinances adopted in 1539 and 1542 required the pastors to be diligent in their studies, so that they could preach God’s word ‘‘purely and clearly, without human traditions mixed in.’’ When necessary, they were ‘‘earnestly to rebuke sins in general using the word of God,’’ but they were to do so in a way that avoided envy and insults or attacks on specific individuals. Where someone was guilty of grave sin, this was not to be proclaimed from the pulpit but reported to the Senate. To this image of the preacher’s responsibility, the Senate held up the preaching of the city’s pastors. The Senate was scathing in its criticism, remarking sarcastically that ‘‘you can hear from their sermons how they spend their study time, for they don’t preach the same.’’ Some pastors did indeed proclaim the word of God as they should, but others began by reading Scripture text, and then started to preach ‘‘according to habit, dragging in recent news or other things, pouring abuse on foreign governments and those who are not comrades in the faith with violent words, until they have wasted the hour. You can easily see just how little they have studied for their sermons.’’ Perhaps, the Senate suggested icily, the problem was that many of the pastors ‘‘were concerning themselves too much with secular things (like recent news, foreign affairs and secular business that belongs to the magistrate) and thereby neglecting their studies.’’1 The Senate’s denunciation gives an intriguing view of preaching in Basel at midcentury. In its recapitulation of how the pastors were supposed to preach, it implies that the laity had come to expect a detailed explanation of the Scripture text when they heard an evangelical sermon. The description of what pastors were actually doing in the

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pulpit, however, demonstrates that invective and personal polemic continued to characterize many of their sermons. It also reveals the lingering traces of preReformation preaching, which was thematic rather than text-based, and hints at the mixing of the old and new forms in the hands of preachers who were neither oratorically gifted nor highly trained in theology and in public speaking. This variety of preaching styles is what one might expect from the background of Basel’s city pastors in 1560. Five of them had held ecclesiastical positions before the Reformation that would have given them frequent opportunities to attend sermons and even to preach themselves. An equal number were born after the Reformation and had grown up with evangelical preaching. The remaining two had been teenagers or young men at the time of the Reformation. They had grown up hearing medieval sermons, but their own models for preaching were the evangelical sermons preached by the city’s reformers. None of these last seven pastors had received any formal instruction in homiletics; they would have learned how to preach by adapting their knowledge of classical rhetoric to the pulpit and by imitating the sermons they heard. Given these varied backgrounds, it is not surprising that preaching in Basel was of uneven quality. In some cases, it was apparently easier to comment on current events or chastise individuals from the pulpit than it was to teach from a passage of Scripture. Although training in homiletics did not necessarily guarantee outstanding preaching, the regularization and development of pastoral education did lead to a general improvement in the level of preaching and a transformation in the type of sermons preached. In 1560, the Senate clearly expected sermons to be expository homilies that clarified and explained the Scripture text, and in general, expository preaching continued to be a hallmark of Reformed preaching. By the 1570s, however, the topical form of preaching developed by Melanchthon and elaborated by his disciples was becoming standard in Basel. Whether or not Basel’s pastors were studying contemporary homiletic texts, they certainly shared the general conviction that although sermons were directed to a diffeent audience than was Latin oratory, they should follow the precepts of classical rhetoric in constructing their sermons. This topical model of preaching proved to be transitional, for it was gradually replaced in the early seventeenth century by a form of preaching heavily influenced by Ramism and dedicated to the inculcation of Reformed Orthodoxy. The evolution of preaching in Basel thus illustrates the practical impact of changes to pastoral education in general and particularly to homiletics over this period. The evolution of dialectic and the increased time devoted to the study of formal theology, as opposed to more general religious education, both contributed to the transformation of preaching.

From Expository to Topical Preaching, 1560–85 The development of preaching in Basel over the second half of the sixteenth century can be demonstrated most easily by a comparison of the sermons of

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several preachers from the first post-Reformation generation. These men were born within a decade of each other, between 1533 and 1544, and they held prominent posts in the city’s church and university. Their sermons survive in differing formats and degrees of completeness; taken as a whole, they give a fairly detailed view of preaching in Basel. The earliest sermons were written by a young pastor, Christian Wurstisen, while he was serving in two successive parishes.2 As was typical for his generation of pastors, Wurstisen acquired the skills of preaching piecemeal. He demonstrated his mastery of Latin oratory at his bachelor’s examination by responding to the question ‘‘whether it is correct and appropriate to teach boys rhetoric after dialectic or not.’’3 Whether he had opportunity to practice the same skill in vernacular preaching is another question. His chief preparation for the pastorate came through the theology lectures he attended. In 1562, the same year he received his master’s degree, he began his own book of theological commonplaces, listing appropriate scripture passages under fifty-eight headings ranging from ‘‘on God’’ to ‘‘on vows.’’4 That summer he had further opportunity to practice the skills of exegesis and teaching when he gave a set of extraordinary lectures on the epistle to the Galatians.5 Wurstisen’s preaching experience was limited before he received his first pastoral appointment. He noted in his diary that he gave his very first sermon in May 1562, before an audience of pastors and fellow theology students. His first public sermon was delivered six months later, in a nearby village. Through the spring and summer of 1563 he preached sporadically in other rural churches before becoming pastor of the village of Hu¨ningen in September. His future was not yet secure, however, for the villagers complained that he spoke too softly and that they could not understand his sermons. To prove his abilities, Wurstisen gave a sermon in Basel before a gathering that included pastors, theology professors, students, and his parents. His sermon met with official approval, and Wurstisen remained in Hu¨ningen for the next year. In August 1564 he was given a temporary assignment as assistant pastor of the city parish of St. Theodor, which had just lost its senior pastor in the plague epidemic then raging.6 While in Hu¨ningen, Wurstisen preached on the Gospels, usually following the traditional pericopes for each Sunday. He deviated from the lectionary when he deemed it appropriate, however. During the Sundays in Lent, for instance, he preached on Christ’s passion, and on the Sunday preceding Ascension through Pentecost he gave a series of three catechetical sermons on the Lord’s Prayer. As assistant pastor at St. Theodor, he preached not at the main Sunday service, which was the responsibility of the senior pastor, but at the early service, and his sermons were based on the customary epistle text for that day. His weekday sermons were lectio continua expositions of a biblical book of his own choosing. Over the course of the two years he served at St. Theodor, Wurstisen preached on both Colossians and the Psalms. He also preached his share of both wedding and funeral sermons over the course of his brief pastoral career.7

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Wurstisen’s Sunday sermons followed the expository model of preaching, being much closer to the homily than to the topical sermon advocated in contemporary homiletics texts. His predilection for the homily may have been due to the fact that he had far more experience as a lecturer than as a preacher when he became a pastor. It is also likely that as a young preacher he was imitating the model of preaching he heard in Basel. His sermons followed the general pattern of reading or paraphrasing and then explaining the literal sense of a verse or passage, followed by a direct application of the passage to his hearers. Thus, in one of his earliest sermons, preached on the healing of the ten lepers (Luke 17:11–19), Wurstisen first interpreted the lepers’ plea for mercy as a sign of their faith in Christ, which had come from the Holy Spirit. He then said that the passage taught two things, one that serves for our consolation, and the other for our admonition and moral improvement: First, we are consoled that when we pray to our Lord Christ for mercy, he himself knows well what our misery and concerns are, who can show us such mercy that is powerful and can help us, as is testified about him in Scripture. . . . Secondly, that we are also warned that we should have mercy and take to heart our neighbor’s concerns.8 Occasionally Wurstisen expanded his discussion of the text to include a very brief theological locus drawn from it. In his sermon on the ten lepers, for instance, he discussed the value of prayer, again emphasizing the practical lesson to be drawn from Scripture: This has not been written in vain, but is for our teaching and instruction, that in all our concerns and burdens we should run to the Lord Christ, call on him for his grace and mercy, and stand before him in true and firm faith and trust, for he gladly wants to be there and help us according to his divine will. And this because firstly this is his earnest command, that we flee to him in everything as the true mediator and helper, and look to no one else, not to any saints or the like. . . . Second, that we truly need him, for who is there (if each one looks to himself) who in his course here on earth doesn’t feel his misery and face much adversity, externally and internally, and especially those who want to live a genuine Christian life.9 Wurstisen followed this model of explanation and application even in his occasional sermons. Although a catechetical sermon on the Lord’s Prayer might seem the ideal opportunity to teach in a more doctrinal or topical fashion, Wurstisen focused instead on explaining the meaning of each petition and applying it to his hearers.10 Nor did his wedding and funeral sermons differ stylistically from his Sunday sermons, although the texts he chose related to marriage or to death and consolation, respectively.11 Although Wurstisen’s sermons differed structurally from the rhetorically influenced topical sermons urged by contemporary homileticists, his sermons

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were not devoid of rhetorical flourish. The introduction and conclusion in particular tended to follow the models of classical oratory. Wurstisen often referred to the topic of the previous week’s sermon or emphasized the value and relevance of the text to his audience. In his introduction and throughout his sermon he frequently said that something was excellent, useful, necessary, or good for his hearers to know.12 In this he was following the standard advice of classical rhetoricians, repeated in contemporary homiletics texts. He also addressed his audience directly in order to point out the practical implications of the text for his hearers, using phrases such as ‘‘we need to understand this,’’ ‘‘here we learn that,’’ or ‘‘we should observe.’’ The best term to describe the overall tone of Wurstisen’s sermons is pastoral—concerned with deepening the experiential piety of their hearers. An important component of that piety was a framework for interpreting the events of the day and the difficulties of daily life that was shaped by the evangelical gospel. There is very little emphasis on doctrinal knowledge, and those doctrines that are discussed are immediately applied or made relevant to the lives of the hearers. Thus in a sermon on serving God rather than Mammon (Matt. 6:24–5), he acknowledged his audience’s legitimate concern with obtaining sufficient food and clothing, but he reminded them that too much worry was sin: ‘‘The Lord Christ here is not simply against the care with which one looks to see how he can feed and clothe himself, but rather he opposes such concern which is more like unbelief and mistrust, where one doesn’t trust God the giver of all good, and therefore gives himself over entirely to laying up much here on earth.’’13 He closed the sermon by reminding them that ‘‘we should give ourselves wholly and completely to [the Lord’s] service, obey his commands and will, serve and depend on him alone.’’14 Most of Wurstisen’s sermons can be summarized under two headings. Doctrinally, the sermons emphasize the fundamental evangelical message: the absolute sinfulness of humankind, and therefore the need for redemption offered through Christ; God’s love and faithfulness, demonstrated through the sending of his Son and through Christ’s life on earth; and faith alone as the basis for salvation. Wurstisen also stressed the practical outworking of evangelical belief: the need to trust God in all circumstances in this life, assurance of salvation in the next life, and exhortation to love of neighbor and moral virtue in view of Christ’s second coming. Although the sermons are clearly evangelical, there is little that is specifically confessional in them. Wurstisen did not preach on those doctrines that were disputed between the Reformed and Lutherans. His practice of following the traditional pericopes meant that he did not have much opportunity to address those Scripture passages that served as proof texts for confessional controversy. Nor did he take the opportunity to preach on either baptism or the Lord’s Supper on those Sundays when he administered the sacrament.15 Likewise, there is very little anti-Catholic polemic. On the rare occasion when he mentioned Catholicism, he tended to depict it as something that concerned past generations but not his hearers: ‘‘We well know the great

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error in which our parents were mired, and how the pure teachings of God were besmirched by papal laws, and how gracious the Lord has been in causing the pure light of his holy gospel to rise and shine in these last days.’’16 In fact, rather than attacking Catholics, Wurstisen was more likely to criticize the complacency of his coreligionists, condemning, for instance, the ‘‘grave abuse’’ of those who did not come to church to hear God’s word on Sunday but instead spent the day in drinking, gambling, and ‘‘other godless work.’’17 Christian Wurstisen left the Basel ministry in 1566.18 There are no other extant sermons to reveal what Basel’s parishioners were hearing from the preachers during the 1560s. Beginning in the early 1570s, however, both published and manuscript sermons indicate the gradual adoption of the topical sermon—more characteristic of Lutherans than Reformed—in Basel. The most important of these preachers, both in terms of his position in the Basel church and his homiletic output, was Johannes Brandmu¨ller. Unlike Wurstisen, Brandmu¨ller was not from Basel but grew up in Biberach, and throughout his childhood and school years he heard a broader variety of preachers and preaching styles than his colleagues who had never left Basel. Brandmu¨ller studied briefly in Tu¨bingen, then moved to Strasbourg before matriculating in Basel in 1551. He became the assistant pastor of St. Theodor in 1556, and he served unofficially as the senior pastor during the two years Wurstisen acted as the assistant pastor. Unlike Wurstisen, he was confirmed in his position in 1566, and he held the post until his death in 1596. He also held the chair of Hebrew, and later of Old Testament, at the university. In 1572, Brandmu¨ller published a volume of 180 funeral sermons. Four years later, he added a similar collection of sixty wedding sermons to a new edition of the funeral sermons.19 The funeral sermons, in particular, proved to be extremely popular, going through three more printings in Basel, as well as two editions in Hanau and Stockholm, over the next thirty years. The success of this sermon collection is all the more striking because other Reformed churches in both Switzerland and France rejected the practice of funeral sermons, advocating instead a radical simplification of mortuary rites in conscious opposition to Catholic practice. Although the sermons were published in Latin and hence accessible to an international audience, Brandmu¨ller’s chief audience would have been his fellow pastors in Basel and the pastors in newly Reformed territories in Germany, such as the Palatinate, that retained the Lutheran custom of preaching funeral sermons.20 Brandmu¨ller remarked in his introduction that he had written the sermons for his own use but had been persuaded by his fellow pastors to publish them.21 The sermons themselves were Latin summaries rather than literal reproductions of what had been preached. As such, they are at least two steps removed from what Brandmu¨ller’s audience heard when the sermons were first given. Nevertheless, their function as models to be imitated by other pastors gives them a special significance in illustrating what was preached in Basel during the 1570s. The first striking difference between Brandmu¨ller’s sermons and those preached by Wurstisen is their form. A few of these sermons were structured

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for expository preaching, with a phrase of Scripture followed by a brief explanation of its meaning. The great majority, however, were organized topically, with the contents arranged under three or four points. Brandmu¨ller often devoted the first point of his sermon to an explanation or interpretation of the Scripture text. In the remainder of the sermon, he expanded on the themes drawn from the text or moved from the specific example of the scriptural text to the broader application to every Christian. Thus, in a sermon on King Hezekiah’s illness, Brandmu¨ller told his audience that the passage taught how one should live prior to death in order to obtain ‘‘infinite and eternal happiness,’’ and it presented Hezekiah as a type of Christ, who was freed from death.22 The overall effect of this format was to shift the purpose of the sermon from familiarizing the audience with the Scripture text to giving them a deeper knowledge of doctrine and to focus on application. The themes of these sermons were those appropriate for the specific occasions of marriages or funerals. Within these limits, however, the sermons managed to cover a fairly broad range of topics, including both the doctrinal and the practical aspects of the Christian faith. As Wurstisen had done, Brandmu¨ller sought to provide his hearers with an evangelical framework for interpreting their world. The funeral sermons, for instance, addressed the inevitability of death and judgment and the need to be prepared for both; the purpose and proper response to sickness and suffering; and the blessedness of life after death for the righteous. They also dealt with issues that might be more immediate to his hearers, such as how to respond to fears about death and how to interpret the circumstances surrounding a death. The death of Sarah, for instance, was an opportunity to remind the congregation that all human beings are mortal, but Brandmu¨ller also pointed out that God approves of natural affection in his saints, ‘‘as long as they do not forget the rule of faith,’’ and he held up Abraham as a model of how one should grieve over the death of a spouse.23 Brandmu¨ller used Isaac’s preparation to bless Esau in order to teach ‘‘the misery of this present life, for Isaac grew old, he lost his powers, death approached, and he did not know the day of his death, that is, he led a miserable, brief and uncertain life. If a just man so considers [his life] on earth, how much more the impious and sinner?’’ Brandmu¨ller also drew more a positive lesson from the text, for Isaac set a good example as a paterfamilias who tried to prevent discord among his heirs before his death. The passage also taught children to heed their parents’ desires before they died; ‘‘indeed, we all ought to offer mutual blessings . . . for we are all ignorant of the time of our deaths, as Isaac also confessed, when he said that he expected to die any day.’’24 Although the sermons were intended chiefly to console and encourage his hearers, Brandmu¨ller did not hesitate to criticize common errors and superstitions. First among these errors was the denial of the resurrection, which he addressed in several sermons. His passion comes through even in the Latin summary: ‘‘I am embarrassed to admonish Christians of the resurrection. For he who must be taught that there is a resurrection, and is not wholly persuaded . . . he is surely not a Christian. . . . Who are those who do not believe

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in the resurrection? Those who live viciously a sinful and impure life, as the prophet says. . . . Man cannot—cannot, I say—live purely, if he does not believe in the resurrection.’’25 He also condemned the belief in ghosts and the consultation of those who claimed to predict the future: ‘‘For what do they want, who run to fortunetellers, astrologers, physiognomists, horoscope-casters, ventriloquists and magicians, so that they may know the measure of their lifetime? The Preacher proclaims, ‘man does not know his end,’ and yet we want to know of our end from those who don’t even know their own end?’’26 The funeral sermons could provide an opportunity to teach about the roles determined by gender or social status: the pain of childbirth and the possibility of death as an indication of woman’s subjection to man and the result of Eve’s sin; the responsibility of the magistrate to defend justice and punish evil; the obligation of the rich to live humbly.27 The wedding sermons were even more useful for teaching about the proper roles of man and woman, husband and wife. They also gave Brandmu¨ller a chance to instill Christian sexual ethics, from the rejection of polygamy (although it was practiced by the patriarchs) and prostitution or the condemnation of adultery and fornication to the appropriate age at which one should marry and the proper reasons for marrying.28 Brandmu¨ller’s sermons had a more scholarly tone than those of Wurstisen. Where Wurstisen had been content to explain the scriptural text without referring to the works of others, Brandmu¨ller regularly cited a number of authorities, ranging from the pagan classics through patristic and scholastic theologians to his contemporaries. His most frequently used sources for the material in both sermon collections were the Old Testament commentaries of his colleague Martin Borrhaus. To give only a few examples, his wedding sermons on Genesis 2 and 3 included literal citations from the corresponding passages of Borrhaus’s Genesis commentary, while his funeral sermons on the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2–3 relied heavily on his colleague’s Revelation commentary.29 Brandmu¨ller’s preaching thus proved to be important for the popular dissemination of the theology taught at the city’s university. Taken by themselves, Brandmu¨ller’s model sermons do not provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate the popularity of the topical sermon in Basel. There are, however, other sermons that support this interpretation. Two sermons published in 1573 by Brandmu¨ller’s assistant pastor, Jonas Grasser, are also structured topically.30 Although they have no connection with Brandmu¨ller’s model sermon collections, Grasser’s sermons illustrate how a pastor could use a schematic, three-point discussion as the basis for a fully developed sermon. Both of Grasser’s sermons were based on the Gospel text for the second Sunday in Advent (Luke 21:25–33), which describes Christ’s second coming. Rather than going through the passage verse by verse, Grasser introduced the theme of Christ’s return in the exordium of the first sermon, and then listed the three points he wanted his audience to learn from the sermons. The first sermon balanced doctrinal content—why Christ explained the signs of the end—with practical application: the five forms of

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consolation that Christians should draw from those signs, and how they were to live in expectation of Christ’s coming. The second sermon focused on the suddenness of Christ’s return, and the need for Christians to be ever prepared for that return.31 The two sermons repeat the same ideas found in Wurstisen’s preaching: the utter corruption of human nature, salvation through faith in Christ alone, the hope based on the promise of Christ’s return, and the admonition not to be anxious for the future. The success of the topical model of preaching emerges most clearly during the 1580s, in the preaching of the man who assumed leadership of Basel’s church. Just as his lectures brought a dramatic change in the style and content of theology instruction, so Johann Jacob Grynaeus’s sermons brought a new emphasis on doctrinal precision to the Basel church. But one cannot draw an accurate picture of preaching in Basel at the end of the century by relying only on the sermons of the most skilled preachers. The sermons of Grynaeus’s colleague at the cathedral, Johann Jacob Gugger, are a fascinating contrast in both content and style, and they give us a better appreciation of what Baslers heard in the city’s most important church.

Cathedral Preaching: Contrasting Models, 1585–1610 In addition to his responsibilities for lecturing and supervising theological disputations as theology professor, Grynaeus accepted a host of new duties when he became pastor of the cathedral parish in early 1586. The most constant of these was preaching: as the senior pastor, he was expected to preach during the morning worship services on Sunday and Tuesday. Every three weeks he gave the 6 a.m. Ratspredigt on the other weekdays as well. The number of services was increased on the religious holidays still celebrated in Basel, and so Grynaeus gave additional sermons at Christmas and New Year’s (Christ’s Circumcision), Holy Week (twice a day) and Easter, and Ascension Day. Finally, as senior pastor he also preached on special days of prayer and repentance, during Saturday vesper services preceding the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and occasionally during the Sunday vespers service.32 Grynaeus’s sermons provide a unique look into both pastoral education and pastoral performance in the later sixteenth century. Grynaeus belonged to the same pastoral generation as Christian Wurstisen, Johannes Brandmu¨ller, and Jonas Grasser, so he had learned preaching at about the same time and by the same means. Unlike Wurstisen and Grasser, however, he studied not only in Basel but also at Tu¨bingen, where Jacob Andreae was lecturing on the topical method of preaching during the 1560s. Whether or not Grynaeus attended these lectures, he was certainly exposed to the topical method of preaching, and the results are reflected in his own sermons.33 The sermons Grynaeus published in the 1580s differed in important ways from those preached in the 1560s by a young student pastor. Grynaeus’s sermons were produced by an expert theologian and practiced preacher at the height of his powers. After twenty years as pastor and theology professor,

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Grynaeus had mastered the art of preaching and developed his own style. The impact of his preaching within Basel’s church was multiplied by the requirement that students of the Latin schools and university colleges attend the sermons preached in the cathedral. Basel’s future clergy were expected to observe, analyze, and imitate Grynaeus’s sermons, which gave them an authority beyond that of the sermons preached elsewhere in Basel. Grynaeus published many of his sermons, beginning even before he officially took up his position as cathedral pastor and antistes: in February 1586 he sent from Heidelberg the written-out versions of two sermons he had just given in Basel while he had been there negotiating the terms for his return to the city.34 Over the next several years Grynaeus published many more of his sermons, either as individual vernacular sermons or in larger collections that included a variety of sermon types and formats: the sermons preached in the worship services on Sunday and Tuesday mornings, those for holidays or special occasions, such as the installation of a new pastor or consecration of a church, funeral sermons, and the like. The largest number of sermons dated from the first ten years after Grynaeus’s return to Basel: like his theology lectures and disputations, his publishing activities dropped off dramatically after the mid-1590s. Some of these published sermons must have been fairly close to the version actually preached. Others, particularly sermon series devoted to an individual book of the Bible, were printed in question-and-answer format or in schematic outline, generally in German but in a few instances in Latin. The schematic outlines reflected Grynaeus’s typical manner of sermon preparation. As he said in the introduction to his first published sermons, his eyesight was poor, and so instead of writing out his sermons in full, a practice recommended by some sixteenth-century homiletics texts, he drafted the sermon giving the chief points to discuss in Latin.35 The publication of these schematicized sermons on individual books of the Bible hints at Grynaeus’s target audiences. They were intended for literate Baslers wanting to understand the Bible, but they were also particularly useful to theology students and pastors in office because they provided both a bare-bones commentary on the biblical text and an example of what points to cover when preaching on that text. On a few occasions the same sermon was published both as a schematic outline and in its final written-out form. A comparison of these versions shows that the chief difference involved the amount of detail and illustration that Grynaeus used to support his points. In a sermon on prayer based on Joel 2, for instance, his full sermon added quotations from St. Augustine and examples of prayer from the lives of St. Paul and the prophets Jeremiah and Daniel, King David, and Christ himself.36 Grynaeus filled out a sermon on martyrdom, based on Philippians 2:17–18, by explaining the context within which St. Paul was writing and by describing the persecution of Protestants under Queen Mary in England and the case of a French refugee from Geneva who was martyred in Lyons.37

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Grynaeus was keenly aware of both the pedagogical and propagandistic value of his sermons. His first three sermon collections published after he returned to Basel were dedicated to women: the wives of two of Basel’s political leaders and the widow of Heinrich Petri, the printer who had served for many years as one of the Deputaten. All three of these sermon collections contained quasi-catechetical appendices explaining what one should believe concerning the Lord’s Supper, how one should prepare to receive it, and what parents should teach their children before allowing them to stand as godparents at a baptism or to receive the Lord’s Supper for the first time. Grynaeus thus skillfully combined a ploy to win the support of the city’s political elite with their parental responsibility to teach the catechism to their children.38 Grynaeus preached topical sermons during the main worship service on Sunday mornings or on church festivals, for regularly held special services such as days of prayer or preparation for the sacrament, and for the weddings and funerals of prominent parishioners. He also preached at the Tuesday morning services and, in rotation with his associates in the cathedral parish, he gave the Sunday afternoon sermon. For these regular services, Grynaeus preached a set of sermons either on an entire book or on a large section of a longer book. Unlike Wurstisen, he does not seem to have followed the traditional pericopes for the church year.39 Shortly after his return to Basel in 1586, for instance, he began preaching on the first chapter of the Gospel of John in his Sunday and Tuesday sermons. In January 1587 he preached on the letters to the seven churches in the Book of Revelation; these were followed by a series of sermons covering the entire Book of Joel that lasted from February through September.40 Every third week, he could continue his sermon series on a Scripture text during the weekday Ratspredigt. In this way he covered the books of Philippians, Titus, and 1 Corinthians. He also preached on Christ’s high priestly prayer (John 17) in the fall of 1590, which led into a series of sermons on John’s passion narrative preceding and during Lent of 1591.41 In his sermon series, Grynaeus was mindful of the need to describe the book’s historical context and its value for his listeners. Thus before beginning to preach on the text of 1 Corinthians, Grynaeus devoted an entire sermon to explaining how the church of Basel could learn from the example of the church at Corinth, and he listed seven issues addressed by the letter.42 Similarly he began his sermons on Titus by telling his listeners that the book taught about the administration of the church, which included the appointment and conduct of its pastors; the proper relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and servants; and the correct attitude toward the government, particularly when relations between magistrate and subjects were troubled.43 The sermons themselves followed closely the structure recommended by both rhetoric and homiletics textbooks. Grynaeus’s exordium, or introduction, was intended to engage his audience’s attention by showing them that what he had to say was useful or necessary. He did this, for instance, by describing his sermon as an explanation of a section of the catechism, by referring to

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current events, by comparing Basel’s church with the individuals or groups described in the Scripture text, or by pointing out the consolatory value of the Scripture text just read.44 The exordium was followed by the propositio and divisio, which is most clearly seen in his schematic sermons. Grynaeus gave a brief statement of the theme or ‘‘chief doctrine’’ (Hauptlehr) of the Scripture passage, sometimes providing some context for understanding that theme.45 He then frequently identified two to four points that would be discussed at more length throughout the body of the sermon, which corresponded to the confirmatio of a classical oration. In his printed sermons, Grynaeus routinely numbered these points for his listeners and repeated them as an aid to both their comprehension and memory. His perorations were generally very brief, consisting of a final benediction or short prayer rather than a summary of the sermon’s contents.46 The confutatio was the only part of the classical oration that Grynaeus omitted. His published sermons were both irenic and moderate in tone, lacking polemical attacks on doctrinal adversaries. Grynaeus also avoided sharp harangues against specific sins and those known to have committed them. He could condemn hypocrisy, blasphemy, adultery, and other grave sins, and say that such sins should be punished more severely than was the practice in Basel.47 He could also lament that in princely courts people looked to the prince rather than to God for approval, and that in commercial centers wealthy merchants were more concerned with temporal goods than with eternal ones.48 But, at least in print, he did not cross the fine line between such general criticism and what could be interpreted as an attack on individuals or groups within Basel or an effort to dictate policy to its ruling elite.49 In general, Grynaeus followed the advice he gave to the rural pastors in the preface to a series of sermons preached during a visitation of the churches: they should avoid bitterness and anything that insulted or belittled their neighbors, even if God had not yet granted that they live by the true light of the Gospel. It was better to pray for one’s neighbors and to set an example of good behavior than to be quarrelsome and to hate them as enemies.50 Many of Grynaeus’s sermons, particularly those on the Lord’s Supper, had a strong devotional and Christocentric emphasis that transcended confessional differences. From his earliest published sermons, Grynaeus emphasized the centrality of faith and trust in Christ.51 The shorter sermon schemata, sometimes published in question-and-answer form, also maintained this emphasis on faith and trust. Thus in the opening sermons on the epistle to the Philippians, Grynaeus reminded his hearers that the faithful should wish grace and peace for each other, that they should pray for each other, and that God would preserve the elect in faith until Christ’s return, although the Bible warned that in the last days many would fall away from the faith.52 Grynaeus’s reference to the doctrine of election demonstrates that the pastoral tone of his sermons did not preclude the vigorous advocacy of Reformed doctrine. He often referred to his audience as the elect in his sermons, emphasizing the consolatory value of election by assuring his hearers of their

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salvation and using the doctrine to explain why others—particularly the rich and powerful of this world—rejected evangelical doctrine.53 Grynaeus rarely discussed the covenant; his few references to it occur in conjunction with his discussions of the sacraments.54 Because the Lord’s Supper was celebrated in the cathedral once a month, as well as at Christmas and Easter time, Grynaeus had ample opportunity to teach the proper understanding of the sacrament, and the Lord’s Supper was a frequent topic of his sermons. In his preaching on the Lord’s Supper, and in the quasi-catechetical treatments of it printed with his sermons, he repeated the same terms, images, and explanations for the sacrament so that they would become familiar to his audience. The sacrament was a true sign, seal, and deposit, the body and blood of Christ, sacramentally but not naturally united with the elements, which fed the believing soul and strengthened the faith of the elect.55 Although Grynaeus never pointed this out to his audience, such terms clearly distinguished Basel’s eucharistic theology from Lutheran doctrine. Grynaeus’s sermons thus bear the mark of the confessional developments outside Basel over the previous two decades. They were intended first and foremost to promote both experiential piety and sound Reformed doctrine among Basel’s laity, and they were more detailed and more confessional in their orientation than those preached by Wurstisen. Where Wurstisen was most concerned with explaining Scripture, Grynaeus wanted his audience to have a clear understanding of doctrine. The topical style of preaching he adopted was well suited for this purpose. There are clear parallels between Grynaeus’s theology lectures, his disputation theses, and his sermons. As with his theology lectures, Grynaeus usually limited each sermon to discussion of just a few verses—or more precisely, to the doctrines that could be derived more or less directly from those verses. Like his predecessors, Grynaeus shared a concern with the practical outworking of the Christian faith. His sermons were closer to those of Brandmu¨ller than to those of Wurstisen, in that he drew a broad range of applications from Scripture. Every aspect of the Christian’s life was to reflect his or her evangelical beliefs. Faith in Christ was central for obtaining salvation, but that faith was to be reflected in the proper performance of the duties appropriate to one’s position in life, one’s relationship with superiors, equals, and inferiors, in prayer and regular attendance of sermons, in suffering patiently the trials and losses of this life and looking with confidence toward the better life to come. The sermons skillfully blended doctrinal and pastoral emphases in a lively style that was popular and engaging. Grynaeus’s practice of preaching on individual verses meant that his audience rarely heard longer passages of Scripture. What they gained in doctrinal knowledge and practical application was at the expense of a broader familiarity with the Bible’s contents. Grynaeus and his colleagues were aware of this trade-off, and they took steps to compensate for it. A few months after assuming leadership of the city’s church, Grynaeus first suggested that the 9 a.m. weekday sermons be replaced by daily readings of an entire chapter of some book of the Bible, followed by a short explanation of the text; his

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proposal was finally implemented two years later. He also used the regular meetings of the city clergy to see that his fellow pastors were preaching on different books of the Bible, so that the city’s inhabitants could gain a broader exposure to its contents. This attempt at oversight was only one of the areas where his differences with his colleague Johann Jacob Gugger came into the open.56 Gugger was almost an exact contemporary of Grynaeus, although he did not have the advantages of education and family connections that his colleague had. He matriculated at Basel’s university in 1553 at the age of thirteen. Supported by a civic stipend, he was awarded his B.A. in 1557 and was sent as a pastor to Baden in 1559. Seven years later, he became pastor in Laufen, the largest of the episcopal villages governed by Basel. In 1577, he left Laufen to become the Spital preacher in Basel, and three years later he was promoted to archdeacon at the cathedral. As archdeacon, Gugger had access to the most important pulpit in the city. In addition to his normal preaching responsibilities at the cathedral, he also preached for Sulzer as the latter was increasingly incapacitated by poor health in the last years of his life. Gugger’s theological education was obtained under Sulzer’s direction, and he remained true to his mentor’s sacramental theology. This put him on a collision course with Sulzer’s successor, Grynaeus. In 1588, Gugger was admonished not to stir up controversy by his preaching. During the censure of the clergy at the 1590 city synod, it was reported that Gugger disagreed with Grynaeus on the Lord’s Supper, the person of Christ, and the doctrine of election. In response, the Senate specifically referred him to the Kirchenrat, where he was told that his teaching did not agree with that of the city’s other pastors and that he should preach in conformity with God’s word and the Basel Confession.57 By 1597, his relations with Grynaeus had broken down almost completely, as is reflected in the notes the latter recorded for posterity in the minutes of the Kirchenrat sessions. Grynaeus clearly linked doctrinal error and professional incompetence with personal moral failings. Gugger not only stirred up hatred and contention with his preaching within Basel, but he ridiculed the pastors expelled from Baden for not accepting the Formula of Concord and had collaborated with Grynaeus’s Lutheran opponents in Wu¨rttemberg. He refused to cooperate with the other pastors in the work of the Kirchenrat, most recently opposing their efforts to have the statues removed from the fac¸ade of the cathedral. According to Grynaeus, Gugger was too fond of wine, and a skeptic who refused to take correction—in particular with regard to the proper numbering of the Ten Commandments. Moreover, his conduct was reprehensible, for he had extorted a considerable sum of money from Sulzer’s heirs. Last but not least, Grynaeus criticized Gugger’s preaching: he failed to distinguish between the canonical Scriptures and the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, drawing morals from them that were inconsistent with faith in Christ. In fact, his sermons were filled with irony, jeers, and coarse jokes; they were at the same time both cold and incendiary, ‘‘lacking the salt of Christ.’’58

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Grynaeus’s condemnation of Gugger’s preaching is all the more striking because Gugger had a loyal following among Basel’s inhabitants.59 In fact, Gugger’s popular reputation as a preacher insulated him against the enmity of most of his colleagues in the city. The sermons Gugger published in 1590– 91 show why his preaching was so popular. Gugger titled his collection Christian Army Sermons, and he wrote in his preface that the sermons were intended to help those pastors appointed to accompany troops on their campaigns, so that they could admonish and console soldiers both before and after their battles.60 There is no indication that Gugger ever held such a position, however, and the sermons themselves, based on narrative sections of the Pentateuch concerned with warfare plus the books of Joshua and Judges, more likely originated as weekday sermons preached in the cathedral.61 Gugger showed some awareness of classical rhetoric in his preaching, in that he sometimes began his sermons with introductions containing anecdotes from classical or biblical history or with references to the previous sermon. He also attempted to provide a proposition or central theme, divided into parts.62 More often than not, however, the rhetorical structure described in the introduction was ignored in the sermon itself, which was more usually a chain of paraphrase and application of each event described in the Scripture text. The general structure of the sermons is therefore expository with only a superficial veneer of rhetoric. Gugger made his recounting of biblical history even more attractive by his popular style. As he wrote in his preface, eloquence was of little use when one was addressing people who came from many different places and who could barely speak their mother tongue.63 Instead, he relied on devices such as picturesque language, rhetorical questions and repetition, use of the first person plural, frequent cross-references to other parts of the Bible, and a simple but lively retelling of the main story to retain his hearers’ interest. Thus in a sermon on Balaam and the ass, he told of Balaam’s rising early and setting out to meet the king, comparing it with Abraham’s alacrity in obeying God when told to sacrifice his son Isaac and with the promptness with which Abraham’s servant set out to find a bride for Isaac. He then contrasted it to the zeal with which we all pursue the smallest bit of earthly profit, rather than seeking heavenly goods.64 Gugger also knew how to develop the drama inherent within the Scripture text. In the first of his two sermons describing Ehud’s assassination of the king of Moab, Gugger recounted the story slowly, first discussing the sins of the Israelites, then Ehud’s preparations to kill the king, and finally the murder itself, leaving the audience to wonder what happened next. He picked up the account in his next sermon, describing Ehud’s escape and then expanding on the military victories of both Ehud and his successor Samgar.65 As these examples suggest, Gugger’s sermons were in effect summaries or paraphrases of stories, with his own comments and digressions added for the sake of clarification, comparison, edification, or entertainment. Gugger did not limit himself to Scripture but freely cited both classical and ecclesiastical historians as well as recent history and current events to illustrate the

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text for his audience. For instance, in his sermon on Genesis 14:13–16, he described how alliances should be established, drawing not only on the text at hand but also on Xenophon, Livy, and the alliance established between Emperor Maximilian, King Louis XII of France, and Pope Julius II against Venice.66 Gugger pointed to the many applications to be drawn from the text as he proceeded through the Scripture narrative, but the lessons he drew for his audience were not necessarily spiritual ones. Indeed, his practice of retelling the story bit by bit, interspersed with embellishment and application, undermined his attempts to find practical applications for his hearers. Gugger drew so many applications from each section of the text that his hearers must have had difficulty remembering them all. In his sermon on Exodus 17:8–10, he told his listeners—among other things—that only those who engage in just wars are victorious; that one should guard against the sins of avarice and spitefulness; that one should not tempt God; that generals should always be prepared for resistance when advancing through enemy territory; that military leaders should be chosen on the basis of ability rather than appearance; that individuals drafted for warfare should submit to their rulers and fight for the sake of their homeland; that Christ, as the second Joshua, leads us to our promised salvation; that the aged and deserving should be spared from difficult jobs; that the magistrate should engage in war only with God’s counsel and permission; that one should always ascribe victory to God; and that the external gestures used in prayer are not so important as the fact that one prays.67 The cumulation—and often the banality—of his applications weakens their impact, and the resulting emphasis of the sermon is on the story, not the lessons it might teach. This brief discussion of Gugger’s sermons demonstrates both why Grynaeus was so critical of his preaching and why he was so beloved by his Basel audience. Gugger was a superb storyteller, a talent he could develop fully when preaching on the occasionally sensational accounts of warfare, plots, and murder recounted in the books of Joshua and Judges. His approach appealed to a lay audience more interested in how people acted in the past than in doctrinal exposition and application. But Grynaeus and his other colleagues believed that sermons were to educate and to edify, not to entertain, and it was their view of preaching, not Gugger’s, that would become the norm in Basel. Grynaeus’s long tenure as antistes guaranteed that his topical model of preaching would continue to be heard from the pulpit into the early seventeenth century. The small number of sermons published by other pastors of the second and the early third generations indicate that they employed the same topical style of preaching.68 But the collections of sermon schemata by Grynaeus’s younger colleague Johann Georg Gross and by his successor, Johannes Wollebius, demonstrate that a new style of preaching also began to be heard in the second decade of the seventeenth century, a style that combined the methods of Ramism with the full doctrinal spectrum of Reformed Orthodoxy.

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The Preaching of Reformed Orthodoxy, 1610–29 Gross and Wollebius were not one but two generations younger than the men whose sermons I have examined so far: Wollebius was born a few months after Grynaeus assumed leadership of the city’s church in 1586, and Gross was five years older. Both of them had been steeped in Reformed Orthodoxy from childhood. As students, first at the gymnasium and then at the university, they had grown up listening to Grynaeus preach, attended the lectures of both Grynaeus and Polanus, and participated in several theology disputations chiefly presided over by Polanus.69 Their careers were remarkably similar: they first held entry-level positions in the city or just outside of it, then served successively at the filial church of St. Elizabeth, and ended their careers as senior pastors, Gross at St. Peter and Wollebius at the cathedral; both died during the plague epidemic of 1629–30. Gross’s most important contribution to the art of preaching was his Treasury of Every Kind of Sermon, a hefty tome that contained almost a thousand sermon summaries ranging from catechetical sermons and sermons for the liturgical year through those to be preached during the grape harvest, in time of war, or after an earthquake. The schemata vary considerably in length and therefore in detail.70 Gross preached the sermons over the course of a little more than a decade. Because Gross noted the date when most of these sermons were preached, they give a detailed picture of the preaching activity of a Basel pastor in the early seventeenth century. By far the largest number of sermons was based on prescribed texts—the core elements of the catechism and the Sunday Gospel readings for the church year. Most of these were preached while Gross was still an assistant pastor, for both St. Margaret and St. Elizabeth, like the rural churches, had retained the practice of preaching on the traditional lectionary, and the pastor of St. Elizabeth was specifically charged with giving catechetical sermons on Sunday afternoons. As pastor of St. Elizabeth, Gross also preached for the weekday service held at the Franciscan church in a three-week rotation with the Spital pastor and St. Leonhard’s assistant pastor. After his promotion to St. Peter, Gross apparently no longer preached on the Sunday Gospel but chose his Scripture text according to what seemed appropriate. Like Grynaeus, Gross preached on a single book during his Tuesday sermons—in January 1612 he began a series of sermons on the Book of Psalms, and by June 1616 he had reached Psalm 37.71 In contrast, Wollebius’s sermon schemata tell us very little about his preaching duties. In fact, the collection of sixty-two schemata was published almost twenty years after his death by his son Johann Jacob, who was also a Basel pastor. The handful of sermons with dates were preached while Wollebius was cathedral pastor, and the remainder probably date from the 1620s as well. Most of the sermons selected by the younger Wollebius for publication were given at specific occasions: weddings, funerals, the annual swearingin of Basel’s magistrate, or the festivals of the church year. A series of fifteen

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sermons on the Last Judgment may have originated as weekday sermons. Perhaps because they were edited, the schemata are more uniform in both length and structure than those in Gross’s collection.72 Both of these sermon collections differ in an important way from those published by Johann Jacob Grynaeus. Although Grynaeus certainly intended his sermons for pastors and theology students, he was conscious that they were a powerful means of teaching the laity, and so he always made them accessible to a lay audience. Thus he published a number of sermons as popular pamphlets or in short collections that were affordable for the literate laity. Even when he gave only sermon summaries or schemata, he reproduced them in German rather than in the Latin in which they had originally been written.73 The sermon collections of Gross and Wollebius were not intended for the laity, however, but were chiefly designed for theology students to study and imitate.74 They were in Latin, in schematic form, and sometimes the parts of the sermon were identified in their margins so that inexperienced preachers could see how the sermon was constructed. They are thus more comparable to Brandmu¨ller’s model wedding and funeral sermons than to the many sermons and schemata published by Grynaeus. For the same reason, they are more important as illustrations of preaching instruction than of what Basel’s inhabitants actually heard from the pulpit, but they give some insight into the doctrines and their applications that Basel’s pastors wanted their parishioners to know. The two sermon collections reveal the establishment in Basel of Ramist preaching. These Ramist sermons shared some of the characteristics of both expository and topical preaching, but they differed from both in important ways. The sermon schemata were rhetorically shaped, with an introduction referring to the occasion of the sermon, the previous sermon topic, or some other attention-getting device, and a conclusion recapitulating the main parts of the sermon. As in topical sermons, the introduction always included a statement of the main parts of the sermon, but unlike topical sermons, most of these do not have a clear statement of propositio or theme. Instead, the body of the sermon is introduced by listing the two or three—more rarely four—topics to be discussed. Thus Wollebius introduced his sermon on Psalm 1:3, ‘‘concerning true happiness,’’ by discussing in what the greatest happiness of man consists, and how happy those are who enjoy this highest good.75 Each of these sermon parts was then further subdivided, sometimes into explanation and application, and sometimes into questions or topics that were divided yet again.76 Wollebius’s schemata most clearly display this Ramist organization, and in the text, these divisions are set apart by the use of numbering or indentation.77 In most of Gross’s sermons, the Ramist structure is disguised rather than marked out by the use of headings or marginal notations, which emphasize content rather than structure and so draw the reader’s attention away from the underlying subdivision of the sermon parts.78 Gross not only used Ramist dichotomization but also drew on other elements of Ramist dialectic as taught by Polanus. His sermon schemata

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demonstrate how to use Ramist dialectic to generate or ‘‘find’’ and then organize the material presented in the sermon. When he states a thema or thesis for his sermon, it is not the propositio of a classical oration or topical sermon but rather a statement or thesis to be proved, sometimes by means of a syllogism. His schemata often contain discussions of the causes and other categories of topical invention discussed by Ramus and applied by Polanus to analyzing the Scripture text.79 Because of their reliance on dialectic, Gross’s schemata seem closer to theology lectures or disputations than to sermons. In fact, Gross was not above borrowing from his teacher: several of his sermons on the first sixteen psalms are reproductions or paraphrases of Polanus’s analysis of those psalms.80 Gross’s sermon schemata illustrate nicely the various methods of arrangement that Polanus prescribed and Gross himself would later paraphrase in his homiletics text. He most frequently employed questions to structure his sermons, but he also used other methods of arrangement suggested by Polanus, such as opening the sermon with a refutation of false doctrine and then proceeding to a discussion of true doctrine, or discussing first the subject, then the predicate of the sermon’s thesis. Gross arranged his catechetical sermons, in particular, as discussions of one or more theological loci followed by their application. A similar pattern was to discuss first the sensus, or meaning, of the text and then its usus or fructus, the application to be drawn from it. This particular pattern was the closest Gross came to the style of preaching advocated by other Reformed homileticists such as Keckermann and Le Buc.81 Wollebius also used this type of organization in several of his sermons, sometimes devoting the second part not to the application but to the rationes or reasons why a certain lesson was taught in that particular passage of Scripture. His sermon on Romans 4:25 treats the locus of justification in dichotomized fashion, first defining the term, then explaining how it is obtained and how the doctrine is applied.82 Like Gross, Wollebius frequently used questions to introduce the various parts and subdivisions of his sermon, and he could begin his sermon with a criticism of false beliefs before explaining the true understanding of the text.83 Neither Gross nor Wollebius shied away from detailed presentations of Reformed Orthodoxy. Like Grynaeus, the two pastors took advantage of the monthly communion services to impress on their hearers the proper terms and concepts to be associated with the Lord’s Supper, but they surpassed him in sheer repetition and detail. Those who heard Gross’s sermons on the sacrament preached throughout 1612 heard repeatedly that the bread and wine signified the body and blood of Christ, that the external physical action was accompanied by an internal spiritual reception, and that the sacrament itself represented, testified, and sealed the believer’s salvation. The same concepts are repeated in Wollebius’s sole eucharistic sermon as well.84 The emphasis on doctrine was gained at the price of a concentration on the Scripture text. All of the sermon schemata are biblically based, but not

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because they are tightly tied to the text being preached on. Instead, they are liberally sprinkled with citations from the Bible that are used to support points made throughout the sermon. Systematic theology thus functioned as a filter through which a Scripture passage was understood. Once the specific doctrines to be discussed were identified from the text, the appropriate proof texts could be employed to support those doctrines. This use of Scripture testifies to the practical utility of collections of theological loci, for the preachers knew which Scripture verses supported the particular doctrines they were preaching on. Hand in hand with the inculcation of correct doctrine went the rejection of whatever was contrary to that doctrine. Both Gross and Wollebius included in their schemata explicit rejections of Catholic teaching. Thus, in his sermons on the Lord’s Supper, Gross condemned the practice of withholding the cup from the laity, limiting its reception only to the ministrants, requiring recipients to fast before communion, offering the host to God the Father as a sacrifice, elevating the host, and putting the host directly into the mouth instead of the hand.85 Confessional polemic was never the sole or even a dominant topic within any of their sermons, however. Rather than including rejection of false teaching within the analytical section of the sermons, both preachers tended to include it among the lists of uses or applications to be learned from the sermon, after the Reformed position had been presented. Of the two, Wollebius was the most willing to criticize Catholic beliefs and practices as a matter of course. To cite only one example, in each of the four sermons he preached sequentially on John 15:1–26, he argued that the passage could be used against the papists, who taught that one must cooperate in salvation by doing good works, who upheld a belief in free will, and who persecuted the faithful in the past and continued to do so at present in Rhaetia, in the Palatinate, and in Bohemia. Gross was somewhat more restrained, but as the foregoing example shows, he had no reservations about criticizing his confessional opponents when the occasion of the sermon provided the opportunity for it.86 Despite the complexity of doctrine that Gross and Wollebius expected their hearers to comprehend, they did not regard preaching as merely a way to convey only abstractions. Both preachers shared the assumption that proper understanding of doctrine shaped one’s attitudes and conduct and provided consolation in all circumstances. To help their hearers draw this connection, they made application an integral part of every sermon. These applications could be either given at the end of every subdivision and thus sprinkled throughout the sermon or gathered at the end under the general heading of usus.87 Both preachers classified their applications according to the categories originally used by Hyperius to describe the five genera of sermons: presentation of correct doctrine, rejection of false teaching, moral instruction, moral admonition, and consolation.88 Nevertheless, and despite their best efforts to emphasize the applications to be drawn from the Scripture text, the sermon schemata of Gross and

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Wollebius lack the pastoral warmth that was so noticeable an element of most of the sermons of the sixteenth century. Neither Gross nor Wollebius went so far as Gugger in finding applications, but there is a baroque tendency to pile up both doctrines and applications to the point where it would be difficult for hearers to come away with one or two of the most important practical applications from the sermons. Moreover, Gross’s heavy reliance on dialectic may have helped him prove his arguments, but it undercut any attempts to make a more personal connection with the audience. The problem inherent in the Ramist emphasis on application is evident in the preaching of Johann Jacob Grasser, another contemporary of Gross and Wollebius. The son of Jonas Grasser, Johann Jacob was born in 1579, and he matriculated at Basel in 1596, the same year as Gross. After receiving his master’s degree in Basel with the support of both civic and university stipends, he traveled extensively through Italy and France, returning home in 1610. He served briefly as a rural pastor before being promoted to the position of assistant pastor of St. Theodor that his father had held twenty years earlier. Grasser published his vernacular sermons on the Book of Lamentations in 1613.89 Several of these sermons, particularly those based on a single Bible verse, were structured according to Ramist dichotomies, but Grasser occasionally followed the older homiletic pattern of discussing the sermon text verse by verse. This merely increased the opportunity to deluge his audience with applications, for after each verse, Grasser would list the several points they should learn from his discussion of it. Grasser’s sermon on Lamentations 2:1–9 illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of the Ramist approach to preaching. The text is first divided into consideration of both the spiritual and secular indications of God’s wrath. Gugger then spends most of the sermon on the spiritual aspects, itself divided into two sections, the first with five points to be remembered by the audience, the second adding a further two points.90 The brief section on the secular manifestations of God’s wrath concludes with five more points of application.91 Although more clearly structured than those of Johann Jacob Gugger, Grasser’s sermons still tend to overwhelm the reader with the number of lessons one is to draw from them. Their pedagogical and pastoral impact is weakened as a result. The one significant exception to the general observation about the weak pastoral emphasis of early seventeenth-century preaching occurs in the funeral sermons that had became an important Basel tradition. By their very nature— preached to a grieving audience and concerned with death, the ultimate pastoral challenge—funeral sermons forced the preacher to present an understanding of the world shaped by the Christian faith and to elaborate on the consolatory function of Christian doctrine. Under these circumstances, Basel’s pastors chose traditional themes for their sermons that echoed those of Brandmu¨ller fifty years earlier: the brevity of life, the unexpectedness of death, the need for repentance, and patient suffering in the face of trials. They also addressed the existential questions of the bereaved by preaching on how to

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interpret the death of a child, why women die in childbirth, or why some people must endure more suffering in this life than others.92 Wollebius took advantage of the funerals of prominent individuals to expound on the duties of the order to which they had belonged. His funeral sermons for the two Bu¨rgermeister Bonaventura von Brunn and Melchior Hornlocher considered the loss to the city-republic of ‘‘pious and useful regents,’’ while the funeral sermon for Beat Hel, the rector of the gymnasium, described both the office of teacher and the eternal reward that faithful teachers would receive. In his funeral sermons for women, on the other hand, he focused on the characteristics of the proper Christian life and/or death. In the funeral sermons for Anna Heydelin and for her daughter Anna Just, both of them pastors’ widows who died within a few days of each other, Wollebius first described what David prayed in his old age, and then taught that the pious should not doubt that God hears their prayers.93 When circumstances required a focus on praxis rather than doctrine, Ramist preaching could be as pastoral and as consolatory as topical sermons. It is unclear whether Basel’s pastors were influenced directly by the Ramist prescriptions of contemporary Reformed homileticists or if they developed their Ramism independently under Polanus’s tutelage. Nor is it possible to compare these early seventeenth-century sermon schemata from Basel with Reformed sermons preached elsewhere, because so little work has been done on the development of Reformed preaching in the early seventeenth century. More studies exist of Lutheran Orthodox sermons, which provide at least one form of comparison with these Basel sermons. The most recent work challenges the older view that the sermons of Lutheran Orthodoxy were doctrinal and polemic, more concerned with correct belief than with the Christian life. Both Hans-Christoph Rublack and Sabine Holtz have argued instead that these sermons provided their hearers with a way of interpreting and making sense of their circumstances and of the hardships of life.94 This revisionist position does not apply to the preaching of early Reformed Orthodoxy in Basel. In comparison with the earlier sermons preached in Basel, as well as with those of their Lutheran contemporaries, the sermons of both Gross and Wollebius uphold the stereotype of Orthodox sermons as doctrinal rather than pastoral. This difference can in part be explained by the format in which these sermons were preserved. Stripped of the rhetorical dress that would have made them more appealing to their audience, the sermon schemata are dry and overly intellectualized. But structure alone does not account for the difference, for the sermon schemata of both Brandmu¨ller and Grynaeus are more direct, more emotionally appealing, and more pastoral than the schemata of their successors. Nor can this difference be attributed to the fact that the sermon schemata of the seventeenth-century preachers were addressed primarily to theology students, for, as the dates listed in the margins of Gross’s collection prove, they were first preached to his own congregation. Another more significant factor weakening the pastoral impact of these Basel sermons is the breadth and detail of doctrinal material included in

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them. Wurstisen concentrated on a few doctrines seen as the core of the evangelical faith. Grynaeus broadened the definition of essential doctrines to include those major points, such as sacramental theology, on which the Reformed differed with the Lutherans, but those topics that receive the most attention are still those seen as having some relevance to the life of the believer. Gross and Wollebius were concerned not only that their hearers knew the Reformed doctrine but also that they were able to recognize and to refute opposing views.95 Moreover, they abandoned the idea that there were certain central or essential doctrines that their hearers should know and preached instead on the full range of Reformed theology in a level of detail not far short of the theology lecture hall. As a consequence, not only was there less time in each sermon to devote to application of doctrine, but the more technical doctrines were harder to apply to the lives of the listeners. A final impetus to the decline of pastoral preaching in Basel was the influence of Ramism. To Ramus and his followers, dialectic, understood as the selection and arrangement of arguments, was the essence of communication. For preachers who were well trained in Ramist dialectic, there was a certain economy of method in using the same dichotomized technique to analyze a Scripture text and then put the results back together in the form of a sermon. Whether this technique was the most effective form of preaching is questionable. Despite the difficulties caused by Melanchthon’s adaptation of classical rhetoric to the art of preaching, the topical method had one clear advantage. Classical rhetoric had developed as oral communication, and orations and sermons composed in accordance with it had a unity of theme and message that made the central point easy to remember. In contrast, Ramism was a method that was first and foremost visual. It worked well when seen on the printed page but was much less easy to follow when heard rather than read.96 Rather than reinforcing the central message of the sermon, Ramism divided the sermon into so many points that the overall impact was weakened. As Basel’s pastors moved away from topical toward Ramist preaching, they made their message more complex, yet they expected their hearers to remember much more of it. The significance of Ramist preaching in Basel during the early seventeenth century cannot be overestimated. Wollebius and Gross not only were the pastors of the two most important churches in the city but also had significant teaching responsibilities in the theology faculty. Moreover, they were not the only pastors to rely heavily on Ramist method in their preaching. Both Johann Jacob Grasser and the pastor of St. Leonhard, Johann Georg Gross’s younger brother Johannes, preached in the same Ramist style.97 Jacob Brandmu¨ller, the second assistant pastor of St. Theodor, attested to his commitment to Ramism with the publication of his analyses of the Sunday Gospels, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Decalogue comprised entirely of Ramist tables.98 Ramist sermons were thus the norm in Basel through the 1620s, although it is unclear whether Ramism continued to have such a strong influence on preaching after the deaths of Wollebius and the Gross brothers in the plague outbreak of 1629–30.

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To pursue the further course of Ramist preaching would go beyond the limits of this study, however. Instead, it is time to turn back to the middle of the sixteenth century and look more specifically at how the developments in pastoral education and in preaching influenced the exercise of pastoral care. Part IV will begin with a discussion of the career patterns of Basel’s pastors and of the structures created to assist them in their pastoral duties.

part iv

The Pastor in the Parish

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9 The Career of a Basel Pastor

In early 1598, Johann Jacob Grynaeus wrote a letter to future readers as a preface to the first volume of minutes from the meetings of the Kirchenrat, the council of pastors, theologians, and Deputaten responsible for oversight of the city-republic’s church. In his letter, Grynaeus thanked God that the Basel church was no longer separated from its fellow Swiss confederates in its understanding of the Lord’s Supper and of Christology, and he gave a brief account of his own career before assuming leadership of Basel’s church. He then summarized the most important religious and ecclesiastical developments, both within Basel and outside of it, during the twelve years covered in the volume. The first two points he mentioned were the end of doctrinal dissent in the city and the appointment of faithful colleagues to Basel’s ministry.1 Although Grynaeus did not acknowledge it, these two points were in fact the end result of the institutionalization of pastoral education in the city. The profile of Basel’s pastors changed over the second half of the sixteenth century, as successive generations of Basel students were appointed to the pastorate. Over the same period, a recognizable pattern for appointment and career gradually developed within the city’s church, with important differences between the pastors in the city and the countryside. Grynaeus and the other members of the Kirchenrat kept a close watch over appointments to the ministry, and they carefully followed the careers of the rural pastors. The ability of the Kirchenrat to supervise Basel’s pastors was strengthened by the gradual establishment of a hierarchy of oversight in the rural church. That hierarchy, in turn, allowed the city pastors to pressure the rural clergy into greater doctrinal conformity with an increasingly Reformed interpretation of the Basel Confession. The

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Riehen RIEHEN

R iv er

S TA D T Basel

Allschwil

Rhine

M

BASEL Binningen

ÜN

Muttenz

CH .

MÜNCHENSTEIN Münchenstein Pratteln

Benken

Oberwil Therwil

Buus

Arisdorf

Munzach Wintersingen

L I E S TA L Liestal

Reinach Ettingen

FA R N S B U R G

Lausen

Pfeffingen

Sissach Bubendorf

Gelterkinden

Rothenfluh

Tenniken

Oltingen

LEGEND Rural Parish

WALDENBURG

Episcopal Village

Rümlingen Diegten

Kilchberg

HOMBURG

Basel

Bretzwil

Basel City State

Reigoldswil Bennwil

RAMSTEIN Waldenburg

District Border

Läufelfingen

0 0

5 km 3 mi

N

Langenbruck

Aare

D I S T R ICT NAME

River

E

W S

EZ

figure 9.1. Basel’s rural districts and parishes. Drawn by Ezra Zeitler. first twelve years of Grynaeus’s tenure as antistes saw the culmination of several developments that made the Basel church in the early seventeenth century quite different from what it had been at the time of Myconius.

The Generational Profile As we have seen, during the first two decades after the Reformation, former Catholic priests made up the majority of those appointed to Basel parishes whose backgrounds are known. By midcentury, however, university students began to make up a significant proportion of new pastors. In the period 1550– 79, not quite half of all new appointees were students when they received their posts (graph 9.1). Roughly one-third of the thirty-five students appointed directly to parish positions during these three decades had received their master’s degrees. Almost all of these became pastors within a few months after being awarded their degree. Although five students were appointed to pastorates within a year of finishing their bachelor’s degree, most of the students with B.A. degrees continued to study for a few more years before they received parish posts.2 The nine students who did not receive degrees

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were all appointed to posts between 1555 and 1567, at a time when the demand for pastors was increased by the introduction of the Reformation in the margraviate of Baden and by the effects of the plague of 1564. In these cases, there was an average of six years between matriculation and appointment to the first post, which implies that many of these students had attended the university for as long as their colleagues with degrees, even if they had not gone through the formalities and expense of being awarded a degree. Another one-third of the pastors appointed to Basel posts between 1550 and 1579 had first served as pastors elsewhere—almost all either in Baden or the episcopal villages under the city’s protection. Although they had accepted the Reformation in the 1520s, these parishes were not as tightly integrated into the structure of the Basel church as the villages in the districts controlled by Basel—a situation that caused some complaints at synods held during the 1530s.3 Nevertheless, Basel’s church leaders assumed responsibility for these parishes, providing them with Protestant clergy from the 1550s on and doing what they could to hinder the bishop’s reintroduction of Catholicism in the 1580s. Several of these parishes were within a short walk of Basel’s city walls, which made them ideal first posts for pastors who wished to continue their studies at the university. As a consequence, these churches provided the equivalent of vicariates for a number of young pastors who served them for a few years before being appointed to positions within Basel’s territory itself. The backgrounds of Basel’s new pastors changed dramatically during the decade of the 1580s. In 1577, the pastors of the territory of Baden were required to subscribe to the Formula of Concord. Some pastors refused to sign it and were dismissed. A few of these—most notably Theophil Grynaeus, the brother of Johann Jacob—were able to find pastorates in Basel. The Basel Senate, in turn, decreed that its pastors should not sign anything but the city’s own official confession.4 As a consequence, pastoral candidates in Basel could no longer look to Baden for pastoral posts while waiting for a position to become available in Basel itself. At the same time, the new bishop of Basel was vigorously campaigning for restoration of his rights over the episcopal villages under Basel’s protection. His efforts succeeded, and over the next decade he pursued a policy of re-Catholicization that included the expulsion of the Protestant pastors serving those parishes. Again, a number of these exiles were given parishes in Basel’s church, and after the 1580s, the episcopal villages no longer served as a training ground for Basel’s pastors.5 Providing jobs for the exiled pastors from Baden and the episcopal villages was a priority for Basel’s church leaders. One-third of the positions that became vacant during the 1580s were given to these exiles. Their appointment decreased the number of positions available to students at the university. Moreover, most of these exiles were still fairly young men who would serve the Basel church for many years to come. Their longevity, as well as that of the pastors appointed during the decade of the 1570s, meant that the turnover in parish positions dropped significantly over the following decade. The appointment of a few older pastors, men born in the 1530s and 1540s, during the last two decades of the sixteenth century, meant that the second

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generation of pastors continued to dominate Basel’s church numerically through the 1580s. Half of the pastors in office in 1590 were born before 1550 (cf. table 9.1 with table 3.1 and graph 1.6). The pastors born during the 1550s made up a much smaller cohort, about half the size of the previous cohort. All but one of these men entered the ministry between 1570 and 1589. Like the cohorts of the 1530s and 1540s, most of these younger men received their theological and pastoral formation during the period when Basel’s church and theology faculty followed Sulzer’s nonconfessional path. That does not mean that this group of pastors agreed theologically with Sulzer; in fact, as participants in the conflicts within the Basel church during the 1570s and witnesses to confessional developments outside the city, they may have become more committed to Reformed theology. Nevertheless, there was a general uniformity in the education they received, and they had much in common with the pastors already in office. The chief difference between these younger pastors and their older colleagues was not so much the content or amount of their education but rather their greater social and geographic homogeneity. Only the youngest of this group had studied theology under Grynaeus, but these young pastors would be the vanguard of a new generation. During the 1590s, the profile of new appointees changed. With the exception of two older men—one of them the last Protestant pastor to be dismissed from a post in the episcopal villages—all of the new pastors had been Grynaeus’s students. By the seventeenth century, the practice of appointing older men to the ministry came to an end. The ten men who entered the service of Basel’s church in the first decade of the century ranged in age from twenty-one to thirty-three, with the average age being twenty-six. Even with the relatively large number of men appointed to office in the next decade, following the plague of 1610–11, the average age at first appointment rose only to twentyeight. With the exception of a former schoolmaster appointed to the combined post of pastor and schoolmaster in Lausen, all of the new pastors were between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-seven. During the final decade of our period, the range in ages at appointment returned to between twenty-two and thirty-one, with an average of twenty-seven. All of these men had been thoroughly trained to use dialectic as a tool for theology, whether in the Aristotelian form used by Grynaeus or its Ramist variant introduced by Polanus. Significantly, the largest cohort within this group was that of the twenty-two men born during the 1590s. They and their two younger colleagues had received their theological education not from the two towering figures of Basel’s theology faculty at the turn of the century but from the epigones, the young men who had assumed responsibility for theology instruction following Polanus’s death in 1610. This brief generational analysis of the pastors appointed to Basel’s church in the later sixteenth and the seventeenth century provides a context for understanding the gradual establishment of more formal procedures for the appointment and supervision of the city-republics pastors. As Grynaeus’s letter to his readers suggests, the most important developments took place before the turn of the century.

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Appointment and Career Patterns Thanks to the university scholarships established from the 1560s, Basel’s future pastors could continue to study while waiting for a parish to become vacant. The result, as we have seen, was the new expectation that those nominated for a pastoral position had completed their master’s degrees and, increasingly, had formally matriculated in the theology faculty. There was no prescribed length of study for theology students if they did not intend to receive a theology degree. It is therefore difficult to determine how long these students studied theology. Those few students who matriculated in the theology faculty before 1580 often already held or were quickly appointed to either a pastorate in the city or a professorship in the Pedagogium or arts faculty. These men continued their studies while performing their other responsibilities. This pattern changed in the 1580s, due to the scarcity of pastoral posts. By the 1590s, there was usually a period of from three to ten years between matriculation in the theology faculty and appointment to one’s first pastoral post. Candidates nominated but not selected for a position were likely to be nominated again for the next vacancy, although repeat nomination was not always guaranteed. A candidate’s name might be put forth two or three times over the next few years before he finally received a position in the church.6 Because most of the university stipends that supported them were not time-limited, pastoral candidates could in theory continue as students for several years until they were finally appointed posts. The stipends were meager, however, and students sought other means of support while waiting for their first appointments. Several served as prefects of the Upper College or as teachers in the gymnasium or at the lowest level of the university. By the early seventeenth century, a few of those whose abilities or family connections gave them hopes for a position in a city parish undertook Studienreisen to Geneva or Heidelberg. Johann Buxtorf II and Theodor Zwinger II, for instance, studied at both institutions.7 Ultimately, however, the goal of every student was appointment to a parish post. Basel’s 1529 Reformation Ordinance did not spell out the procedure for appointing men to vacant parish positions. Before the Reformation, the rights of presentation and appointment belonged to a variety of individuals and ecclesiastical corporations, but the Senate appropriated most of these rights during the 1520s. A description of the rural parishes drawn up in 1592 listed the Senate as the official collator for seventeen parishes. It shared collation rights for two more parishes with the cathedral chapter and for a third with a local nobleman. The cathedral chapter had sole appointment rights to two more parishes, and the Commenthur for the house of Teutonic Knights at Beuggen was the collator for three parishes. The remaining appointment rights belonged the abbess of Olsberg, a convent in Basel’s rural territory, and the Chorstift in nearby Rheinfelden, in Habsburg territory. In these parishes, the Senate chose the candidate, who was then confirmed by the official collator.8

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Although the Senate had the final say in appointing pastors to the rural parishes, the city’s parish pastors and theology professors had considerable input. Until well into the 1560s, the selection of candidates for vacant parishes seems to have been fairly informal and open to the influence of interested parties. The early career of Christian Wurstisen is a case in point. Wurstisen was one of the more gifted of the native Baslers recruited for the ministry in the first generation after the Reformation. Not the least of Wurstisen’s unusual qualities was his penchant for record keeping: the diary he kept from 1557 gives us a glimpse of the transition from student to pastor in the mid–sixteenth century.9 The son of a wine merchant and senator, Wurstisen matriculated at the university in 1558, at the age of thirteen. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1560 and his master’s degree two years later, and then matriculated as a theology student. When the pastor of Ru¨mlingen died in late 1562, Simon Sulzer and the Deputat Heinrich Petri met with Wurstisen’s father and gained his permission to appoint the son to this rural parish, a day’s travel from Basel. The younger Wurstisen could not be installed at once, however, for the incumbent’s widow had been granted the income from the parish through the fall of 1563.10 This delay proved decisive for Wurstisen’s career, for sometime during the next six months he decided that he would rather obtain a post close to the city so that he could continue his studies at the university, even if it meant a smaller income. Sulzer tried to persuade Wurstisen to accept the Ru¨mlingen parish, but—supported by both his father and by Deputat Petri—the young man remained adamant and eventually prevailed. In the fall of 1563 he became the pastor of Hu¨ningen, just west of the city.11 Wurstisen’s experience illustrates the difficulties of staffing faced by Basel’s church leaders during the 1550s and 1560s. During each of these two decades, turnover in the ministry rose to over two-thirds of the total number of posts in Basel (see graph 1.3).12 In addition, Basel was supplying pastors for the Protestant parishes in the episcopal villages as well as to the newly reformed margraviate of Baden. Capable pastoral candidates were in high demand, and gifted students such as Wurstisen could dictate the terms of their appointments, particularly if they had connections in high places. By the 1580s, however, the situation had changed dramatically. For reasons already discussed, the number of qualified candidates now exceeded the number of vacant positions. This simple reversal in the relationship of supply and demand gave the church’s leaders greater control over appointments. The process of appointment to a rural parish now involved three steps. First, the senior pastors and theology professors discussed potential candidates and settled on a list of nominees. The Deputaten were then invited to the next meeting of the Kirchenrat, where the list was narrowed to three names. Finally, these names were submitted to the Senate, which selected the person to be appointed to the post. Only rarely did the Senate break with this practice to choose an individual whose name had not been forwarded by the Kirchenrat.13 Most of the men nominated for parish positions were current or former students at the university, but for rural positions, it was not uncommon for the slate to include a pastor already serving in another rural parish. It became

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increasingly rare for a pastor from outside of Basel’s church to be nominated for a post, and in the few cases where this happened, the nominee was almost always a native Basler who had taken a post in another territory. The procedure for placing a pastor in an urban church was somewhat different, for the selection of the pastor lay in the hands of those understood to represent the parish: the senators who lived in the parish, the Bannherren charged with moral oversight of the parish’s inhabitants, representatives of the guilds, and other prominent citizens.14 As it did with the rural parishes, the Kirchenrat drew up a slate of three candidates. Each candidate then preached a sample sermon, and after all three had been heard, the representatives of the congregation voted for their choice. The ability to preach well was thus a vital prerequisite for any pastor who hoped for a position in the city.15 Although it did not exclude the possibility of external interference, the formal procedure that was established by the 1580s made it more difficult for outsiders to influence the appointment process, thus effectively limiting the choice of pastor to candidates approved by the Kirchenrat. The antistes could, in turn, influence the Senate’s final selection by the way he presented the nominees. Johann Jacob Grynaeus had no qualms about making his preferences known to the Senate. When the parish of Muttenz became vacant in 1597, for example, he pointed out to the Senate that this parish needed an older, respected incumbent. At the same time, the pastor of the double parish of Bretzwil and Reigoltswil could no longer serve both villages due to his deteriorating health. It would thus be a good idea to transfer him to Muttenz.16 As the number of vacancies gradually dwindled, the young men hoping for their first parish—or for a move up to a better paying post—tried several strategies to influence the leaders of the church. The strategies ranged from the ingenuous to the ingenious. The young Johann Parcus, for instance, wrote to Antistes Grynaeus to express his sorrow over the sad case of the Spital preacher who had been removed from office on account of adultery, and to congratulate the man chosen for the Spital position, the former pastor of Benken. Parcus then recommended himself for the now vacant position in Benken.17 Parcus was fortunate: he was not only nominated but also elected as Benken’s new pastor. Conrad Lu¨tzelmann tried another tactic: he sent two hares caught by his sons along with his letter requesting promotion to the vacant parish of Rotenfluh. Like Parcus, Lu¨tzelmann also received his promotion, but in this case, it may have been due less to his gift than to the fact that in 1611 Basel had many vacant parishes in the wake of the recent outbreak of plague.18 In some cases, pastoral candidates circumvented the Kirchenrat and appealed directly to the Senate. In 1591, three young men petitioned the Senate to be considered for two parish positions that had recently become vacant, arguing that because they were civic stipendiates, they should be given priority over pastors who came from outside Basel—in other words, the exiled clergy from the episcopal villages and from Baden.19 A decade later, another stipendiate, the son and stepson of city pastors, wrote directly to the Burgermeister

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asking for the position of common deacon.20 Another strategy was to have an influential citizen intercede with church authorities: Heinrich Ott, the preacher in the Farnsburg castle, had his immediate superior, Obervogt Bernhard Brand, write to Grynaeus urging Ott’s appointment to the vacant parish of Wintersingen.21 Such efforts did not always succeed. In 1574, Hans Ludwig Schultheiss, at that time a pastor in Thurgau, made a trip to Basel to meet with Sulzer and the Deputaten in hopes of receiving a post in Basel. Despite his best efforts, which included a petition to the Senate and a letter of commendation from his cousin, who was a rural pastor in Basel, Schultheiss never received a pastorate in Basel.22 Although they were less influential than in Wurstisen’s day, family connections continued to play a role in the appointment of new pastors into the seventeenth century. A number of pastors wrote to Grynaeus recommending their sons or other family members for posts.23 To some extent, this strategy could backfire. Wolfgang Meyer’s early career was fraught with charges of nepotism. He came from a prominent ecclesiastical family: his father, Jacob, was pastor of St. Alban, while his mother was the daughter of the Strasbourg reformer Wolfgang Capito and of Oecolampadius’s widow Wibrandus Rosenblatt. Meyer received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Basel, and then studied theology in England. Upon his return to Basel in 1602, he became vicar for his aging father. As the father reported to Grynaeus at the end of that year, it was rumored that the younger Meyer had received this position solely through intrigue. The elder Meyer argued that since his son was among the oldest of the theology students then in Basel, he should be appointed as the city’s common deacon. The request was not granted, and over the next two years, Jacob Meyer continued to ask that his son be appointed to a permanent post. In fact, Wolfgang did not officially enter Basel’s pastorate until he was chosen as pastor of St. Alban in 1605 after his father’s death.24 One final means of gaining appointment should be mentioned: the willingness of a new pastor to marry the widow or daughter of his predecessor. The role of such marriages is difficult to determine, since there is no way of knowing whether the marriage was either an explicit or an implicit condition for election or if it was merely an anticipated result. Young pastoral candidates clearly took the importance of such marriages into account, however. When his first wife—a pastor’s daughter—died, the Lausen pastor-schoolteacher Johann Salathe´ married the daughter of a neighboring pastor who was over seventy years old. A few years later, Salathe´ became his father-in-law’s vicar and succeeded to the post after his father-in-law died. This strategy was all the more important because parishioners would sometimes petition the Senate in favor of a young man who was known to them, whether as son of their former pastor or in some other capacity. There were limits to the effectiveness of parish support, however. When the pastor of Tenniken died in 1578, the parish petitioned the Deputaten to appoint as his successor the neighboring pastor who had served the parish during their own minister’s final illness. Their request was not granted, and they were given instead a young man who to that point had been a schoolmaster in the city.25

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Because most of the pastoral candidates were known to the Kirchenrat from their student days, for much of the sixteenth century it was deemed unnecessary to hold a formal examination before nominating them for a parish post. The lack of an examination could cause problems, however. As Grynaeus pointed out, some of the stipendiates expected to be appointed to a parish regardless of their qualifications, and so they neglected their studies. It was therefore recommended that the Senate give preference in their appointments to those students who could present written testimonials from their teachers concerning their studies and conduct.26 Successful nominees were sent directly to their parish, where they were installed following a ceremony developed during the 1550s. This ceremony visibly demonstrated the authority of the magistrate in church affairs, for it was jointly conducted by a member of the Senate, generally one of the Deputaten, and one of the city pastors, usually, but not always, the antistes. The senator opened the ceremony by introducing the new pastor and stating the Senate’s approval of the candidate’s ‘‘learning, orthodoxy, disciplined conduct, and piety.’’ The city pastor then gave a sermon on the pastoral office, emphasizing the obligations of the parishioners to their pastor and urging the new pastor to diligence in his duties. The formal installation continued with the pastor’s laying of hands on the new pastor, ‘‘according to the custom of the apostolic church,’’ and prayer for divine assistance. The senator closed the ceremony with yet another reminder that parishioners should obey their pastor, and that those who disobeyed would be reported to the magistrate for punishment.27 The few existing references to the installation of new pastors from the 1560s reflect some sense that the pastor was not simply given a specific job with defined rights and responsibilities but was also ordained or set apart for the ministry in general. The latter aspect may have been more important than the former, for Christian Wurstisen noted in his diary that he was ‘‘inaugurated into the ministry of the church by Sulzer in Roeteln’’ (in Baden, where Sulzer was also superintendent of the church). Wurstisen never held a post in Baden; hence his ‘‘inauguration’’ was an ordination, not an installation to a specific post.28 Over the last third of the sixteenth century, several changes occurred that transformed the significance of the installation ceremony. In 1562, a new ordinance for the rural church specified that as part of the installation ceremony, the new pastor was to swear obedience to the dean of the chapter in which the parish was located. This was only the first step in the gradual process of increasing the degree of supervision over the rural clergy and developing an ecclesiastical hierarchy within Basel’s church.29 The confessional strife that developed in Basel over the 1570s brought another change. At the end of the century, the Senate issued a mandate requiring that all pastoral candidates be examined for their orthodoxy and promise their obedience to the magistrate, the Kirchenrat, and the dean of their chapter. Only after such a promise was extracted was the candidate sent to his new parish. The mandate also specified that these new pastors would not be formally installed until they

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had served a probationary period to the satisfaction of their parishioners and of the church authorities.30 The requirement of a probationary period was only the formalization of what had come to be the normal practice of Basel’s church, for already by the 1590s, newly elected pastors were being sent to their posts but not installed until a later date. The temporal separation of election and installation was originally seen as a purely practical matter, intended to free city and church officials from the burden of traveling to a rural parish every time a new pastor was elected.31 Since both district and village officials were expected to participate, the inauguration was not entirely without congregational representation, but the ceremony no longer had a purely congregational purpose. An inauguration held in a central location before an audience of pastors and village officials had a much different significance from one held in the parish before the congregation. The decoupling of the public installation from the new pastor’s assumption of his duties had several implications. It broke any older associations that might have remained between the Catholic sacrament of ordination and the Reformed ceremony of installation. It also contributed to a devaluation of the latter, since the rite could no longer be interpreted as conferring the authority to exercise the duties of pastoral office. Instead, installation now served as both a carrot and a stick to Basel’s newly appointed pastors. It was a reward held out for those who demonstrated their loyalty to both secular and ecclesiastical officials, and a privilege that could be denied to those who did not toe the line. Installation in one’s first parish was only the first rung on the career ladder for Basel’s clergy. The church had a clear hierarchy of posts, and most pastors could hope to move to a better paying and more prestigious post over the courses of their careers. That career often began with appointment to one of the seven parishes that served as entry-level positions. Half of the city pastors and almost two-thirds of the rural pastors held one of these seven positions in the century after the Reformation. The first position to be used in this way was the parish of Lausen, just to the east of Liestal, the largest settlement within Basel’s territory. The Lausen pastor also served as the schoolmaster in Liestal and assisted the Liestal pastor. Turnover in this parish was particularly high. It was unusual for a pastor to stay for more than a few years, unless he was highly regarded as a teacher or there was some question about his potential as a pastor. Heinrich Suntgauer, who served Lausen from 1585 to 1595, is a good example of the latter case. He was regularly criticized at chapter meetings because both he and his wife drank too much. Only after his wife’s death was Suntgauer appointed as vicar in another parish, and he served there for two years before finally being given the post permanently.32 Two more churches just outside of Basel’s walls also provided a training ground for young pastors: the hospital church of St. Jacob and the village of Hu¨ningen. In the decade after the Reformation, several former priests served St. Jacob, but no record remains of most of the men who provided pastoral

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care there for the next forty years. Only in the 1580s did the situation stabilize somewhat, and the post was then filled in regular succession by young men who served for two or three years before moving up to other posts. Oversight of the church was also uncertain; it was moved back and forth between the city and one of the rural districts several times before finally being classified as a rural parish at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The turnover in Hu¨ningen was not quite so rapid, perhaps because the village was an established parish, but by the 1590s that post, too, was reserved for beginning pastors. The proximity of both churches to the city made them ideal as places where young pastors could gain some practical experience while continuing their studies at the university, as we have seen in the case of Christian Wurstisen. In recognition of this fact, the antistes was given the right of appointment for both churches in the early seventeenth century.33 This made the posts even more valuable, because the church’s leader could appoint his best candidates to these positions without having to go through the normal procedure for nominating pastors. The men who served these two parishes were as likely to move on to a city post as to a rural one. Farther away from the city, the two parishes of Arisdorf and Mu¨nchenstein served as entry-level positions for those pastors who were destined for the rural ministry. Although they were both a step up from the positions at Lausen, St. Jacob, and Hu¨ningen, they were poorly endowed, so they were regarded as most appropriate for young men first entering the ministry. Their incumbents were regularly transferred to other rural posts as both their experience and their financial needs increased.34 In addition to St. Jacob and Hu¨ningen, two more positions functioned as first posts for city pastors from the early seventeenth century. In May 1604, the Senate decreed that weekly sermons be held at the church of St. Margaret for the residents of two villages just south of the city, and it gave the four senior pastors in the city the right to appoint the preacher.35 For several years, the city pastors had also requested that the Senate approve the appointment of a common deacon who could substitute for any of the city pastors who was temporarily unable to perform his duties. Such a post was established briefly ‘in 1607, but it was combined with the Hu¨ningen parish by 1614. Hu¨ningen lost its status as an independent parish in 1623, while the post of common deacon was retained. This post was used, in particular, to support the most promising pastoral candidates in the city: many of those appointed as common deacons went on to become influential city pastors or university professors.36 With the important exceptions of St. Jacob and Hu¨ningen, a pastor’s initial appointment determined whether he would serve the rural church or a parish in the city of Basel. Of the 167 pastors appointed between 1550 and 1629, only thirteen were appointed first to a rural parish and later transferred to an urban one. In the other direction, only one urban pastor, the assistant pastor of St. Theodor, was transferred to a rural post, and this was a disciplinary measure imposed in response to a sermon criticizing the magistrate. There was a well-established career pattern for those pastors who held posts in the city of Basel. New ministers were first elected as assistant pastors

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(deacons) at one of the four parish churches or, in the seventeenth century, appointed as common deacon. Half of the pastors who served in the city held this post for the rest of their careers; most of these either died or left the ministry within ten years of their appointment. The next step on the career path for those who survived was election as sole pastor of one of the churches affiliated with the cathedral: St. Alban, St. Martin, or St. Elizabeth. Only those with considerable pastoral experience were nominated to be senior pastor at one of the four parish churches. Although an assistant who had served the parish for many years might be elected to the senior pastor position, it was much more likely that a pastor from one of the filial churches would be chosen for that position.37 Half of Basel’s rural pastors held only one post. Roughly 60 percent of these pastors died or left Basel’s ministry within a decade of their appointment, and thus before they might have been appointed to a second post, but a few of them remained in one parish for decades.38 Almost all of the pastors who held two rural posts began their careers serving in one of the entry-level parishes, and several of those who had not served one of these parishes had pastoral experience elsewhere before entering Basel’s ministry.39 The relative status of the rural posts was less clear than that of those in the city, but in general that status was linked to both the pastor’s income and the size of the parish.40 A few positions were better endowed, were more prestigious, or entailed greater responsibility than the rest. Liestal was both the largest settlement and the only walled city in Basel’s territory; the men chosen as its parish pastors invariably had prior experience in one of Basel’s rural parishes. Likewise, the parish of Sissach, which included not only that village but four surrounding villages as well, was always given an experienced pastor. The greatest responsibilities within the rural church were divided among the deans of the three rural chapters.41 The largest of the three, the Farnsburg chapter, included ten parishes plus the preacher at the Obervogt’s castle, who served as a common deacon for the rural church, substituting for pastors throughout the entire territory when necessary. The Liestal chapter contained nine parishes, three of which were associated with the Liestal church in some way, while the Waldenburg chapter had only seven parishes. The deans of each chapter were elected by their fellow pastors and were responsible for supervising those churches. By the end of the sixteenth century, they served as intermediaries between the church leaders in the city and the pastors serving in the countryside. The growing prominence of the deans was only part of a larger movement over the course of the later sixteenth century to improve clerical supervision and to redefine the relationship between ecclesiastical and secular authorities.

Developing an Ecclesiastical Hierarchy The Basel church at midcentury had no effective means of overseeing its clergy or promoting policies it deemed necessary. The measures introduced

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by the Senate in 1539 to limit Myconius’s authority and to place the church more firmly under the magistrate’s control had left the church in administrative disarray. In the city, the four senior pastors were now collectively responsible for handling church affairs. As long as the pastors agreed on policies, this arrangement could function reasonably well, but it left the church vulnerable to the worst consequences of factionalism if disagreements were to develop.42 For the most part, the rural church was left to itself. The Senate sent out a senior pastor and one of the Deputaten to visit the churches in 1541, 1546, 1549, and 1551, but no records were kept of these visitations.43 For more direct supervision of the rural clergy, the Senate relied on the remnants of the rural chapter of Sisgau, the subdivision of the medieval diocese of Basel that had included most of the city’s territory. The rural chapter was a corporation that had functioned as a religious confraternity and defended the interests of the rural clergy. Its members were subject to a dean whom they elected. The chapter also had its own funds, administered by an elected treasurer. At the time of the Reformation, the Senate had appropriated the chapter’s property and appointed Hans Bruwiler, the pastor of Liestal, as the new archdean. Bruwiler was not an enthusiastic supporter of the new order adopted in 1529, and his fellow pastors soon complained that he had no interest in exercising his supervisory responsibilities. To remedy this situation, the Senate appointed pastors to serve as deans or superintendents in the three chapters into which the territory was now divided. After Bruwiler’s death in 1540, the position of archdean was left vacant, and the three deans assumed the responsibilities of supervisors and spokesmen for their fellow pastors.44 The passing of the first generation of pastors and their replacement by a new generation at midcentury brought a new concern for the smooth functioning of the church in both city and countryside, accompanied by more frequent synods and better documentation. In 1554, Simon Sulzer and Deputat Balthasar Han were sent out to visit the rural churches. The next year, a synod was held in the city, the first in five years. Another visitation was held in 1557, and synods followed in 1558 and 1559. Like the synods of the 1530s, these gatherings provided a forum for the urban and rural clergy to present their collective grievances and suggestions for improvement to the Senate. Many of the pastors’ complaints were the same as those made at the synods held twenty years earlier: the morals code was not being enforced, and sins such as gambling, drinking, and cursing were getting out of hand; wedding celebrations lasted as long as three days and were marred by dancing, gluttony, drunkenness, and solicitation by local prostitutes; children were sent into the streets to beg or left to run wild. The rural pastors also raised concerns about the number of peasants who were entering mercenary service, despite the prohibition of the Senate. Some of the pastors’ grievances were more pointed, for the charges of usury and speculation on grain and wine, and of negligence in overseeing the distribution of alms and accounting for the income from church property, were not-so-implicit criticisms of members of the Senate.

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These grievances suggest that not much had changed in the rural parishes over the past twenty years. There was, however, a new set of issues that reflected the passing of time. The most immediate concerns raised by the pastors were assisting elderly or ailing colleagues unable to perform their duties and establishing a regular procedure for appointing substitutes when a pastor died, so that his widow and children would continue to receive the parish income for a specified period of time. The pastors also requested the establishment of additional common deacons who would be available to assist any pastor as needed and provide pastoral care for vacant parishes.45 These grievances and recommendations were not entirely without effect on the city’s government. At the close of the 1559 synod, the Senate appointed a commission to examine the pastors’ concerns and draft measures to deal with them. Over the course of the next year, the commission collated the petitions submitted over the previous three years and drafted a point-by-point response.46 In the meantime, however, Basel suffered the deeply embarrassing discovery that the respected merchant Johann von Bruck, who had died in 1556 and been honorably buried in the church of St. Leonhard, was in reality the heresiarch David Joris.47 The exposure of Joris’s followers did nothing to improve the Senate’s opinion of the city’s pastors, who had failed to detect the heretics in their midst. The tensions between Senate and pastors came to a head when a new quarrel broke out among the city pastors over a book on the relationship between faith and good works published by Johannes Hospinian, the professor of logic and pastor of one of the episcopal villages. The Senate’s previous displeasure with its clergy only fed its annoyance at synodal grievances that it felt had been directed specifically at its members, ranging from negligence and religious indifference to malfeasance and misappropriation of church funds. As a consequence, the Senate’s official response to the synod petitions fell far short of the pastors’ wishes when it was finally presented to the pastors in October 1560, and it was accompanied by a harsh criticism of the pastors themselves. The senators justified their own oversight of church affairs, declaring: ‘‘up to the present we have administered the church’s property as we trust we can give an account to God and all honorable men, and we will continue to do so.’’ Nor had they failed to provide financial support to pastors and teachers, who, after all, were sufficiently provided for from their benefices—an assertion the pastors might have disputed. The Senate turned a deaf ear to the pastors’ request for the permanent post of common deacon in the city and stated that the rural pastors did not need additional assistance beyond that provided by the preacher of the Farnsburg castle.48 The Senate’s response to complaints about growing immorality was also less than what the pastors desired. The Senate reminded them that it had recently renewed its mandates against various moral offenses, but it did not appear convinced that the moral failings of its subjects were as severe as the pastors claimed. It was willing, for instance, to take steps against gambling that was done without proper supervision and lasted throughout the night or was

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done for undue profit, but ‘‘honorable games’’ played in the guildhalls ‘‘for the sake of entertainment’’ would not be abolished. Likewise, disreputable songs were to be prohibited, but dancing was permissible, ‘‘as long as it was done with restraint and honor.’’49 After presenting its response to the various synodal articles, the Senate turned to the pastors themselves. The pastors had not only failed to carry out their preaching responsibilities; they were also faulted for their conduct. Their audience could hear from their sermons that they disagreed with each other; the pastors excluded their deacons from their weekly meetings, and some caused offense by allowing their wives and children to dress above their station. If the pastors expected the Senate to assist in eliminating vice—which the Senate fully intended to do—they had first to look to themselves and correct their own failings.50 All in all, the immediate result of the synods of the later 1550s was the Senate’s reassertion of its final authority over the moral and religious lives of its subjects, a refusal to allow the pastors any greater influence over the religious instruction and conduct of their parishioners than what they already had, and a sharp rebuke for the pastors who were seen as too willing to meddle in the concerns of the Senate at the expense of their own preaching responsibilities. No further synods or visitations were held for the rest of the 1560s. In the long run, though, the Senate was forced to address more directly the synodal grievances particularly concerned with staffing and supervision of the rural church. The Reformation Ordinance had not dealt with many of these problems, and they now needed to be addressed. Accordingly, a new church ordinance for the rural church was drafted in 1561 and confirmed by the Senate the following year.51 The ordinance created a supervisory structure for the rural clergy under the authority of the general chapter of Sisgau, which was itself divided into three district chapters. The new church ordinance reestablished the position of archdean and gave the right to appoint the archdean to the Deputaten and four senior pastors in the city. The pastors of each district chapter could elect their own dean, but their choice was to be presented to and confirmed by the city pastors and Deputaten. Each dean was given formal charge over the churches in his district, while the archdean, in conjunction with the deans, bore final responsibility for both the spiritual and material condition of the rural parishes. To bolster the archdean’s authority, the ordinance specified that he had the right to admonish both pastors and secular officials to the better performance of their duties, and newly appointed pastors were to take an oath to obey him in all things. With regard to the pastors themselves, the ordinance set minimum standards of conduct. They were to live quiet and studious lives, at peace with their wives and children, they were to dress appropriately not only in public but also at home, and they were to avoid bad company and to refrain from dishonorable or foolish activities such as singing and dancing at weddings. The pastors of each district were to meet twice a year for instruction and discussion of church affairs. Disciplinary matters and disagreements between pastors were also to be resolved at these meetings. In addition, all rural

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pastors were to meet in a general convent held every other year, and their concerns and deliberations were to be forwarded to the Deputaten and city pastors. Responding to the concerns expressed in the previous synods, the ordinance regularized the procedure for providing pastoral care where pastors were incapacitated or had died and guaranteed that the widows and families of deceased pastors would continue to receive the parish’s income for six months.52 Perhaps the most significant result of the new ordinance was the stricter separation of Basel’s rural churches from those in the city. The Deputaten and city pastors retained some control over the rural church through their powers of appointment and/or confirmation, and the biennial general convents brought larger problems to their attention. Nevertheless, in terms of day-to-day functioning, the real responsibility for the rural church was now entrusted to the archdean and the deans of the three chapters. The new reliance on the chapters for the purpose of clerical supervision had several advantages over reliance on either synods or visitations. The small number of pastors in each district chapter meant that the chapter meetings could be run more informally than the large gatherings of all pastors in city and countryside. Moreover, they were more efficient than the yearly synods and visitations at resolving local issues and overseeing the clergy at the parish level. Finally, the meetings provided an opportunity for the clergy of each district to socialize and discuss common concerns. As a consequence, they promoted closer ties among the pastors in office and, increasingly, helped preserve friendships first established during student days. As long as the city authorities trusted the capabilities of its superintendents, it saw no need for closer supervision over the rural churches. Only as the doctrinal controversies swirling through Germany began to affect Basel’s rural church did this policy change. Over the course of the 1560s, Basel’s city pastors gradually divided into those who backed Sulzer’s policy of maintaining a broad interpretation of the article on the Lord’s Supper in the Basel Confession, which in practice smoothed relations with the neighboring Lutheran churches in the Empire, and those who believed that Basel’s Confession could not be reconciled with the Augsburg Confession and who emphasized the city’s alliance with the other Reformed churches in Switzerland. The Basel ‘‘Paroxysm’’ of 1570–71 brought this division to the countryside. In a sermon preached on Christmas Day, Heinrich Erzberger, the young assistant pastor of St. Peter, accused the church’s leaders of forsaking the eucharistic doctrine taught by Oecolampadius. His sermon provoked a polemical response from Johann Fu¨glin, the senior pastor of St. Leonhard. The conflict escalated, in part because of the partisan involvement of Lutheran students from the Empire and Reformed students from Zurich. In an attempt to restore order, the Senate required each of its pastors to sign the Wittenberg Concord, along with Bucer’s interpretation of it written for the Basel church in 1536. The rural pastors had closely followed developments in the city, and they refused to sign the Wittenberg Concord until it became clear that such a refusal would mean the loss of their positions.53

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Over the next several years, all pastors entering the Basel ministry were required to sign the Wittenberg Concord, but this measure proved to be only a partial solution. Tensions continued to mount over the 1570s and reached an acute level in 1577, as news of the Formula of Concord reached Switzerland. The Senate’s decree prohibiting its pastors from signing the Formula may have been yet another effort to avoid commitment to a doctrinal statement that narrowly defined the positions of one confession and excluded all other views, but that decree was perceived by many as a rejection of Lutheranism and thus an endorsement of the Reformed church.54 By the end of the decade, it was no longer possible to appeal to broad statements that could include both sides of the confessional divide: pastors had to choose between the rival confessions. In Basel, that fault line ran through both the urban and the rural churches, dividing its clergy. Under these circumstances, the structures established in 1562 were no longer adequate for preserving harmony among the rural pastors. Although it may have been the most prominent cause of divisions, doctrinal controversy was not the only source of problems in the rural church. There were other more immediate considerations as well. The ordinance of 1562 had established a chain of command, but it had rather naively assumed that the pastors would be on good terms with their colleagues and with their neighbors. This proved to be an overly optimistic assumption, and by the 1570s it was clear that the church needed some way of handling personal frictions, both among the clergy and between pastors and parishioners, before they got out of hand. All of these concerns led to the revision of the rural church ordinance in 1578, although the Senate did not confirm the revision until 1582.55 The revised ordinance differed from the earlier version in its emphasis on the need for uniformity in both doctrine and church practices. It also established new procedures for dealing with disagreements and conflicts between pastors and gave the deans new powers to enforce those procedures. Several of these changes were incorporated into a new section describing how to censure an erring pastor. The ordinance laid out a disciplinary procedure roughly modeled on the stages outlined in Matthew 18. If the erring pastor did not heed private admonition, first individually and then with witnesses, he was reported to the dean, who would bring a charge against him either at the district chapter meeting or at the general convent of all clergy. A pastor who refused to change his ways, even after repeated admonition, was excluded from the chapter, and his case was reported to the Deputaten and pastors in the city. Individual pastors were forbidden to bring charges against their fellows at the chapter level unless they had first tried private admonition, and no case could be brought to the attention of the officials in the city unless and until it had come before a chapter meeting or general convent. Likewise, matters that had been resolved at a lower level, such as a chapter meeting, were not to be brought up at a higher level, such as a general convent or synod. Both the pastors and the secular officials who attended the chapter meetings were to maintain silence concerning the chapter’s business ‘‘and in no way spread it about or criticize it in the streets and taverns.’’56

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The ordinance also established certain juridical privileges for Basel’s clergy. Disputes between pastors were not to be heard by secular officials but had to be brought before the dean. The deans were also responsible for settling disputes that might arise between a pastor and his wife. If a pastor was a plaintiff in a case involving a layman, he could use the secular courts, but if a layman brought suit against a pastor, the case was to be determined by the rector of the university. All of these provisions were directed at the resolution of conflict at the earliest possible instance and with the greatest degree of confidentiality. By so doing, they preserved the collective reputation of the pastors against their critics. They also discouraged teaching, practices, or conduct that would set individual pastors apart from their colleagues and undermine a newly developing sense of collective identity. These tendencies would be strengthened over the course of the next decade, as Johann Jacob Grynaeus assumed leadership of Basel’s church. Grynaeus had a clear vision for Basel’s church when he assumed his position as cathedral pastor in the spring of 1586. The church needed not only unambiguous doctrinal standards around which the pastors would unite but also a functioning system of clerical oversight that specified responsibilities and authority at each level of the hierarchy. Grynaeus’s decade of experience as church superintendent in Baden proved to be a practice run for what he would introduce in Basel. A decade after his return to Basel, he had succeeded in restructuring the ministry and enforcing doctrinal conformity. Grynaeus’s election as cathedral pastor marked the definitive rejection of Basel’s policy of avoiding explicit identification with either confession, for by 1586 Grynaeus’s commitment to Reformed doctrine was well known. From the beginning of his ministry, Grynaeus slowly but surely encouraged his fellow pastors to abandon those positions that did not accord with Reformed teaching. In an age of bitter confessional polemic, his forbearance in dealing with pastors who did not agree with him was noteworthy, for he avoided any public denunciation of opposing views. Instead, he worked through the weekly meetings of the city clergy and the synods and chapter meetings to pressure dissenting clergy to conform to the majority view. In the late summer of 1591, for instance, he went through the Reformation Ordinance with the pastors and deacons at the Kirchenrat sessions, to ensure that all were familiar with and agreed with its contents.57 As Grynaeus himself acknowledged, his success in establishing greater doctrinal uniformity was aided by the high turnover among the city clergy and the consequent appointment of a number of younger men to the urban parishes.58 In the ten years after Grynaeus’s election as pastor, seven of his twelve colleagues either died or left office, and an eighth was increasingly incapacitated by age. Grynaeus was thus in the enviable position of being able to influence the selection of his coworkers. Four of the pastors appointed to fill city posts between 1586 and 1596 had proven their doctrinal orthodoxy and their pastoral competence while serving as rural pastors before being called to city parishes. Three more were young men who had studied theology under

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Grynaeus and could thus be considered doctrinally sound. Most of the new pastors were still in their twenties or early thirties when appointed to their city posts, and only a few of them were old enough to remember, much less endorse, the confessional openness Sulzer had pursued during the 1550s and 1560s. As a consequence, Grynaeus had little difficulty encouraging stricter adherence to Reformed doctrine. By the mid-1590s, only one pastor was left in the city itself who did not readily conform to the new orthodoxy in the city. As the archdeacon at the cathedral, Johann Jacob Gugger worked closely with Grynaeus, bearing much of the preaching burden in that church, and their doctrinal disagreements were well known. Nonetheless, the two avoided public controversy, and Gugger told his more clearly Reformed colleagues that he was willing to be taught from God’s word and preach in conformity with the Basel Confession. Because he was a very popular preacher, he was more or less tolerated by the other pastors.59 The chief problem that Grynaeus faced in his efforts to strengthen the supervisory structures of the church was the diffuse nature of authority. The collegial nature of church leadership effectively prevented any one pastor from forcing his will upon his fellows, but it left the church without any mechanism for resolving conflicts and made it difficult to introduce necessary reforms. Grynaeus was quite aware of this problem and took steps to counter it. Six months after returning to Basel, he petitioned the Senate to appoint him ‘‘overseer,’’ with the authority to convoke regular meetings of the city clergy, delegate preaching duties when one of the pastors was sick or absent, authorize leaves of absence, and discipline those ministers who were negligent in visiting the sick or performing their other pastoral duties.60 Although it took them almost a year, the Senate eventually agreed to Grynaeus’s request and gave him the authority over his colleagues he had asked for. In August 1587, they summoned all of the city’s pastors and announced to them that henceforth Grynaeus would be the ‘‘supreme shepherd, president, and overseer of the church in both city and country.’’61 Grynaeus now had full authority over his colleagues in the city and ultimate responsibility for the rural pastors. Grynaeus did not hesitate to exert his newly granted authority. Already the previous May he had visited the rural churches, together with the senior Deputat and another pastor from the city. General synods were held for all pastors in 1588, 1590, 1597, and 1598, while further visitations were carried out in 1589 and 1594. The weekly meetings of city pastors also assumed new importance for the administering of ecclesiastical affairs, as revealed by Grynaeus’s carefully recorded minutes of each meeting.62 In the first year of Grynaeus’s tenure, the Kirchenrat, as it was now called, dealt with matters ranging from complaints about the low salaries of certain parishes and nominations for vacant posts to discussions of how to respond to the bishop’s efforts to suppress Reformed worship in his territory. The weekly meetings of the Kirchenrat met the need for communication and supervision among the city pastors. Although they were held only once or twice a year, the district chapter meetings and general convents performed the

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same function for the rural clergy. Like the synods of all clergy, the general convents included both a censure of the pastors and an opportunity for each pastor to present concerns and problems in his parish to his ecclesiastical superiors. They were thus an acceptable substitute during those years in which neither a synod nor a visitation was called. Grynaeus or one of the other city pastors was sent to attend the general chapter meetings, and a report of each meeting was submitted to the authorities in the city. At about the same time, the deans began keeping records of the district chapter meetings as well.63 Such improved record keeping was vital for the oversight of the clergy, for it made both public (at least to church authorities) and permanent the disciplinary actions and discussions that had previously been witnessed only by those attending these meetings. The culmination of Grynaeus’s efforts for doctrinal conformity and stricter clerical oversight was the Kirchendienerordnung issued at the end of 1597. As noted, this ordinance required that new pastors be examined before their installations and obliged them to accept Basel’s official teachings or be removed from office. Although intended primarily for men entering Basel’s ministry, it was also imposed on the city’s existing clergy. In March 1598, a general convent was held to acquaint the rural pastors with these new standards of doctrine and conduct. The Senate sent a contingent of two pastors (Grynaeus and his colleague Johann Tryphius), the theology professor Amandus Polanus, and one of the Deputaten to the synod to see that doctrinal unity was established among the pastors. Over the course of the first day, the pastors went through the Basel Confession article by article, in order to identify any possible deviations from the official interpretation. It was no longer sufficient for the pastors to say that they agreed with the Confession; they were also to interpret it in a particular way. As the Deputat impressed on the rural pastors, those who disagreed with the official interpretation given by the city pastors were given this last opportunity to have their ‘‘misunderstandings’’ corrected.64 Most of the pastors accepted the articles of the Confession, along with Grynaeus’s official interpretation, without any question, even when asked individually about the article on the Lord’s Supper. The lengthiest debates arose over seemingly more obscure issues and demonstrate that the road to confessionalization could be rocky. The Liestal pastor Jakob Christoph Ryter objected to two changes that Grynaeus had made to Basel’s catechism, replacing Myconius’s original explanation of Christ’s descent into hell from the creed, and renumbering the Ten Commandments to match the Reformed division. Ryter’s objections were based as much on traditionalism as on theology: he was unwilling to see any changes to the wording attributed to Oecolampadius and derived from the writings of the church fathers. The confessional significance of these changes was uppermost in the minds of the church’s leaders, however. Both Grynaeus and Polanus emphasized that the traditional explanation of Christ’s descent could be used to support a number of doctrinal errors and therefore had to be

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replaced by an explanation that better accorded with Scripture.65 Likewise, the division of the Commandments, which combined the prohibitions against coveting into one commandment, ‘‘was not something first established twelve years ago,’’ when Grynaeus had assumed leadership of the church, but was used in the catechism of Christoph Wyssgerber, was found in the Strasbourg catechism, and was derived from Scripture itself.66 Whether or not Ryter was convinced by these arguments, he eventually submitted to the official interpretation for the sake of preserving unity among the pastors. The synod was closed the next day with a celebration of the Lord’s Supper to demonstrate that unity—as Ryter remarked in his own notes concerning the synod, something that had never been done since the time of the Reformation.67 The general convent of 1598 was the last step in the consolidation of a new ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Basel church. In the rural church, pastors were now scrutinized yearly via the censures that were a regular part of the district and general chapter meetings, and as the functional bishop of Basel’s church, Grynaeus was kept appraised of conditions in the rural parishes. His attendance at the general convents, appearing in the name of Basel’s Senate and sometimes accompanied by one of the Deputaten, personalized and reinforced his authority over the church.68 When it gave Grynaeus this authority, Basel’s Senate reversed a longstanding policy that had effectively weakened the ability of any individual pastor to supervise, discipline, and direct the city’s clergy. By the close of the sixteenth century, though, a stronger church hierarchy was not seen as a challenge to the authority of the Senate; rather, it relieved the Senate of responsibilities that it did not care to exercise. In fact, over the next decades, the Senate’s policy toward the church could best be described as one of benign neglect. It approved appointments recommended by the Kirchenrat, accepted reports from the visitations and synods, deposed pastors for misconduct in office, confirmed minor decisions decided by the Kirchenrat in conjunction with the Deputaten, and referred major ones to commissions specially appointed for that purpose.69 The only situations where the magistrate took direct action without being prompted by the Kirchenrat were those in which a pastor had criticized either the policies of the Senate or the conduct of individual senators. The Senate warned the pastors that shortcomings and sins among the members of the Senate were to be rebuked privately, rather than proclaimed from the pulpit, and temporarily deposed the pastor of St. Leonhard, Israel Ritter, in 1587 for preaching against the Senate’s policies during a brief war with neighboring Mulhouse.70 Likewise, the Senate refused to be railroaded when it deemed that the pastors went beyond reasonable bounds. In 1597, for instance, the Senate rejected the Kirchenrat’s argument that the statues of St. Martin and St. George should be removed from the fac¸ade of the cathedral because they violated God’s prohibition of images. Despite Grynaeus’s comment in the minutes of the Kirchenrat that ‘‘it was necessary to obey God rather than man,’’ the pastors were forced to back down on the issue, and the statues remained.71

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Perhaps the best illustration of the relationship between the pastors and the magistrate, however, is the extended discussion concerning the improvement of morals that took place during the fall of 1590. This exchange began with a sermon in which Grynaeus criticized the Senate and lamented the poor enforcement of discipline in the city. When the sermon was brought to the attention of the Senate, it dispatched the Deputaten to talk with Grynaeus. The antistes, in turn, described his sermon and then wrote out his specific grievances for them. At the same time, Grynaeus asked that a member of the Senate attend the weekly meetings of the head pastors, to be informed of situations where the magistrate needed to correct abuses or support the church.72 Less than two weeks later, the Senate began discussing the problems Grynaeus had cited, a discussion that lasted for the next few months. At the end of the year, it presented its final response to the Kirchenrat. For the most part, the presentation was a disappointment to the pastors. The Senate duly acknowledged its duty as a Christian magistrate to promote God’s word and the reformation of life, and it promised to see that its edicts and mandates were better enforced. At the same time, though, it resisted the pastors’ efforts to urge more direct involvement in church affairs by refusing to burden one of its members with weekly attendance at the pastors’ meetings. If the pastors wanted the Senate to act on specific concerns, they could inform the Deputaten, who would in turn pass those concerns on to the Senate.73 The entire exchange reveals both the extent and the limits of the partnership between magistrate and ministers. The Senate was sensitive to any criticism of its members from the pulpit, but it was willing to listen to complaints it considered justified. Rather than seeking an active role in church affairs, it resisted the pastors’ efforts to draw it into too great an involvement with routine supervision of the church. The traditional view that Basel’s church was entirely subordinate to the magistrate thus needs to be modified to recognize both the clergy’s desire for greater magisterial intervention and the Senate’s awareness that the pastors had their own sphere of responsibility.74 The years immediately after the Reformation had been marked by uncertainty and experimentation as pastors and magistrate worked out their new relationship. At midcentury, the only clear principle that had been established was the subordination of the church to the magistrate. Fifty years later, the situation was much different. By the early decades of the seventeenth century, that relationship had evolved into more of a partnership that allowed a great deal of independence to the church, although the magistrate retained its ultimate authority.75 In practice, much of the responsibility had been delegated to the Deputaten, who worked with the Kirchenrat to oversee ecclesiastical affairs. The church’s leadership might have preferred a closer partnership, with the Senate paying greater heed to their concerns, but the magistrate was not inclined to greater involvement. Nevertheless, if this was not the ideal relationship, it was one the church could live with, for it authorized the antistes to supervise and discipline his fellow pastors and provided him with an institutional mechanism to assist in that task.76

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Grynaeus’s satisfaction with the state of Basel’s church thus seems entirely justified. The institutional structures that developed over the second half of the sixteenth century provided an external framework for the tasks of the ministry. But how well did the ministers function within that framework? The next two chapters will look more closely at how they performed the various pastoral responsibilities with which Basel’s clergy were entrusted.

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10 The Pastor as Teacher

In the farewell sermon he preached to his congregation at St. Elizabeth on the eve of his installation as the new cathedral pastor, Johannes Wollebius urged his hearers to take note of the labors required of a faithful pastor. Although the papist clergy lived a life of leisure, and even some Protestant pastors were guilty of shirking their duty, for most ministers, the pastoral office was a heavy one. Wollebius took particular aim at those who claimed that they could preach as well as their pastor but, when they brought their children to be baptized, ‘‘could scarcely address the pastor and godparents, let alone recite the Lord’s Prayer or an entire psalm before the entire congregation.’’ And preaching was only the tip of the iceberg, for the duties incumbent on a good pastor also included studying the Scriptures, visiting the sick, praying for his flock, and exhorting them to greater conformity between doctrine and conduct. For their many labors, these men deserved the respect and gratitude of their parishioners.1 Wollebius’s description of pastoral office repeats a view of the ministry that dated back to the birth of the city’s reformed church. Basel’s Reformation Ordinance defined the duties of the parish pastor as preaching, catechizing, administering the sacraments, visiting the sick and burying the dead, and overseeing the moral behavior of his parishioners. The proper provision of pastoral care continued to be a major concern for both ecclesiastical and secular officials, for they routinely inquired into each minister’s performance of these duties at the visitations and synods of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Although all of these tasks had their precedents in the pastoral care of the medieval church, they assumed a new importance and often a different meaning in the Protestant church. The changes in

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the definition and emphases of pastoral care can be seen as a facet of what Bernd Hamm has called ‘‘normative centering,’’ the growing concentration on certain focal points of belief and practice within the church, the state, and society at large that were increasingly seen as authoritative and regulative.2 Already during the later Middle Ages, certain aspects of theology and spirituality were growing in significance, but the Reformation channeled and institutionalized them, thus accelerating the process. It became the task of the Protestant pastor to propagate these new norms among the laity in general and his parishioners in particular. The various components of pastoral care were redefined accordingly, with special emphasis placed on the pedagogical tasks of pastoral care. Preaching, the first duty enjoined by Basel’s Reformation Ordinance, was the most vital for the pastor’s own understanding of his role as a teacher of God’s word. Indeed, preaching was so central that the ministry was often referred to simply as the preaching office. Yet, as Basel’s pastors recognized, preaching was of little use unless there was an audience for their sermons, and so they campaigned ceaselessly to improve church attendance. They also emphasized the importance of catechization to ensure that all their parishioners knew the fundamental elements of their Christian faith. They strove to increase the frequency of catechism instruction, supplementing parental responsibility for catechization with their own instruction. These fundamentally pedagogical tasks thus assumed prime importance within the pastoral ministry. I have already looked at the evolution of both the form and the content of sermons and catechisms over the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century. This chapter will look more closely at the structures developed for preaching and catechization and at the way these two central elements of the pastoral ministry were carried out.

The Practice of Preaching The framework within which Basel’s rural pastors exercised their tasks of preaching and teaching was the parish rather than the village. The joining of several settlements into one parish was the rule rather than the exception in Basel’s rural territory. Most villages were too small to support their own pastor, and only seven of the twenty-seven rural parishes consisted of a single village. The pastors of parishes made up of villages of the same size followed a rotation that divided preaching services equally, preaching in each village on alternate Sundays. This could have the unfortunate consequence (from the pastor’s point of view) that some villagers thought that they did not need to attend church more often than every two weeks.3 Smaller villages did not have regular services in their own church, for these were held only in the mother church in the largest village. As a consequence, some parishioners had to walk a considerable distance to attend worship. This contributed to the frequent complaints at visitations about parishioners arriving at church late and leaving early.4

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It could be difficult for these smaller villages to gain access to what they considered their fair share of preaching. The villagers of Frenkendorf, for instance, repeatedly asked that their pastor, based in Munzach, be allowed to hold Sunday services in their village when the weather was bad, in order to spare the sick and elderly. In 1594, they were told in no uncertain terms that Sunday morning sermons must be held in Munzach, although the pastor could preach in Frenkendorf on Sunday afternoon if he chose to do so. The villagers did not give up; at the 1601 visitation they requested again that sermons be held in Frenkendorf during the winter. Their request was again summarily rejected. Undaunted, they asked again in 1619, with no more success than in previous years.5 The pastor of Lausen was pulled in three different directions. Not only was he responsible for the church in that village, but he also served as schoolmaster in Liestal and as deacon or assistant to Liestal’s pastor. In 1587, the residents of Lausen requested that their pastor celebrate the Lord’s Supper in their parish on Easter, rather than assisting at the service in Liestal on that day.6 Liestal’s pastor protested against this innovation, complaining that it contradicted long-established custom and gave preferential treatment to a tiny village at the expense of the largest congregation in Basel’s territory. Moreover, if Lausen were allowed to observe the Lord’s Supper on feast days, other villages in double parishes would demand similar privileges.7 One factor contributing to these complaints of pastoral neglect was the growing population of Basel’s rural territory. Between 1500 and 1630, the number of inhabitants of the rural districts rose from less than five thousand to almost fifteen thousand.8 By the end of the century, pastors and village officials alike were complaining that their churches were too small and could not hold all the parishioners. There were also discussions about creating new parishes within the Waldenburg chapter, where the villages were fairly distant from each other.9 These efforts came to nothing, largely for financial reasons, and so, despite the population growth, the number of parishes in Basel’s territory remained unchanged. As a consequence, the rural pastors of the early seventeenth century were responsible for three times as many parishioners as their predecessors at the time of the Reformation. This was particularly significant during plague epidemics, when the clergy were expected to visit the sick and dying. The Reformation Ordinance required the rural pastors to preach twice each week: in addition to the Sunday service, they preached on one weekday as well. The establishment of a regular preaching service on Tuesdays in the city parishes influenced the rural parishes, and Tuesday became the day on which most pastors held their weekday sermon. There were clear expectations concerning the length of these sermons: in 1538, the district governor of Ramstein complained that the peasants thought that sermons should last for an hour, and they did not want to listen to anything longer. At the visitation of 1582, some of the village officials complained that their pastors preached for as long as two hours; these pastors were told by the visitors to limit the sermons to one hour on Sundays and to half an hour on Tuesdays.10

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Unlike residents of the city, who were free to attend the sermons of any of the pastors and thus heard a range of preaching styles and sermon texts, most villagers heard only the sermons of their own minister on the portion of Scripture he chose. Unlike most Reformed churches, Basel retained the practice of preaching on the traditional lectionary for Sundays and feast days, at least in the rural parishes, but the pastors were free to choose whichever text they wished for their weekday sermons. The pastors made great use of this freedom. In 1594, the visitors noted that pastors were teaching on parts of the Pentateuch, the minor prophets, Psalms, and various Pauline epistles. A few pastors used the weekday sermons between Advent and Pentecost to give a more detailed account of Christ’s life and ministry drawn from all of the Gospels; others gave catechism sermons during the week.11 Although their parishioners were not as educated and theologically sophisticated as the city-dwellers, rural pastors were expected to spend time studying in preparation for their sermons. This private study time was particularly crucial for the pastors who entered the ministry in the third quarter of the century. They had received some basic training in rhetoric, dialectic, and theology, and so were familiar with the tools needed for exegesis and preaching. They were not as heavily indoctrinated with orthodox theology as those who entered the ministry at the end of the century, however, and they were expected to continue their theological education on their own, through private study. This self-education could be a double-edged sword, for there was a danger that these pastors might develop theological convictions out of step with those of the church’s leaders.12 We have only glimpses of what the pastors were reading during their private study time. The new pastor in La¨ufelfingen in 1566 noted that the parish church had a copy of Luther’s translation of the New Testament, an old Psalter, and a copy of Basel’s liturgical agenda, while the pastor of Wintersingen had a copy of Johann Spangenburg’s tabular analysis of the Sunday Gospel and epistle texts bound into that parish’s baptismal register.13 Two decades later, an inventory of the books in the church library in Oltingen included both Latin and German Bibles, Nicolas of Lyra’s commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, Martin Borrhaus’s Pentateuch commentary as well as Luther’s commentary on Genesis, and Wolfgang Musculus’s commentary on Matthew, while the Rotenfluh pastor reported that the church owned a copy of Chrysostom’s works.14 The church libraries were less important than the personal libraries of the pastors, but there is no way to determine the contents of the latter for the earlier period. Only at the turn of the century did pastors begin to describe their reading. The trend seemed to be toward greater reliance on Reformed theologians. In 1594, the pastor of Mu¨nchenstein reported that he was ‘‘reading holy Scripture and the writings of Bullinger,’’ while at the 1598 general convent, the pastor of Muttenz cited Bucer’s Romans commentary; in 1605, the Rotenfluh pastor stated that he relied on the commentaries of Calvin, Rudolf Gwalther, and Lambert Daneau to prepare his sermons on Jonah.15

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Perhaps as important as the content of the pastors’ reading and preaching is the frequency with which the parishioners heard their sermons. Throughout the entire sixteenth century, the rural pastors complained about poor church attendance and other indications of disrespect for the Sabbath: men going hunting or women going to market before the Sunday sermon, individuals ‘‘going over the fields’’ either before or during the time of worship, foreign carters transporting their goods through the village on Sunday mornings, and so on.16 The Senate had issued edicts requiring enforcement of its ordinance on church attendance several times during the 1530s and 1540s, but the pastors’ continued complaints indicate that these edicts had little impact. This situation persisted through the end of the century. In June 1595, the Senate reissued its code regulating religious and moral conduct, and the number of complaints about church attendance dropped sharply at the general chapter held a few months later, but by 1596, some of the pastors were complaining again that church attendance was not being enforced.17 Even when the pastors reported that church attendance on Sunday was satisfactory, they complained about poor attendance at the weekday sermon. These services were never as well attended as those on Sunday, in part because they interfered with the work routines of the peasants.18 In 1593, the Tenniken pastor reported that only six people came to the Tuesday sermon, while in Arisdorf there had been one service where no one had come at all, and the pastor was not sure he should continue trying to hold the service.19 Both civic and ecclesiastical authorities were sensitive to the time constraints imposed by field work, and they told pastors not only to shorten their weekday sermons but also to hold them at an earlier hour if the parishioners requested it. By the end of the sixteenth century, it was the general practice to suspend the weekday services from late spring to midautumn, the busiest time for field work.20 In fact, the evidence regarding church attendance is contradictory. The level of attendance varied from parish to parish: while the pastors of Liestal and Tenniken complained about church attendance at the visitation held in 1594, their colleagues in Dietken, Sissach, Arisdorf, and Buus all praised the diligence of their parishioners in coming to church on Sundays. One reason the Senate gave for instituting a visitation in 1601 was that it had reports of poor church attendance, but in parish after parish, the pastors reported that Sunday church attendance was satisfactory; the Liestal pastor even reported that the shortage of chairs on Sunday morning caused discord among his parishioners.21 At a meeting of the Farnsburg chapter a few months earlier, several pastors expressed their satisfaction with attendance, but they were concerned that it would fall off again during the approaching summer. The pastor of Dietken pointed out that his parishioners preferred the custom of the summer, when there was not such ‘‘sharp oversight’’ of attendance, and wished this was the case also in winter, but the pastor himself feared that if enforcement were relaxed, he would soon be preaching to empty pews.22 These examples imply that the most important factor influencing church attendance was the strictness with which the edicts requiring it were enforced. And whatever the seasonal variation may have been, the general trend over the

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course of the sixteenth century was toward better enforcement and hence improved attendance. The kinds of complaints made by the pastors during the synods of the 1530s—that no one attended the Sunday or holiday services, let alone during the week, that many came only every month or so simply to avoid accusations of being Anabaptists, that some came into the church halfway through the sermon, that people gathered outside the church during the time of service, whether buying or selling or simply gossiping—were repeated during the later 1550s, but they had completely disappeared by the end of the century. Complaints about nonattendance from the seventeenth century focus on groups seen as problematic, such as foreign carters driving their wagons through the village at the time of the church service. In 1533, the pastors complained that some were buying and selling schnapps at the time of the service and keeping people away from the sermon; in 1599, the pastor of Sissach complained that some of his parishioners drank their schnapps before church, and then fell asleep during the sermon.23 They may not have gotten much out of the sermon, but at least they were present for it. Moreover, the drinkers in Sissach cannot be seen as fully representative of Basel’s rural population. The visitation records also contain indications that at least some parishioners were listening to their pastors’ sermons. According to the Wintersingen pastor, an outbreak of plague in 1594 had motivated his parishioners to attend church more diligently. In 1598, the villagers of Lausen asked that their pastor be allowed to preach on Tuesday as well as Sunday. At the visitation three years later, the Dietken pastor reported that he preached on the first half of the Sunday gospel text on Sundays and covered the remainder in his weekday sermon, ‘‘but he could tell that when he read only half the text, his hearers wanted him to read the rest.’’ And in 1605, the pastor of La¨ufelfingen told Grynaeus that he had begun preaching on Genesis at his parishioners’ request, ‘‘because they wanted to hear about how things were at the beginning of the world and what kind of life the patriarchs had lived.’’24 This is a far cry from the complaints from the 1530s that the peasants dishonored and neglected God’s word. The changes in preaching and sermon attendance in the city were less dramatic. Here too there were complaints about sermon attendance. Although apparently many people came to the Sunday and Tuesday morning services in each of the parish churches, as well as to the Sunday vespers in the cathedral, attendance dwindled at the other services. By the end of the sixteenth century, Basel’s church leaders were experimenting with ways to attract a larger audience. In May 1588, the 9 a.m. daily sermons at the cathedral were replaced by the daily reading and explication of one chapter from the Bible, beginning with Genesis 1.25 Seven years later, the pastors first suggested introducing a vespers service to be held on the major church holidays in the two parish churches that did not normally hold them, but the Senate did not approve even this limited proposal until 1613. Only in 1619 did the Senate finally agree to weekly vespers services in those churches.26 Meanwhile, the pastors had instituted a reverse form of daylight-saving time for the daybreak services in the main city in 1605. To increase attendance during the dark winter months,

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they suggested that the sermons in the Franciscan church and the cathedral, normally held at 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., respectively, should begin an hour later. An earlier attempt to move the 5 a.m. Sunday sermon held in Kleinbasel to noon proved less successful, because the deacon who preached for that service feared that this would not give him time to prepare on those days when he also preached for the vespers service.27 All of these changes to the preaching schedule had to be approved by the magistrate. The Senate generally acted slowly in implementing any changes because it was reluctant to interfere with the distribution of preaching responsibilities among the city’s pastors. To avoid overburdening any one individual with preaching, the responsibility for the daily sermons rotated among the senior pastors and their assistants. In the cathedral, for instance, the three senior pastors in the main city preached the daily sermon for the Senate (Ratspredigt) at the early service, while the 9 a.m. service was the responsibility, in rotation, of the archdeacon and the pastors of St. Alban and St. Martin. The senior pastors of St. Peter and St. Leonhard also preached at the main service on Sundays and on Tuesday mornings in their own churches. The two assistant pastors of St. Peter traded off responsibility for the dawn service on Sundays and the 8 a.m. service on the remaining weekdays, while the responsibility for the dawn sermons on the remaining weekdays at the Franciscan church was rotated among the assistant pastor of St. Leonhard, the pastor of St. Elizabeth, and the Spital preacher. As at the beginning of the Reformation, the parish of St. Theodor in Kleinbasel remained a selfcontained unit: its senior pastor preached on Sundays and Tuesdays, like his counterparts across the Rhine, while his assistant pastor(s) preached for the early service on Sundays and the dawn sermons at the former convent of St. Clara on the other weekdays.28 Any changes in the preaching responsibility of one or two pastors thus had ramifications for their colleagues. For instance, in the fall of 1610, at the height of the plague outbreak, the Senate released the senior pastors from their obligation to preach the 6 a.m. cathedral sermon on Thursdays and Fridays, giving the responsibility for preaching on Thursdays to their assistant pastors and on Friday to students preparing for the ministry.29 A year later the Kirchenrat recommended that on Thursdays the 9 a.m. sermon in the cathedral be delegated to the rural pastors, so that the city pastors and senators could more easily check on their orthodoxy and evaluate their preaching ability. As Grynaeus presented the proposal, it was not deemed to be too burdensome to the rural pastors, since each pastor would only have to preach in the city twice a year. The Senate approved the idea, and at the end of December, they ordered the rural deans to draw up a schedule for each of the rural ministers, beginning with the pastor of Liestal, to come to the city to preach a Thursday sermon and then meet with the city clergy.30 The rural pastors recognized the value of these sermons for preserving unity among the pastors, supervising their teaching, and bringing the more gifted preachers to the attention of the Senate for possible promotion to an urban parish. Nonetheless, it was a burden for many of them, especially the older pastors or those who lived farthest from the city, to have to travel to Basel.

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In November 1614, therefore, they sent a letter requesting that they be excused from giving the Thursday sermons during the winter. The Senate granted their petition but emphasized that they were required to preach the sermons in rotation from Easter until the fall, and this remained the practice at least into the 1630s.31 Despite modifications to the structure laid out in the Reformation Ordinance, the framework for preaching in Basel remained basically unchanged in the century after the Reformation. The same was not true with regard to catechism instruction. Over the course of the sixteenth century, Basel’s pastors fought a slow and ultimately successful battle to gain more control over catechization and to increase its frequency.

The Challenge of Catechization The Reformation Ordinance paid scant attention to catechization, specifying only that pastors should summon all children between the ages of seven and fourteen four times a year in order to examine and instruct them further in the components of the catechism. The pastors were also given the right to examine and correct each child’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper before receiving the sacrament for the first time.32 Underlying this provision was the assumption that children would learn the catechism elsewhere, from their parents and schoolteachers. Following the provisions of the ordinance, it became customary in Basel’s church for the pastors to hold quarterly catechism sessions. Already by 1540, however, the pastors were complaining to the Senate that the existing system did not work: parents were basing admission to the sacrament more on their children’s age than on their understanding of what was involved, and few children submitted themselves to the pastors’ examination before their first communion.33 These complaints were increased at a series of synods and visitations held in the second half of the 1550s. The pastors reported that neither children nor their parents came to catechism examinations, and that many parishioners received the Lord’s Supper without understanding its meaning. They proposed several measures to combat this problem. First, public catechism instruction should be held more often than the four times a year required by the church ordinance. The pastors recommended that a catechism service be instituted on the Saturday evening before the monthly celebration of the Lord’s Supper in each of the city’s parish churches. Second, not only children but also their parents, who were responsible for teaching their children, should be required to attend the catechism sessions. Third, the pastors requested the right to visit the schools in their parishes every month to observe catechism instruction. Finally, and most controversially, the pastors recommended the institution of a precommunion examination. In order to preserve church discipline and prevent the sacrament from being misused, all those who wished to receive the Lord’s Supper should present themselves to their pastor beforehand in order to be examined and instructed in its meaning.34

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The Senate had initially been open to the pastors’ requests to increase the frequency of catechization and to require all parents to send their children to catechism sessions. In the end, however, it decided to leave in place the provisions of the Reformation Ordinance, which required only that children receiving the Lord’s Supper for the first time be examined by their pastor. Even here, the Senate’s support for this provision was halfhearted, rejecting a proposal that this requirement be read aloud in the guilds every three months. Likewise, the Senate rejected the pastors’ proposal for a mandatory precommunion examination, although it did remind the pastors that if they referred grave sinners to the proper officials, the sins would not go unpunished.35 After the failure to institute more frequent catechization during the 1550s, the issue was dropped and not taken up again until the 1580s. At the synod held in May 1581, Grynaeus—at that time the professor of Old Testament— strongly urged the Senate to introduce weekly catechism sessions, and after the synod of 1584, the pastors requested that they be allowed to replace the noon sermon with catechization on the Sundays when communion was celebrated.36 Once he became head of the church, Grynaeus worked tirelessly for the improvement of catechism instruction. In May 1587, the Kirchenrat took up the issue of more frequent catechization, and a year later it was finally able to institute monthly catechisms in each of the four parish churches. Monthly catechization spread more slowly in the countryside, but by the visitation of 1594, many pastors indicated that they were holding catechism sessions at least once a month.37 The catechism exercises as they were practiced in Basel had two different goals. As the Reformation Ordinance specified, they were an examination of children to see if they knew both the chief parts of the catechism (the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer, as well as the words of institution for both baptism and the Lord’s Supper) and their proper interpretation as contained in Basel’s catechism. The exercises were also an opportunity to teach the catechism to those children who did not yet have it memorized. Which of these elements dominated depended on both the era and the particular pastor. In the early years after the Reformation, the element of examination dominated.38 This was what the Reformation Ordinance had described, for the pastor could not effectively teach the children anything if he only met with them once every three months. Only after monthly catechism sessions were introduced did pastors have a realistic possibility of using the meetings for instruction. Although there was no mandated form to follow in catechizing children, Grynaeus described to his colleagues in the city ministry what he did with the children during this time, so that they would have a model to follow during their own monthly catechism sessions. He opened the session with prayer; then he recited the five chief parts of the catechism. Following this introduction, he examined the children in order, beginning with the girls and ending with the Latin school students. After the examination, Grynaeus read aloud the questions and answers in one part of the catechism, giving a brief explanation of the catechism as he proceeded.39

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Other pastors followed the same procedure as Grynaeus, but they had some freedom to vary from it as they saw fit. The pastor of Mu¨nchenstein, for instance, alternated each week between questioning the older and the younger students, while in Pratteln, the pastor examined the boys first, and then the girls.40 In 1605, the pastor of Arisdorf reported to Grynaeus that when he had first arrived in the village, the children were used to reciting the portions of the catechism in unison, with the result that most children could only stutter and mumble fragments of the catechism when asked to recite it individually. He had experimented to determine the best method of teaching them and had finally hit on a procedure that had proven effective. He first read the entire Basel catechism out loud, and then questioned the students by name, ‘‘which created such attention, diligence, and earnestness among the youth, that a good portion of the boys and girls knew the Ten Commandments and the teaching on baptism and the Lord’s Supper and could teach each other.’’41 This type of interrogation had its drawbacks, of course. The pastor of Waldenburg was criticized for frightening the children by not questioning them in a set order. Over time, a few pastors had to be reminded not to be so harsh and ‘‘unfriendly’’ to the children they were examining but were instead to encourage them.42 The fact that these men were reported to the authorities demonstrates that their fellow pastors disapproved of their manner of catechization. At the time that the monthly catechism sessions were instituted, the city pastors discussed whether to continue the quarterly examinations. They decided that both were necessary: the quarterly catechism sessions were intended for examining the children, while the monthly catechism sessions gave the pastors more opportunity to instruct, to examine the children not in school, and to give more attention to the younger children.43 As these examples demonstrate, even when held monthly, the catechism exercises were still oriented toward examination, not instruction. The children were expected to have already done most of the work of learning the catechism before they came to the catechism session. This was not a problem for those children who attended school, since catechism instruction was a regular and large part of the curriculum. Those who did not attend school were to be taught the catechism by their parents. This was not an unreasonable expectation, since parental instruction had been the dominant means of learning the Latin form of the Lord’s Prayer, creed, and Ave Maria in the late medieval church. With the Reformation, though, the emphasis shifted to the vernacular, and parents thus had to know the chief articles of the catechism in German so that they could teach them to their children. Hence the pastors insisted that they attend the catechism sessions. If the parents were present, they could both see how their children were performing and have their own knowledge of the catechism refreshed and corrected as necessary.44 It took several decades before parents came to share this view, however. A constant complaint at the visitations and synods held over the second half of the sixteenth century was that parents did not attend catechism with their

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children. This pattern was also beginning to change at the end of the century. In 1597 the pastor of Wintersingen, Heinrich Ott, reported that although parents had hitherto refused to attend the catechism, saying that this was not customary, his constant admonition had persuaded some of them to start coming. At the visitation four years later, Ott reported that both children and parents were attending catechism, while other pastors expressed general satisfaction with attendance. The battle to change the parents’ attitude was far from over, however. In 1619, several pastors reported that women and children were coming, but the men still refused to attend the catechism. This division of labor might have made sense to the peasants, since mothers were expected to teach the catechism to the young, but the pastors were not satisfied, because they held the fathers ultimately responsible for the religious instruction of not only their children but their servants and other household members as well.45 By the turn of the century, another problem with parental catechism instruction emerges from the visitations records. Many parents were indeed fulfilling their responsibility to teach the elements of the catechism, but they were using the traditional form contained in the catechism of Oecolampadius and Myconius, rather than the Reformed version introduced by Grynaeus. In 1601, the Dietken pastor reported that children continued to use the old phrasing because they were taught that way at home by their parents, ‘‘and they couldn’t grasp the long Tenth Commandment.’’ This problem only persuaded the pastors that it was more important than ever that parents attend catechism sessions so that they could teach their children the proper wording.46 Pastors and parishioners also disagreed on the ages at which children were to be sent to catechism sessions. A few pastors complained that parents were sending only the very young children, ‘‘with whom one can do nothing fruitful; the older ones are left to run.’’47 A universal complaint was that apprentices and servants refused to attend the catechism exercises. The pastors complained that these teenagers believed that once they had been admitted to the Lord’s Supper for the first time, they were free from the obligation to attend catechism practice.48 There were other hindrances to catechism attendance. A few of the pastors who complained about poor attendance were criticized in turn by their parishioners for making the children stay far too long. The authorities told these men that they would be much more effective if they held shorter and more frequent catechism sessions. In Dietken, the population had grown so much that by the early seventeenth century the church was too small to hold all the children as well as their parents, which the parents used as an excuse not to come to catechism. In the winter, it was hard to persuade children to meet in an unheated church or to walk the long distance to the parish church in another village. By the early seventeenth century, it had become customary to hold catechism only from Easter until the weather began to turn cold in the fall.49 The catechism sessions were not the only opportunity Basel’s pastors had to teach their parishioners the essentials of the catechism. One of the liturgical innovations Grynaeus introduced soon after his return to Basel was the

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incorporation of the chief elements of the catechism into the Sunday service. At the 1587 visitation, the rural pastors were told to speak the Lord’s Prayer, the creed, and the Ten Commandments after the sermon on Sunday; they should also on occasion repeat the Scripture passages describing the institution of both baptism and the Lord’s Supper. At the synods and visitations of the next decade, the pastors were regularly reminded to recite these elements distinctly and understandably. It was especially important that they recite the Ten Commandments in the proper form, clearly distinguishing between the First and Second Commandments, as well as properly dividing the commandments into two tables of four and six.50 In addition to their catechism sessions, Basel’s rural pastors occasionally preached on the catechism. In the rural parishes there was no requirement to do so, but the pastors of both Liestal and Bubendorf had introduced catechism sermons at noon on Sunday by the turn of the century, while the pastor of Pratteln reported in 1594 that he had spent five years preaching on the catechism on Sunday mornings. Many of them preached on the catechism during their weekday sermons.51 Grynaeus also supported regular catechetical preaching in the city. In 1592, the Kirchenrat decided that henceforth the pastor of St. Elizabeth should preach on the catechism during the Sunday service. Four years later, Grynaeus inaugurated a yearlong series of catechism sermons for the Sunday vespers service at the cathedral. Following the divisions of the Heidelberg catechism, Grynaeus preached the first sermon on sin. On the next two Sundays, the pastors of St. Peter and St. Leonhard preached, respectively, on redemption in Christ and on gratitude as the proper response. After these introductory sermons, the three preachers in turn covered the rest of the catechism, divided to extend over the fifty-two Sundays of the year. This cycle of catechetical sermons was repeated annually.52 Thanks to Johann Georg Gross, who served as pastor first of St. Elizabeth and then of St. Peter, we have a good idea of what these catechetical sermons were like. Gross included sketches for three different series of catechetical sermons in his sermon collection published in 1616. He began the first series of thirty sermons in June 1607, shortly after his appointment to St. Elizabeth, and proceeded through the catechism, pausing only during the four weeks of Advent and ending just before Easter of 1608. After Easter he began the second series of thirty-one sermons, this time not just preaching on a portion of the catechism but also including a brief Scripture text that illustrated the main point of the day’s catechetical lesson. Thus he discussed Elijah’s being taken up into heaven as a prefiguration of Christ’s ascension as described in the creed.53 The final series was constructed from the weekly catechetical sermons at the cathedral preached between 1611 and 1615, in rotation with the other two senior pastors. For this series, Gross chose three sermons to illustrate each portion of the catechism, whether commandment, statement from the creed, or petition from the Lord’s Prayer, resulting in over ninety sermons. Despite differences in structure and depth of coverage, the content of Gross’s catechetical sermons remained consistent. In all of his discussions

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of the Fifth Commandment, for example, Gross emphasized that not only parents but all in authority, whether magistrates, teachers, or masters, were to be obeyed and shown reverence and veneration. Parents, in turn, were obligated to love their children, teach them piety, pray for them, and chastise them when necessary. Finally, the promise in Exodus that those who honored their parents would live long could be applied in a spiritual sense to all Christians, but it was always to be understood with the proviso ‘‘if it seems good to God and is useful for the children.’’54 The theological content of these sermons was fairly technical. For instance, in his explanation of Christ’s ascension as stated in the creed, Gross discussed the four degrees of Christ’s exaltation after the crucifixion and his threefold office as prophet, priest, and king. The sermons also served a polemical purpose. Gross’s explanation of Christ’s ascension included explicit criticism of the Jews, who believed Christ’s kingdom would be earthly, and the implicit rejection of both Catholics and Lutherans, who taught that Christ’s body was contained in the sacrament.55 The level of abstraction and theological detail included in the sermons implies not only that Gross expected adults to be among his audience but also that he aimed his message chiefly at them. The catechetical preaching of one of the city’s senior pastors and adjunct theology professors was probably a far cry from the sermons of the rural pastors. Even in the rural churches, however, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the general level of religious knowledge at the end of the century was much higher than it had been fifty years before. In 1601, the pastor of Arisdorf reported a recent conflict that had arisen over a child who had not been attending the catechisms but wanted to receive the Lord’s Supper for the first time. When the pastor objected that the boy should not receive the sacrament if he did not know his prayers or his catechism, his parents answered that they couldn’t pray either but still received the sacrament. The pastor stated his fears that if other older people in the village were examined, several would be found who couldn’t pray the Lord’s Prayer. Four years later, however, the same pastor reported to Grynaeus that after much diligence and zeal in catechizing, ‘‘a good portion of the boys and girls’’ knew their catechism.56 Other pastors reported similar successes in teaching the catechism. In Langenbruck, the pastor told the visitors that ‘‘during the catechism the children could answer so well that he was amazed,’’ while the pastor of Waldenburg boasted that the children had mastered the ‘‘long’’ Ten Commandments and the other parts of the catechism.57 The real test of catechetical knowledge, however, came with the examination before children were admitted to their first communion. Here, too, there was a tremendous contrast with the pastors’ complaints at midcentury. The earliest indication that pastors were regularly performing these examinations dates from 1601, and by 1619 the practice was becoming more common. The Senate capped this development in the spring of 1622, when it issued an edict requiring the examination of first communicants. Like Gross’s catechetical sermons, the theological complexity of the new catechism written specifically

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for this examination reflects the much higher threshold of doctrinal knowledge now considered appropriate for Basel’s citizens and subjects.58 Moreover, the pastors had the right to refuse admission to the sacrament to those who could not answer satisfactorily. At Easter in 1618, for instance, the Arisdorf pastor noted in the parish register that he had not allowed many of the boys to receive their first communion because they had not come to the catechism exercises, ‘‘and because they are bad and for the most part getting worse’’; he did, however, ‘‘show mercy’’ to at least one girl in allowing her to receive her first communion.59 Because admission to the sacrament was not automatic, these first-communion examinations were one of the few disciplinary measures the pastors could use on their parishioners. Aside from the examination of first communicants, the pastors had one other significant opportunity to ascertain how well, if at all, their parishioners knew and understood Christian doctrine. This opportunity came when they visited the sick. When asked in the 1601 visitation about their parishioners’ understanding of doctrine, several pastors responded that in their sickbed visitations they found many who were well instructed in the faith. The pastor of Langenbruck, for instance, reported that many of the sick adults whom he visited ‘‘knew their prayers, the articles of the faith, and that their blessedness was based on faith in the grace of God and in Christ.’’ His colleague in Gelterkinden added that in visiting the sick he found ‘‘that hearing the Word of God had been useful for them,’’ while the pastor of Rotenfluh stated that the sick ‘‘showed signs that they comprehended [God’s] word from the sermons.’’ The pastor of Bretzwil was perhaps more realistic about the success of his teaching efforts, however, when he remarked that his parishioners ‘‘went diligently to sermons, but the fruit appeared more by one than by the other.’’60 The impression one receives from the records of the early seventeenth century is of a significant improvement in church and catechism attendance and consequently in the level of religious knowledge. And one of the most important factors contributing to these improvements is the key role played by local officials in enforcing exposure to evangelical teaching. As Heinrich R. Schmidt has argued, social and religious disciplining was not possible without cooperation and participation at the local level.61 This is certainly the case in Basel. The clergy recognized that their pedagogical responsibilities had to be complemented by the coercive authority of the magistrate. The willingness of local and district officials to enforce the Senate’s edicts concerning church and catechism attendance proved crucial for the gradual acceptance of Reformed beliefs and standards of behavior. This willingness developed only gradually over the course of the sixteenth century. During the 1530s, the Senate listened with sympathy to the pastors’ desperate pleas for more stringent enforcement of their subjects’ religious obligations and in turn urged its officials to greater diligence and severity. Judging from the pastors’ continued complaints, though, these official reminders were not heeded by local officials. As a consequence, the efforts of clergy and magistrate to impose new beliefs and practices, particularly on their rural subjects, met with passive resistance and significant failure. But as

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two generations of Reformed pastors persisted in their preaching and teaching, they gradually won the support of at least some of the local elite, who in turn proved more diligent in enforcing church and catechism attendance. The gradual improvement in attendance was thus the result of the cooperation and mutual support among pastors, Senate, and eventually the local officials.62 There is a certain irony in the fact that at the turn of the century, when attendance at church was being more strictly enforced, the sermons that Basel’s subjects heard were losing their popular character and becoming both more doctrinal and more intellectually complex. There is no way to know for sure how Baslers reacted to this change, but there are several factors to keep in mind. The first is the difference between urban and rural preaching. Doctrinally detailed Ramist sermons seem to have become standard in the city by the second decade of the seventeenth century, but there are no extant sermons from the rural parishes to show whether similar sermons were being preached in the country. A standard refrain of all homiletics texts, however, was that pastors should tailor both the contents and the style of their sermons to the needs and intellectual capacity of their audience.63 To the extent that Basel’s rural pastors followed such advice, Basel’s peasants may not have been exposed to the degree of doctrinal detail regularly included in urban sermons. Moreover, the most intellectually gifted pastors were appointed to posts in the city, where they could serve as adjuncts to the theology faculty. It is possible that many of the less gifted rural pastors would not have been capable of preaching such intensely Ramist and theologically weighty sermons as either Johann Georg Gross or Johannes Wollebius. The second factor concerns the difference between active and passive knowledge. It is unlikely that most Baslers, whether burghers or peasants, could have given a coherent and comprehensive confession of the Reformed faith as preached from the pulpit. But on those issues that were most important for confessional identity, it was not necessary to give such a comprehensive account. It was sufficient that Baslers recognized the key words associated with the correct position on that issue. Thus they may not have understood precisely the shades of meaning that distinguished the terms ‘‘really,’’ ‘‘bodily,’’ ‘‘essentially,’’ ‘‘substantially,’’ and ‘‘spiritually,’’ as applied to Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, but they did know that the last term was the correct one when they heard it, because it was the word constantly repeated in the sermons on the Lord’s Supper given by their pastors. Finally, one could suggest two opposing and probably simultaneous developments in reaction to the increasing level of doctrinal complexity. On the one hand, many parishioners may have gone through the motions of attendance and rote memorization, gleaning what they could from sermons and catechisms that were too detailed for them to remember or too foreign to relate in any significant way to their lives. On the other hand, those who had learned the catechism as children and regularly attended the sermons had been trained to appreciate the doctrinal instruction and to appropriate the pastoral advice they conveyed. Whereas the former development is perhaps more typical of adults who are forced to abandon one set of religious beliefs in

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favor of another, as happened in the decades after the Reformation, the latter is more likely where, as in Basel at the turn of the century, three generations had grown up with the teachings and practices of the Reformed church.64 In fact, the majority of Basel’s subjects probably fell somewhere between the two poles of religious conformity without understanding and ardent adoption of the doctrines and behaviors advocated by their pastors. In order to determine where along this spectrum they can be located, we need more information about how Basel’s pastors performed the other tasks of pastoral care: administering the sacraments, ministering to the sick, the dying, and the bereaved, and exercising their responsibilities of moral oversight.

11 Pastoral Care from Cradle to Grave

At the synod of 1533, Basel’s pastors presented the Senate with a lengthy list of complaints, the largest section of which concerned ‘‘the belittling of the sacraments.’’ Many Baslers, they reported, did not want to have their babies baptized or agreed to such baptisms only to please the magistrate and to avoid suspicions that they were Anabaptists. Some parents asked only ‘‘the least important people, i.e. foreign servants and papists,’’ to act as godparents, and those who were asked to be godparents refused the honor, while fathers refused to attend the baptism of their children. Still others showed their disdain for the sacrament by changing the child’s name from that given at baptism, ‘‘thus denying the baptism they had received.’’1 The situation was no better with regard to the Lord’s Supper. Many of their parishioners had not received the sacrament since before the Reformation, while others received it only once a year, which raised the pastors’ fears that they did so only out of habit or because they felt compelled to participate. Children, foreign servants, and others who came from outside Basel were receiving the Lord’s Supper without having first been examined, so that the pastors did not know if they truly understood what they were receiving. If the pastors tried to examine either the young or the unknown before admission to communion, they were accused of wanting to reestablish auricular confession. People were not staying through the end of the service but left the church immediately after they received the sacrament, and some spent their afternoons attending weddings, where they ate, drank, danced, and engaged in other inappropriate activities. The pastors feared that this kind of behavior

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only confirmed both Lutherans and papists in their assertions that the Baslers regarded the sacrament as mere bread.2 The pastors’ complaints in 1533 reveal the numerous difficulties they faced in helping their charges both understand and value Reformed sacramental doctrine and practice in the years immediately following the Reformation. The administration of the sacraments had been the most important aspect of pastoral care in the late medieval church, but the Reformation had rejected five of those sacraments and transformed the meaning of the remaining two. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were no longer semimagical rites that automatically brought salvation to their recipients, but rather public proclamations of the individual’s entrance into and continued participation in the church as the body of Christ. The challenge facing the pastors in the century after the Reformation was to eliminate the older Catholic understanding of these two sacraments and instill a new Reformed understanding of them. A similar challenge faced the reformers with regard to the rituals surrounding death. Visitation of the sick and burial of the dead were no longer opportunities for the priest’s sacramental intercession, whether through hearing deathbed confession, administering the viaticum and last rites, or saying requiem masses. Instead, they became the focus of individual pastoral care, in which the pastor tried to ensure that the dying person understood the fundamental Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. He reinforced the consolatory aspect of this doctrine through his conversations with the dying person and his or her family and friends gathered at the bedside, as well as through the proceedings surrounding burial. The rituals of death thus provided yet another occasion for the pastor to act as teacher at both a private and a public level. Last but not least was the pastor’s responsibility for encouraging his parishioners to live God-pleasing lives. The administration of ecclesiastical discipline proved a challenge for Basel’s pastors, however. They were hampered in this duty by the fact that Basel’s church placed primary disciplinary authority in the hands of laymen. Moreover, the sins that were subject to ecclesiastical discipline were often also offenses against the moral code whose enforcement was the responsibility of local secular officials. The pastors were thus only one of the three groups responsible for oversight of morals, and they proved to have the least authority of the three. Although not as prominent as preaching and teaching, these three aspects of pastoral care were an important part of the Basel ministry. In each of them, the pastor’s pedagogical role continued to dominate. In the administration of the sacraments, Basel’s pastors functioned primarily as teachers, for it was of fundamental importance that their parishioners understood those sacraments rightly. Similarly, the deathbed visit was transformed from a sacramental act to a final opportunity for individual instruction. Finally, as with preaching and teaching, the active involvement of lay officials at the local level also proved vital for the working of church discipline. Let us look at each of these elements of pastoral care in turn.

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Redefining the Sacraments According to Catholic teaching, baptism washed away the stain of original sin. Babies who died before baptism were not damned, but neither could they be admitted to heaven; instead, they remained in limbo, at the threshold of hell. It was thus important to parents that babies be baptized as soon as possible after birth. If the child was healthy, the midwife and godparents brought it to the church for baptism by the priest. If, however, it seemed likely that the baby would not survive, the church allowed midwives to baptize it at home. By the end of the Middle Ages, such emergency baptisms by midwives were fairly common. Even if the child was baptized in a church, the parents did not participate in the ritual: the mother because she was still recovering from the birth and was ritually unclean, not having been ‘‘churched,’’ and the father because he was preparing the celebration to be held after the baptism. Indeed, because baptism was seen as a spiritual rebirth, with the godparents serving as spiritual kin, fathers could be actively discouraged from attending their children’s baptisms, and parents were prohibited from serving as godparents for their child.3 The Swiss reformers rejected the Catholic belief that baptism was necessary for salvation and shifted the spiritual responsibility for the child from the godparents to the father. Baptism was a public ceremony, to be performed by the minister in the presence of the congregation. It was necessary that the father be present for the ceremony in order to acknowledge his spiritual responsibilities, and that the congregation witness the entire ceremony. Both Bullinger and Calvin were adamant in forbidding women to baptize babies. Simon Sulzer, however, was more willing to accept emergency baptism by midwives, and his flexibility on the issue may have made it easier for Baslers to grow accustomed to and eventually accept without question the Reformed view of baptism.4 Only during the 1580s do complaints about midwives performing baptisms begin to appear in the visitation records, along with the observation that this practice was not allowed by the other Swiss churches. In response to a query at the 1587 visitation, Grynaeus published a statement condemning the practice of midwives’ baptism together with the sermons he had delivered during the visitation. To the pastors and interested laity, he argued that midwives had no more authority to baptize babies than any woman or layman had to administer the Lord’s Supper. Just as only the Stadtschreiber had the right to use the city’s seal, so only those ordained to pastoral office had the right to administer the seal of the Gospel through the sacrament of baptism. Grynaeus reminded his readers that those not able to receive the sacraments could not for that reason be condemned. Babies who died before they could be baptized fell into this category, and so there was no need for emergency baptism. As Grynaeus argued, ‘‘reasonable, blessed women’’ understood that they should never attempt to undertake the solemn task of baptism; it was only ‘‘irresponsible, brazen, cheeky little women’’ who did so. It was one of

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these ‘‘brazen’’ midwives who complained to the Kirchenrat that pastor Georg Wildysen was slow to baptize babies. This in turn provoked the Kirchenrat’s final prohibition of baptism by midwives in 1594.5 By this time, however, most Baslers may no longer have felt so strongly that babies needed to be baptized as soon after birth as possible. Basel’s baptismal registers document the growing willingness of parents to postpone the baptism of their infants until the appropriate service, which suggests that by the last quarter of the century they had accepted the Reformed teaching that baptism was not necessary for salvation.6 In the three decades after the Reformation, baptisms were performed regularly throughout the week, although there was a tendency for parents of babies born at the end of the week to bring their newborns for baptism at one of the Sunday services (table 11.1).7 By the mid-1560s, the pattern had become more restricted, with weekday baptisms increasingly being performed on Tuesdays or Thursdays. This pattern grew even more pronounced over the following decades in every parish church except St. Peter, where, in 1586, the Monday and Wednesday services were preferred for baptisms.8 By the early seventeenth century, there was a clear preference for administering baptisms on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and it was not unusual for there to be multiple baptisms on any of these days.9 The preference for Sundays and Tuesdays may perhaps have been due to a wish to baptize children at the services during which the senior pastor preached—the main service on Sunday morning, and the prayer service on Tuesdays. It appears, however, that the deacons were responsible for maintaining the baptismal register and administering the baptisms, and so it seems more likely that babies were baptized at the early morning services on these days.10 The regularity with which Baslers witnessed baptism ceremonies must have contributed to the greater willingness to delay baptism until the appropriate service, for at each baptism they heard the explanation of the sacrament’s significance repeated in the baptismal liturgy. And they heard that liturgy frequently, for with the concentration of baptisms on just a few days of the week, it was increasingly likely that a baptism would be held during one of the services on Sunday, the day when all Baslers were required to attend church. In 1606, for instance, there were baptisms on twenty-nine different Sundays at St. Theodor, on thirty different Sundays at St. Leonhard, and on thirty-four different Sundays at St. Peter.11 The frequency of preaching services in the city enabled Basel’s inhabitants to adjust more gradually to the Reformed understanding of baptism, since children could still be baptized on every day of the week during a public service. The city-republic’s rural subjects did not have this luxury, for services were held only two days a week in most rural parishes, which limited the times at which babies could be baptized. A direct comparison of baptisms in urban and rural parishes in the decades immediately after the Reformation is not possible, for the majority of rural parishes did not have regular baptismal registers until the 1560s. By this time, however, most baptisms were already

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being administered during the Sunday morning service. In Sissach, one of the most populous parishes, only three out of the thirty-two baptisms in 1566 were not administered on a Sunday, and by 1606 there were baptisms on thirty-two different Sundays. The rapid growth of the rural population meant that by the early seventeenth century even the inhabitants of the smaller villages frequently witnessed baptisms. Of the twenty-seven baptisms in Arisdorf in 1606, seventeen were held on a Sunday. Only four of the twentyfour baptisms in Kilchberg that year were not administered during a Sunday service. The didactic emphasis of the often-repeated baptismal liturgy may thus have contributed to the laity’s gradual acceptance of the Reformed understanding of the sacrament.12 There are indications of greater continuity between medieval and Reformed baptismal practices in the role accorded to godparents. In the late medieval church, baptism created both a spiritual relationship and a spiritual responsibility. The sponsors were not only linked to the child as godparents but were allied as coparents with the child’s natural parents; in late medieval Switzerland, the latter was the most significant function of this relationship. The godparents were also charged by the church with teaching the child the essentials of the faith as summarized in the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. While the laity emphasized the relational aspect of godparentage, the church insisted that godparents take their responsibilities seriously as well. Significantly, both the relationship and the responsibility created through godparentage were restricted to the laity. Clergy could be seen as spiritual fathers in a general sense, but the role of the baptizing priest remained distinct from that of the godparents. Moreover, although in the early Middle Ages a priest could also be the godfather of a child he baptized, from the thirteenth century on, priests were increasingly forbidden to do so.13 Godparentage was one of the few nonscriptural practices the Swiss reformers retained, perhaps because of its pedagogical function. For this reason, Basel’s pastors insisted that only those who had been examined on their knowledge of the catechism and admitted to the Lord’s Supper be allowed as godparents. In addition to his other pedagogical efforts, Grynaeus published a short catechetical dialogue for parents to teach their children about baptism if the latter were asked to serve as godparents. His ‘‘Instruction’’ presented the Reformed understanding of baptism and emphasized the godparents’ responsibilities to see that the child was properly instructed in the faith.14 While the pastors emphasized the responsibilities of godparentage, they did not denounce the relational aspect of godparentage, beyond rejecting the prohibitions on marriage associated with spiritual kinship. The laity were thus given time to accept more gradually the shift of emphasis from relationship to responsibility. The relational aspect of godparentage remained important throughout the sixteenth century, and parents continued to ask their Catholic friends or neighbors to serve as godparents.15 Even the pastors accepted this aspect of godparentage. In 1600, pastor Antonius Weitz of Oltingen came to the attention of the Kirchenrat because he had asked a Catholic from a

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neighboring village to serve as godparent for his newborn son. The pastor who performed the baptism justified his acceptance of the Catholic sponsor because ‘‘he was not evilly inclined to our religion’’ and often attended the services in Oltingen, but also because he was a close relative of Hans Uebelhardt, who had been the pastor of St. Elizabeth in the city for several decades. Nevertheless, there are indications that by the early seventeenth century the general prohibition of Catholic godparents was beginning to have an effect on the laity, in part because they were aware that priests in neighboring Catholic villages were not allowing Protestants to serve as godparents.16 Another important change with regard to the selection of godparents was the tendency for parents to ask the pastor or his wife to serve as godparent to the baby he baptized. The pastors were apparently chosen for this honor because of their position rather than from any preexisting friendship. It was not unusual for a pastor to serve as godfather at the first baptism he performed in his new parish. Although not as strong as ties of marriage and kinship, the relationships established between the natural parents and the minister or his wife as spiritual coparents bound the pastoral family into various village networks and could therefore be socially advantageous to parishioners.17 Baptisms could also be occasions for strengthening the bonds between Basel’s pastors. Although it was allowed in cases of emergency, pastors were strongly discouraged from baptizing their own children. Instead, the new father invited one of his colleagues to his church to perform the baptism, and the officiating pastor also often served as one of the godparents.18 As these cases demonstrate, not all traditional practices were regarded as superstitious or wrong, and the maintenance of those traditions could be due as much to the clergy’s acceptance of them as to the laity’s resistance to change. A similar reluctance to revise existing practices can be seen with regard to the other Reformed sacrament, the Lord’s Supper. Basel’s practice of communion—both the rituals surrounding it and the frequency with which it was received—differed from that of other Reformed churches because of the city-republic’s adherence to customs established with the Reformation. By the end of the sixteenth century, there was a growing desire to bring the ritual acts of the Lord’s Supper into greater conformity with the practices of other Reformed churches, but loyalty to the city’s own tradition hindered a full-scale adoption of Reformed practices. In the Basel church, some elements of the communion ceremony remained traditional, while others signaled a more visible break with medieval practice. Like Zurich and Bern, Basel retained the use of oblates for the communion service long after the use of regular bread had become an important distinction between Reformed and Lutheran practice in Germany.19 The elements were given first to the men and then to the women who approached the communion table in the front of the church. The pastor, standing in front of the communion table, placed the oblates used for the ceremony in the mouth of each communicant. The recipient then went around the table and drank from the chalice, which was held by one of the local officials in the rural parishes, by an assistant pastor or a theology student in the city.20

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Over the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century, there were various attempts to change communion practice, particularly where it deviated from what was becoming identified as the Reformed tradition. In the spring of 1588, the Kirchenrat discussed whether the bread should be placed in the communicant’s hand, ‘‘following both the institution of Christ and the example of the early church,’’ or if the pastor should place it directly in the communicant’s mouth ‘‘in the papistic manner’’—but also ‘‘as has been done up until now in our church.’’ The pastors ultimately decided to retain the traditional practice: not that it was wrong to place the bread in the hand, but ‘‘it was best not to change anything done in their reformed church without a clear reason.’’21 Twenty years later, the question arose whether it would be better to have the schoolmaster (a position sometimes held by pastoral candidates) assist in the distribution of the elements in the rural parishes. After some consideration, the Kirchenrat decided that this would not be practical, and it was best to continue with the current custom, although it conceded that schoolmasters who hoped to be promoted to the pastorate could assist during the communion service. In 1618, the Kirchenrat decided that the person administering the cup should stand not behind the communion table, as formerly, but next to the pastor distributing the oblates. This change met with some resistance from parishioners, but the pastors were firm in insisting on it, since it was a res adiaphora and hence something that could be changed.22 The greater willingness to alter traditional communion practices was typical of the early seventeenth century. By this time, the pastors were agitating more directly for greater conformity with other Reformed churches: in a communion sermon in 1611, for instance, Johann Georg Gross told his hearers that it was not necessary to use unleavened bread stamped with a figure of the crucifix for the sacrament. The ultimate victory of Reformed practice came in 1642, when Basel’s church finally adopted the fractio panis, after a year of preaching and propaganda to persuade Baslers that the new practice conformed with Scripture.23 Despite the modifications to both doctrine and practices surrounding the Lord’s Supper brought by the Reformation, one aspect of its older significance continued into the seventeenth century, for its reception was regarded as a public testimony of concord and unity with other participants. Pastors and laity alike shared this view of communion. In 1546, after a violent public quarrel with Wolfgang Wissenburg, Oswald Myconius deliberately asked his colleague’s forgiveness so that he could administer the Lord’s Supper in the cathedral at the next Sunday service. Fifty years later, the Rotenfluh pastor excused his failure to celebrate the autumn communion service on the prescribed day by saying he had not had enough oblates on hand that day to distribute to his congregation and so had planned to postpone the ceremony until the following week. During that week, though, a conflict developed with one of his parishioners, and so he had to delay the communion service until that conflict had been resolved. At the visitation of 1601, the Bretzwil pastor reported that one of the laymen who helped administer the sacrament was at

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odds with others in the village, who for this reason refused to receive the sacrament from him. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper marked the close of the 1598 general chapter meeting, at which all of Basel’s rural pastors were required to attest their unity in doctrine on the basis of the Reformed interpretation of the city’s official confession.24 Perhaps the most persistent practice of the laity with regard to the sacrament was the medieval habit of receiving communion only at Easter and on one’s deathbed. A few years after the Reformation, the rural pastors noted that although the Lord’s Supper was celebrated three times a year—at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost—their parishioners received the sacrament only once a year. At the end of the century, the pastor of Mu¨nchenstein reported that although there had been forty-four people at the Christmas service, no one had received communion, claiming that it was the custom to receive the sacrament only once a year.25 Mu¨nchenstein may be an extreme example, but the records of communicants in other parishes from this time show that two to three times as many people received the sacrament at Easter time than on the other appointed days.26 So great was the number of communicants during this holiday that in most parishes two communion services were held—not only at the mandated service on Easter but also on Palm Sunday or, in a few parishes, Maundy Thursday. The extra communion service could itself give rise to problems: in 1597, one pastor noted that most of the teenagers received the sacrament on Palm Sunday, so that on Easter they would feel more free to eat, drink, and engage in other types of misbehavior.27 One consequence of infrequent communion in the rural parishes was that the laity placed great emphasis on receiving the sacrament on their deathbeds. Part of Grynaeus’s campaign to change the understanding of sickbed communion was to encourage them to receive the sacrament more regularly when it was celebrated publicly, particularly in times of plague. For this reason a fourth communion service, to be held during the fall, was introduced in the rural church during an outbreak of plague in 1594. The autumn communion was the most poorly attended of the four yearly celebrations at the turn of the century, but by the 1620s it was attracting more communicants than the traditional Pentecost communion. The encouragement of more frequent public reception of the sacraments seems to have paid off, for the number of communicants at both the autumn and Christmas communions spiked in 1610 and again in 1628 during plague outbreaks.28 The practice of sickbed communion was only one part of the more specialized ministry that Basel’s clergy performed for the sick, the dying, and the bereaved. As with the administration of the sacraments, Basel’s pastors faced the challenge of giving new meaning to old forms. In the rituals surrounding death, their goal was to stamp out vestiges of the Catholic sacraments of confession and last rites and to replace the laity’s reliance on these external forms with a new confidence in their salvation based on their knowledge and understanding of Reformed doctrine.

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Dealing with Death The duty of providing pastoral care to the dying and bereaved was one Basel’s pastors did not take lightly. Especially in times of plague, it exposed them to the risk of infection and potential death when they visited their stricken parishioners. In Geneva, the Company of Pastors limited this risk by choosing one pastor by lot who bore the responsibility of visiting the sick during outbreaks of plague. Such a solution would have been unthinkable in Basel, where each parish pastor was expected to provide pastoral care to his dying parishioners. Deviation from this practice occurred only during extraordinary circumstances such as plague epidemics, when theology students were also recruited to visit the sick. Assuming they escaped the plague themselves, their pastoral services could later be rewarded when a parish position became vacant.29 The laity and the pastors understood the purpose of these sickbed visits in different ways. For the pastors, the visits were yet another type of instruction in which, through the visitation liturgy, prayer, and private conversation, the sick or dying individual was reminded of God’s love and mercy as revealed in the Gospel. Because the liturgical agenda granted a place for it, the sick person was asked if he (or she) ‘‘bore any burdens about his faith,’’ which in turn provided the pastor yet another opportunity to assure him (or her) of God’s forgiveness.30 For the laity, however, the pastor’s visit was not just pedagogical but also offered the promise of salvation, particularly when it included the administration of the Lord’s Supper to the dying. This understanding did not necessarily contradict that of the pastor, since from the pastor’s perspective, true faith in Christ’s redeeming death brought assurance of salvation, but there was always a fear that the laity would place their confidence in the external forms of liturgy and sacrament rather than the spiritual message that they conveyed. Complicating the situation was the popular belief that the pastor’s visit was a sign of impending death, even hastening or making that death inevitable. As a consequence, many resisted summoning the pastor until the dying person was beyond the point of being able to respond to the pastor’s instruction and consolation, thereby nullifying any pedagogical purpose to the visit.31 The Zurich church had dealt with these problems by rejecting sickbed communion entirely, but in Basel the practice was both prescribed by the Reformation Ordinance and given its proper form by the liturgical agenda.32 It thus became the responsibility of the individual pastor—and occasionally of his ecclesiastical superiors—to determine when the external actions associated with the sickbed visitation supported genuine faith and when they interfered with it. The contrasting understandings of pastor and parishioners could lead to conflict, as when the assistant pastor of St. Peter was criticized for refusing to administer the Lord’s Supper to the fourteen-year-old daughter of a parishioner. The pastor defended himself by arguing that since the girl

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had not yet received the sacrament publicly in the church, she should not be given it privately at home. No one should think, he asserted, ‘‘that the Lord God was so bound to the external signs of bread and wine that one could not be saved without them.’’33 The key to preventing such conflicts was to acknowledge the value of sickbed communion while at the same time teaching the laity not to place undue emphasis on it. This is precisely what Johann Jacob Grynaeus did when he assumed leadership of Basel’s church. The city’s pastors were reminded that they could not deny the sacrament to a sick person who requested it, but they should be sure to recite the creed, Lord’s Prayer, confession of sin with absolution, and the words of institution when they administered the sacrament. In the meetings of the Kirchenrat, the pastors also discussed whether it was appropriate to give the sacrament to sick individuals who had not been regular recipients when they were healthy, or to the dying who were no longer of sound mind or too weak to swallow the elements.34 After the issue was raised during the 1587 visitation, Grynaeus wrote out guidelines to help the pastors determine whether they should administer the Lord’s Supper to the sick. In cases where the dying person greatly desired the sacrament, the pastors were to see if he or she could give account of his or her faith and, if not, to provide very basic instruction in the essentials. Those who had earlier scorned God’s word and the sacrament were first to be confronted with their sin and brought to repent of it, but, Grynaeus underlined, they were not to be left to die in fear or despair. Instead, they should be reminded that it was not the sacrament itself but the true faith that accompanied it that saved one. If the dying person recognized this, he or she was also to receive the sacrament, along with any others gathered at the sickbed.35 Six years later, the pastor of Buus was commended for visiting the sick during an epidemic, but he had to be warned to avoid ‘‘the papistic custom’’ of carrying the Lord’s Supper with him to various houses, ‘‘as if the sacrament itself worked like a medicine without reflection by the one receiving it.’’ On the other hand, Grynaeus again stressed that the sick who requested the sacrament should not be denied it, because it offered consolation as the visible form of the Gospel.36 Other pastors emphasized the pedagogical function of the sickbed visit with an eye to loosening its monopoly by the clergy. At the height of the plague epidemic in 1610, Wolfgang Meyer wrote his Spiegel der Geistlichen vnd allerheilsamsten Cur to teach the laity how they could instruct, encourage, and console the dying themselves. Meyer’s goal was a practical one: he was recovering from the illness that would soon claim his wife and son, and so he was unable to visit his parishioners himself.37 Under normal circumstances, the pastor was expected to attend the deathbed, and those who shirked this responsibility were criticized because they denied the consolation of the Gospel to those most in need of it.38 During the extraordinary situation of the plague epidemic, however, a deathbed scene without the presence of a pastor may not have been uncommon, simply because there were so many sick and dying, including some of the pastors themselves.

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The Spiegel is a dialogue between a dying man, Jacob, and his four friends. The dialogue was consciously intended as a contrast with the conversations of Job and his self-proclaimed comforters. Many of the dying Jacob’s earliest statements were citations from the Book of Job; others were drawn from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Unlike the Old Testament story, Jacob’s friends proved not a torment but a comfort as they took Jacob through the stages of confessing his sinfulness (although not specific sins), making his will, discussing plans for burial, confessing his faith, and being strengthened against the last temptations of doubt, despair, and loss, to his final successful passage to eternal life. The modern reader is reminded of nothing so much as a scene in a birthing room in which the pregnant woman is coached through her labor pains to the successful birth of her child. Meyer’s Spiegel was less a depiction of an actual deathbed visit than an idealized description intended as a guide for the laity. The dying man’s visitors were gifted with a profound knowledge of Scripture, which they cited at length. Despite his physical weakness, Jacob was able to make a detailed confession of faith that followed the twelve articles of the Apostles’ Creed but went into considerably more detail, including an express rejection of the Myconian interpretation of Christ’s descent into hell, endorsing instead the Calvinist interpretation of the descent as the greatest degree of Christ’s suffering.39 Most notably, the dying Jacob is ministered to entirely by laymen. Only after Jacob’s death is someone sent to inform the pastor. As a consequence, the book depictsa good death entirely without the consolation of the Lord’s Supper or anything that could be regarded as sacramental intervention.40 The pastor’s responsibilities did not end with the death of his parishioner but continued through the burial. The Reformed churches influenced by Zurich and Geneva reacted strongly against the mortuary pomp of the medieval church and simplified their burial services to a bare minimum. Basel followed this trend, but to a lesser degree, for it maintained some of the distinctions of a hierarchical society in its funeral ceremonies and its burial sites. Unlike Geneva, for instance, where even Calvin was buried in an unmarked grave, prominent Baslers continued to be laid to rest in family tombs, even if they were located in churches that had been secularized. Oecolampadius was buried with full honors in the cloister of the cathedral; Simon Grynaeus and Burgermeister Jacob Meyer were buried next to him in 1541. Citizens were interred in the city’s parish churches, while servants and inhabitants were buried in the filial churches or those on the edges of the city.41 In response to this differentiation among the dead, Basel’s pastors tried to strike the proper balance between bestowing too much honor on the deceased and not showing enough. In Meyer’s idealized deathbed visit, the dying man asserted that it made no difference to him whether he was buried inside the church or in the cemetery outside, for all places were equal in the sight of God. He and his friends agreed in their criticism of costly funerals but asserted that the bodies of the deceased should be treated with respect and buried honorably.42

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This emphasis on honorable burial was not entirely a formality, for there are indications that in the rural villages funerals were carried out without much preparation. At a general convent in 1567, the pastors criticized the practice of villagers ‘‘not letting the deceased lie for a quarter hour after their death.’’ They decreed that bodies had to be left for at least twelve hours before burial, to prevent further cases of those ‘‘who lie unconscious for a time and then revive and die only in their graves; for there have been some examples of this.’’43 The practice of immediate burial was also discouraged by the developing custom of having the pastor preach a funeral sermon. Basel was virtually alone among the Reformed churches outside of Germany in its acceptance of these sermons in the sixteenth century. Beginning with the funerals of Oecolampadius in 1531 and Erasmus in 1536, it became customary to combine the burials of prominent men with sermons based on a relevant Scripture text. By midcentury, funeral sermons were being preached for the not-so-prominent as well: the professor Thomas Grynaeus requested one for the burial of a family servant in 1547. Nor were funeral sermons restricted to the city. Rural pastors were also expected to deliver them, and the ministers could not refuse to preach them when asked. By the last two decades of the century, pastors had to be reminded to keep their funeral sermons to a thirty-minute limit.44 The practices surrounding death that developed in Basel reflected the Protestant emphasis on hearing and understanding God’s word. For the dying, the individual instruction given by the pastor was meant to evoke a confidence in salvation by faith alone. For the bereaved, funeral sermons provided a Reformed answer to existential questions of suffering and death. Yet these practices retained some similarity to their medieval antecedents in their concern to assist individuals in a good death and their reinforcement of the social hierarchy even after death. The continuation of traditional attitudes and practices concerning baptism, communion, and the rituals of death might be seen as a failure of Basel’s Reformed pastors to indoctrinate their parishioners with a truly Reformed understanding of the sacraments. It can, however, be interpreted in a more positive light. Margo Todd has argued that the flexibility of the Scottish church in retaining some pre-Reformation traditions actually made the acceptance of Reformed doctrine easier for the laity.45 A similar argument can be made with regard to Basel. As long as they were understood rightly, the older forms could continue to be used. The pastors’ own reports that many of the sick were well instructed in Reformed doctrine imply that by the early seventeenth century the old forms had been given new meaning. And once Baslers had been taught that certain practices were not necessary or desirable, they could more easily be eliminated, as would happen in 1642 with the substitution of regular bread for oblates in the Lord’s Supper. Despite the major theological differences between the medieval and the Reformed understanding of the sacraments and other rituals, by the end of the sixteenth century, Basel’s laity seem largely to have accepted their new interpretation. Although the pastors feared that their charges might place too

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much emphasis on the external reception of the sacraments, through the third quarter of the sixteenth century they were willing to administer the sacraments in private, whether to sickly newborns or those on their deathbeds. By the time the leaders of Basel’s church began to push for the more clearly Reformed practice of rejecting the private administration of the sacraments at the end of the century, the Baslers themselves were far enough removed from the older Catholic conception that the new policy of discouraging the private use of the sacraments was not as disruptive as it might have been earlier. Moreover, the pastors’ willingness to accept established customs, such as the use of oblates or godparentage, allowed a certain amount of ceremonial, if not doctrinal, continuity. As a consequence, the task of redefining the pastors’ sacramental responsibilities took time but proved to be relatively easy. Basel’s pastors would face far more challenges in carrying out the last of their major pastoral responsibilities, that of moral oversight and the exercise of church discipline.

The Question of Compliance Perhaps the one feature of the Reformed tradition that has received the most attention from modern scholars is its practice of church discipline. The explicit inclusion of discipline as one of the duties of the ministry, to be exercised by lay elders working together with the pastors, made this task a much more prominent part of pastoral care than in the Lutheran church. The very visibility of this responsibility has tended to obscure the fact that within the Reformed practice of autonomous church discipline that extended back from Calvin through Bucer to Oecolampadius, the ability of the pastors themselves to exercise discipline was limited by the requirement that they work together with lay elders.46 In fact, Basel’s pastors had little coercive power in the exercise of church discipline. The task of moral oversight in Basel actually involved three different groups: pastors, lay ban brothers, and secular officials. Of these three groups, the pastors had the least amount of authority, so in practice the exercise of church discipline was not a significant component of pastoral care in Basel. Nevertheless, the exercise of discipline was important in theory, and the pastors themselves were concerned with the conduct of their parishioners. Thus a brief discussion of ecclesiastical discipline belongs within a broader consideration of pastoral care.47 Although Basel’s Reformation Ordinance charged the pastors with the duty of moral oversight, the system of ecclesiastical discipline established in the city placed disciplinary authority in the hands of the laity. The proper exercise of church discipline and excommunication was a major concern of Basel’s reformer, Johannes Oecolampadius, and over the course of 1530 he worked to introduce the independent exercise of ecclesiastical discipline, not only in Basel but in other reformed churches as well.48 The disciplinary system finally established in Basel at the end of 1530 did not correspond

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exactly to Oecolampadius’s original proposal, but it gave the city the distinction of being the first Reformed church to introduce an autonomous form of church discipline. Each parish was to have three Bannherren (in the city) or Bannbru¨der (in the rural parishes). These laymen were charged with reporting sinners to the pastor, admonishing them to change their ways, and proclaiming the sinners excommunicated if repeated admonitions proved fruitless.49 Initially the pastors had no say in the selection of the ban brothers, an ‘‘oversight’’ that they brought to the magistrate’s attention at the synod of 1542 and that was corrected in a revision to the ban ordinance later that year. In the city, the ban brothers were two senators and a burgher from the parish; in the countryside, they were chosen from each village, but they were not to include those who already held any local office. The morals ordinance of 1540 specified that in order to make the distinction between the church’s spiritual authority and the magistrate’s secular authority clear, no individual could serve concurrently as both ban brother and local official. This distinction was retained when the morals code was reissued at the end of the century.50 Neither the original ban ordinance nor its later modifications gave the pastors a direct voice in the exercise of discipline. Instead, they participated in the disciplinary process in an advisory and liturgical capacity. They met with the ban brothers as they discussed disciplinary problems, and they pronounced both the public sentence of excommunication and absolved excommunicated sinners. Beyond that, they were catalysts in the disciplinary process, expecting weekly meetings with the ban brothers of their parishes and encouraging them to report sins that needed correction. Without the aid of the ban brothers, however, the pastors could do very little. The ultimate penalty within this disciplinary system, and the one that provoked the greatest controversy, was the imposition of excommunication. Over the course of the 1530s, the Senate issued a series of changes or ‘‘improvements’’ to the ban ordinance in order to clarify who retained the final authority to excommunicate and what the sentence of excommunication entailed. Less than a year after the ban ordinance was published, the Senate issued an amendment requiring that contumacious sinners who did not heed the admonition of the ban brothers were to be referred to the Ha¨upter, who would in turn summon the sinner to the next Senate meeting. Only if the sinner rejected this final warning was he or she referred back to the ban brothers and pastors to be publicly excommunicated. An edict of 1538 clarified the role of the guilds in the city and the local officials in the countryside in the admonitory process. A year later, the Senate reasserted its right to issue the final admonition before an individual could be excommunicated. Finally, in 1542, the Senate exempted cases of adultery that were not publicly known from the oversight of the ban brothers and made them instead the responsibility of the marriage court.51 This remained the procedure for church discipline for the next decade, until a controversy over excommunication in Geneva raised the issue again in Basel. In response to a query from Geneva about the use of excommunication in Basel, Simon Sulzer wrote to Calvin explaining that Basel’s sentence of

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excommunication entailed exclusion not only from the Lord’s Supper but from the civil community as well, and because of its severity it was rarely imposed. Nevertheless, the final sentence of excommunication was imposed by the ban brothers, and not by the Senate. Sulzer’s answer provoked a reaction from Basel’s Senate, and before he had a chance to send his letter, the Senate made yet another change to the ban ordinance. The new edict stated in unequivocal terms that when a contumacious sinner appeared before the Senate for a final warning, the Senate had the authority to decide what type of penalty to impose, whether fine, imprisonment, expulsion, or excommunication by the ban brothers at the Senate’s command. In accordance with this new edict, Sulzer had to rewrite his letter to Calvin to acknowledge the Senate’s final authority over excommunication.52 The modification of Basel’s system of church discipline in the wake of Oecolampadius’s death has often been described as an illustration of the gradual subjugation of the city’s church to the magistrate, with the right to excommunicate seen as the key issue. More enlightening for an understanding of the working of the system, however, is Sulzer’s statement, in both the draft and in his final letter to Calvin, that excommunication was rarely imposed in Basel. Sulzer had been in the city for five years, but he had apparently never been involved in a case of excommunication. His description of the procedure was based entirely on the edicts issued by the Senate, rather than on his own experience with cases of excommunication. This fact alone reveals that public excommunication played only a small role in Basel’s church. Both the long, drawn-out process required before someone could be excommunicated and the severity of the penalty itself were factors limiting its imposition. As described earlier, the pastors had no authority to exercise discipline independently but had to rely on the cooperation of the ban brothers. Because most of the rural parishes were made up of several villages, the ban brothers were particularly important for bringing to the pastor’s attention any moral lapses among his parishioners who lived in the outlying villages—if, that is, they performed their responsibilities conscientiously. At the synods held during the first half of the sixteenth century, the pastors regularly complained that the ban brothers were negligent in their duties and that the ban ordinance was not being enforced. Even into the 1590s, individual pastors reported problems of compliance with the ban ordinance, whether from the ban brothers, who did not want to earn the reputation of informing on their neighbors, or from their parishioners, who refused to answer the summons when the ban brothers did exercise their disciplinary responsibilities.53 By the end of the century, however, such complaints were relatively rare, and most of the pastors seem to have been satisfied with the level of cooperation they were receiving in the disciplinary process. At the 1594 visitation, several pastors reported that in fact the ban brothers did meet with them weekly, that the ban ordinance was being enforced, and that it had not been necessary to impose any sentences of excommunication. A generation later, this tendency had become the norm. Almost all of the pastors reported at

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the 1619 visitation that they were satisfied with the performance of the ban brothers and their enforcement of the ban ordinance.54 This general satisfaction with the enforcement of church discipline does not mean that the pastors had no complaints about the conduct of their parishioners. At district meetings held in the later 1610s, they grumbled about the general occurrence of swearing and blasphemy, gambling, and magical or superstitious practices, as well as about specific cases of habitual drunkenness or Anabaptist error. According to the pastors, however, the fault lay not with the ban brothers but with the secular officials who were not enforcing the magistrate’s moral code.55 What explains this discrepancy between the pastors’ satisfaction with the ban brothers and their complaints about their parishioners’ conduct? There are no records describing the ban brothers’ meetings through most of this period, and so we are left to conjecture. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that the pastor recognized that the vices they complained about should be either prevented or punished as secular offenses but did not merit the imposition of an ecclesiastical penalty and hence were outside the purview of the ban brothers. There is some evidence to support this explanation. The few records that exist from the earliest meetings of the ban brothers in the city indicate that they were concerned only with those who rejected the new church either through active criticism or passive refusal to receive the Lord’s Supper.56 This narrow focus on recalcitrant Catholics and Anabaptist sympathizers diverted attention away from all but the most serious infractions of the city’s morals code. The 1542 revision concerning publicly known cases of adultery acknowledged the ban brothers’ authority in cases of grave and notorious sin, but its exemption of cases not yet publicly known hamstrung any role the ban brothers might have played in private admonition to bring about repentance and reform, one of the chief goals of ecclesiastical discipline. In effect, the ban brothers were primarily agents of the magistrate responsible for protecting the public reputation of the church, and there is no indication during this early period that they carried out the type of admonition and conflict resolution that became the hallmark of ecclesiastical discipline in Geneva and other Reformed churches. Only toward the end of the century, and then only when it had reached its last stages, do we catch a glimpse of how the disciplinary procedure functioned in Basel. In the cases that were the most scandalous, there was often no clear distinction between sin and crime, hence between ecclesiastical penitential discipline and secular punitive discipline. Thus, in early 1596, the blacksmith charged with blasphemy for his criticism of the Lobwasser Psalter, the German translation favored by the Reformed, was reconciled ‘‘with both the political and ecclesiastical orders’’ after his release from jail. In 1618, a boy guilty of raping a five-year-old girl was beaten and sentenced to expulsion from Basel by the district governor in the presence of not only the village officials but also the pastor and ban brothers. A peasant whose drunken behavior had caused the death of his three-year-old daughter was expelled from Basel in punishment, but only after his public reconciliation

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with the church, during which Antistes Wollebius preached against the sin of drunkenness.57 For less spectacular cases of sin, the exercise of church discipline in both city and countryside seems to have remained fairly informal. Although public excommunication was rarely imposed, individuals could be excluded from the Lord’s Supper, a reflection of the medieval distinction between major and minor excommunication. The pastors themselves were not always sure of the extent of their authority in this area. At a chapter meeting in Liestal in 1599, they discussed whether they had the right to exclude individuals from the sacrament themselves or needed to refer such cases to the Kirchenrat in the city. Individual pastors were also reminded that they could not ban anyone based on hearsay alone but were to question individuals in order to lead them to a general confession of sin.58 The reference to the Kirchenrat points to another important development. Although it had no statutory mandate to do so, by the end of the century, the Kirchenrat was functioning as an intermediary between ban brothers and Senate, particularly for disciplinary cases from urban parishes. The records of the Kirchenrat demonstrate that in a limited way it had assumed the function of furthering domestic harmony and public peace that was exercised by the consistories of other Reformed churches. For instance, in 1589 a usurer who had been forbidden to receive the sacrament by the pastors and ban brothers of St. Theodore was summoned before the Kirchenrat because he had attempted to commune in the cathedral. He was told to abstain from usury and to be reconciled with the church. At the same meeting, a husband and wife were admonished to mend their differences lest they offend the church by the scandal they caused. The Kirchenrat could also take more direct action, as when it tried to persuade a woman to return to her husband.59 These disciplinary cases took up only a small proportion of the Kirchenrat’s time, however. Most problems were handled at the parish level, whether in the city or in the countryside, and there seems to have been a general reluctance to burden the Kirchenrat with them. More common were cases in which the Kirchenrat functioned as the supreme instance of oversight and admonition for the clergy. When disputes between pastors could not be resolved at either a district or a general chapter meeting, the Kirchenrat summoned the parties to the city to settle the matter. The Kirchenrat also rebuked individual clergy for drunkenness, domestic discord, or neglect of their pastoral duties. In these cases, the Kirchenrat could show a great deal of forbearance with the offending pastor. The assistant pastor of St. Leonhard, Georg Wildysen, proved to be a continual trial to the church’s leaders, for he was admonished several times to live at peace with his wife and better manage his finances and his children.60 The Kirchenrat’s role of supervising the clergy was a small but crucial part of the larger task of ecclesiastical discipline. It was important to protect the pastors’ reputations and prevent scandal from disrupting their relationships with those over whom they had some disciplinary responsibility. But Basel’s pastors had no similar right to supervise the laity. In the area of

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church discipline, as in the other tasks of pastoral care, their most important role was pedagogical, teaching the laity what to do or what to avoid and, by extension, identifying for the ban brothers what types of conduct were liable to censure. The pastor’s pedagogical role in church discipline echoed his pedagogical responsibilities in the other tasks of pastoral care. Despite his sacramental and liturgical duties, the Reformed pastor was always at heart a teacher, whose fundamental responsibility was to impress on his parishioners an intellectual understanding of scriptural truths and to show them how those truths should shape their conduct. But the pastor’s teaching responsibilities were carried out within the framework provided by the expectations of his parishioners, as well as by the architects of Basel’s Reformed church. Many medieval practices, such as the elaborate rituals that were part of baptism, had been jettisoned, but others, such as the role of godparents, had been retained. Basel’s pastors accepted this framework and carried out their teaching responsibilities within it.

Assessing the Outcome This discussion of the tasks of pastoral care leads inevitably to the question of how effective the pastors were in changing the religious beliefs and behavior of their parishioners. A detailed answer would shift the focus of this study away from the pastors. Nevertheless, it is possible to make some general observations about the debate over what has been called, in overly simplistic terms, the success or failure of the Reformation, or more broadly, the impact of the Reformation on popular religion. Before venturing to do so, however, we must first consider two issues that complicate an assessment of the pastoral ministry in Basel. First, as Gerald Strauss admitted when he raised the question of the Reformation’s success or failure, visitation records pose numerous difficulties as a source of information about popular religious beliefs and practices. They were not compiled with an eye to charting change over time but rather to presenting both ecclesiastical and secular officials with a snapshot of the circumstances in each parish under their jurisdiction. The reports could be glowing or pessimistic, depending on the perspective and priorities of those who wrote them, but because their purpose was to point out problems, they tend toward the negative. They contain only what the visitors deemed to be important, rather than what the modern historian would like to know. The appearance or disappearance of specific issues or problems in the reports may have more to do with the concerns of the men in charge of specific visitations than it does with any change in the frequency with which those problems actually occurred in rural parishes.61 All of these difficulties apply to the use of Basel’s visitation and synodal records, as has been evident in the discussion of pastoral care. The contradictory evidence regarding church attendance, as well as the apparent discrepancy between the pastors’ satisfaction with their ban

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brothers and their complaints that specific vices remained unpunished, raises questions about the reliability of visitation records. Second, these chapters have concentrated specifically on the tasks of pastoral care and have not considered any other factors, whether economic, political, or personal, that might be detrimental to the pastoral ministry. Other studies have shown that problems rooted in the poverty of the pastors or in disputes over the allocation of scarce resources could undermine the pastor’s authority and his ability to carry out his pastoral duties. Likewise, power struggles between the pastor and village officials or between village factions in which the pastor became enmeshed could limit his effectiveness. Last but not least, personality clashes with parishioners or doctrinal conflicts with other pastors could escalate to the point where pastors could no longer function and needed to be removed from their posts. Again, each of these problems can be documented in Basel. To give only one example, Conrad Lu¨tzelmann was transferred from his post in Gelterkinden to the parish of Buus because his former parishioners blamed him for a fire that destroyed several homes in the village, and he could no longer minister effectively there.62 In light of both the problems often cited in the visitation reports and the many factors that could complicate the provision of pastoral care, it is all the more striking that the picture of religious life in Basel’s rural parishes is so positive. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that there was a fundamental transformation of the religious beliefs and conduct of Basel’s inhabitants that was essentially complete by the first decades of the seventeenth century. There were, to be sure, elements of traditional religious practice that continued. The synodal and visitation reports from the last decades of the century contain an increasing number of complaints about superstition and popular magic, for instance, and occasionally individuals were brought to the attention of the authorities for making pilgrimages to seek a cure for some ailment. But these elements could exist within popular Protestantism and do not imply the persistence of specifically Catholic belief. In fact, when confronted with their use of benedictions, the parishioners of Arisdorf told their pastor that the benedictions ‘‘were done with God’s word,’’ a Protestant reinterpretation of the power of magic.63 Moreover, the persistence of these practices does not mean that no change had occurred in how they were viewed by the laity. Richard Weiss has pointed out that there is an important difference between Catholics participating without a second thought in traditional practices and rites and Protestants who might resort to them, especially when all other means of aid had failed, but who did so with a conflicted or guilty conscience. There is evidence that by the end of the century, Basel’s peasants no longer accepted the older Catholic practices unquestioningly. At one of the regular district chapter meetings, for instance, the pastor Conrad Lu¨tzelman reported on a servant who tried to hide from him the fact that her master and mistress had gone on a pilgrimage seeking healing for the wife’s illness. Whether or not the maid’s denial indicates a guilty conscience, it certainly demonstrates her awareness that the

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act was wrong in the eyes of the church; and such official disapproval would eventually have some effect on popular attitudes.64 The elimination of Catholic ceremonies, liturgical cycles, and sacred objects made the continuation of traditional Catholicism impossible within Basel’s territory. Only fragmentary elements remained and were adapted to fit in with Protestantism. Moreover, the fact that the pastors singled out individuals for these infractions implies that they were not common occurrences. Although remnants of pre-Reformation practice continued in Basel’s rural territory, the only genuine practitioners of Catholicism were those whose noble status or protection by the Catholic institutions for which they worked allowed them to ignore the pastoral efforts and admonitions of Basel’s clergy. The minutes of the district chapter meetings demonstrate that the rural pastors were far more concerned with the few ‘‘obstinate’’ Anabaptists they had in their parishes than with their parishioners’ participation in Catholic religious practices.65 The change in the religious culture of Basel’s rural subjects can be attributed not only to the pastors’ efforts but also to the cooperation of local elites in disciplining the behavior of their fellow parishioners. The previous chapter has already pointed to the importance of local elites in enforcing obedience in the area of sermon and catechism attendance. The local elites assume a similar importance in the enforcement of church discipline, since they were the group from whom the ban brothers were chosen. Both developments imply that this group was most receptive to the religious message conveyed by the pastors. Whether the majority of Basel’s inhabitants shared the same standards as their officials, or whether their external obedience to the edicts either reflected or helped shape their internal beliefs and attitudes, is a question more difficult to answer. On the basis of similar developments in the Rhineland, although looking at a much broader range of activities, Bernard Vogler has concluded that a minority particularly of local notables were active in the church, but the great majority simply conformed to religious expectations but rarely manifested signs of personal devotion.66 To look for signs of personal devotion, however, may be to impose modern criteria for religious expression that the pastors themselves did not use. Their own standards regarding their parishioners’ religious life focused on religious behavior rather than internalized piety. At a meeting of the Liestal chapter held in the spring of 1605 in preparation for the upcoming visitation, a group of those pastors listed the criteria they considered important. There they expressed their general satisfaction with the members of their flock: ‘‘the parishioners are for the most part diligent in hearing God’s word, reverent in prayer, they receive the holy sacrament in true faith and intention of reforming their lives . . . the majority live according to the obedience of faith, and [the pastors] don’t want to criticize their entire congregation because of the failings of a few.’’67 Although one might argue that these actions—worship attendance, visible reverence in prayer, and reception of the Lord’s Supper— may encourage or reflect a certain inner attitude, they are first and foremost matters of conduct. The strong emphasis on doctrine in the Ramist preaching

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of the early seventeenth century also implies that the city pastors were more concerned that their parishioners were familiar with orthodox doctrine than that they developed an internalized piety. This emphasis on doctrine and behavior rather than internalized devotion may be a distinction that separated Basel’s Reformed pastors from their Lutheran counterparts. Beginning with Luther’s own experiential religious crisis that impelled him to his new understanding of the Gospel, there was a strong emphasis within Lutheranism on consolation and personal application of religious belief. The Lutheran retention of private confession with absolution provided pastors with the regular opportunity for the individual application of the Gospel. Lutheran pastors’ manuals written over the course of the sixteenth century increasingly emphasized the consolatory or psychological tasks of pastoral care.68 There was no equivalent to this genre within the Reformed tradition. The only counterpart in Basel to the individualized pastoral care of the Lutheran church was the visitation of the sick, and this duty was not monopolized by the clergy. Basel’s pastors had neither the liturgical opportunities nor the institutional encouragement to devote time to developing an internalized piety in their parishioners in the way that Lutheran pastors were expected to do. This does not mean that internalized spirituality was not personally important to Basel’s pastors, at least during the sixteenth century. Grynaeus’s sermons in particular reflect his deep concern for encouraging this kind of piety among his hearers. At the same time, though, his theological commitment to a doctrine of double predestination may have worked against his pastoral concern. One of the questions he asked his fellow pastors at the 1597 synod was whether they could see that some were reformed through their sermons and others were hardened.69 If receptivity to the pastors’ message was ultimately determined by God’s eternal decrees, the pastors themselves did not need to concentrate their efforts so strongly on fostering an internalized piety. In light of these observations, modern observers should exercise caution in evaluating the impact of the Reformation on popular religious practice. It is too restrictive to categorize the response to the Protestant message as either conformity, defined as visible compliance with the new religious order and implying no inner commitment to its teachings, or as genuine conversion, the self-conscious internalization of those teachings that cannot be measured. There is a middle ground between these two poles—illustrated, for example, by the loyalty of ordinary parishioners to Lutheranism in the face of the territorial ruler’s conversion to Calvinism and his efforts to impose Reformed practices on his subjects. Such indications of loyalty imply a stronger commitment to the new religious order than simple outward conformity.70 The conscious adherence to one’s confessional identity is a more easily verifiable means of measuring the impact of the pastoral ministry and is more likely to reflect the criteria used by Basel’s pastors themselves than a modern definition of internalized piety. Loyalty can only be measured when it is tested, and there were no challenges within Basel’s territories to the established church in the century after

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the Reformation. The episcopal villages under Basel’s protection, however, were re-Catholicized after they were returned to the bishop’s jurisdiction in 1585. The bishop gradually reintroduced the mass, expelled the Reformed clergy, and replaced local Protestant officials with Catholics loyal to him. The villagers, led by their pastors, protested against these measures, but they had no effective means of withstanding the efforts of their secular overlord. Nevertheless, it took a generation before these villages were fully restored to the Catholic fold.71 The resistance of the episcopal villages reveals something of the effectiveness of Basel’s pastors beyond simply inducing conformity. A comparison of the synodal and visitation records of the 1530s with those of the 1550s suggests that little had changed in the rural parishes in the three decades after the Reformation. A generation later, though, the situation appears much different. The villagers’ hostile response to the bishop’s re-Catholicization efforts reveals that a strong loyalty to the new church had developed by the 1580s. Their adherence to the Reformed faith is all the more striking because the circumstances for pastoral care in these villages were the worst of any in the areas under Basel’s jurisdiction. The parishes were for the most part staffed by young, inexperienced, and poorly paid pastors who stayed for only a few years before they were promoted to a post in Basel’s rural territory. Despite these circumstances, the second generation of pastors—those born after the Reformation who entered the ministry in the third quarter of the sixteenth century—brought about a perceptible change in the religious identity and loyalty of the inhabitants in the episcopal villages. It can be assumed that similar changes occurred during the same period in Basel’s remaining rural parishes. The first generation of pastors, those who had begun their ministries as parish priests, may have presided over the elimination of Catholicism in their parishes, but they had difficulties replacing the older practices with adherence to Protestantism. That deeper allegiance to Protestantism was inculcated by the second generation of pastors, those who were the first to benefit from the city’s reformed educational system. They were aided by the fact that over time their congregations were increasingly made up of those born after the Reformation who thus had no memory of pre-Reformation Catholicism. If the first generation of pastors cleared away the wreckage left by the demolition of Catholicism in Basel, the second generation laid the foundation for a more thorough acceptance of Protestant beliefs and practices. Their accomplishments were the basis on which the third generation of pastors was able to introduce more specifically Reformed practices. The growing willingness of local elites to assist the pastors in the enforcement of religious behavior and the exercise of church discipline accelerated the popular acceptance of Protestantism. By the early seventeenth century, Basel’s pastors had provided the framework for the emergence of a Protestant popular culture. That culture would take root and develop more fully over the next century. One hundred years after the Reformation, the religious landscape in Basel had been fundamentally altered in a way that the first generation of

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reformers could not have imagined. It is tempting to focus on what are seen as the negative aspects of confessional formation, particularly its attempts to suppress popular religious practices and its role in subjecting the ‘‘common people’’ to the domination of state and church. Likewise, there are always aspects of cultural continuity over long periods of time, despite the most vigorous efforts to transform culture from above. Last but not least, one can very easily emphasize the shortcomings of individual pastors, the religious ignorance or indifference of the laity, the conflicts between ministers and magistrate and among the ministers themselves, the clergy’s criticism of the laity, and the laity’s resentment of their pastors. These examples can be multiplied indefinitely, particularly when they are chosen from a heterogeneous collection of cities and territories over a long period of time without regard for local circumstances or generational development. But concentrating on the negative aspects of confessional formation, on cultural continuity, and on cases of individual and collective failure obscures the very real and profound changes that also took place in the century after the Reformation. One cannot compare the religious situation in Basel in the early seventeenth century to that of the late medieval church without acknowledging the fundamental changes that had occurred in the practice of Christianity. The laity were regularly exposed to a detailed presentation of Reformed doctrine that now was codified in the new, clearly Reformed Basel catechism and preached from the pulpit. Children were expected to be able to repeat the essential elements of that doctrine before being allowed their first communion, while the sick were reminded of its consolatory value on their deathbeds. Fathers brought their babies to be baptized at the designated worship services, and parishioners received the Lord’s Supper publicly in church during times of plague rather than relying solely on the pastor’s sacramental acts administered individually to the dying. This is a far cry from the complaints raised by the pastors at the synod of 1533. Over the course of a century, Basel’s clerical corps and their ministry had been transformed.

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12 The Transformation of the Pastoral Ministry

In the generation since Gerald Strauss first asserted that the Reformation was a failure, historians have become much more sophisticated in their efforts to understand popular religious culture. Few would accept uncritically Strauss’s statement that the Reformation had no significant effect on popular religion. Increasingly historians have recognized that the Reformation’s impact on popular religious culture must be measured not only by the laity’s knowledge of doctrine and their adherence to higher moral standards but also, and just as important, by their acceptance of and participation in the specific rituals and rites associated with the new churches. Both of the Protestant forms of Christianity rejected or modified the rituals of medieval Catholicism to accord with their own theological positions. Reformed theologians, in particular, confined the practice of Christianity to a much smaller and less obvious set of rituals than did their Lutheran counterparts. But this does not mean that rituals were unimportant in the Reformed church. The theology of Reformed Protestantism may have been centered on the word, but its practice was inevitably associated with performing certain actions—such as the congregational singing of psalms—and not performing other actions—such as venerating the consecrated host— on very specific occasions and events. Ritual actions could speak as loudly as words in defining religious identity or creating a religious community.1 The assessment presented here of the Reformation’s impact on the popular practice of Christianity in Basel has looked at both words and actions. It has described the preaching and teaching of the city-republic’s pastors and examined the laity’s participation in particular rituals and religious practices, an important indication of

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their acceptance of the Reformed doctrines on which those rituals were based. On this basis, this assessment has concluded that by the early seventeenth century, the Reformation had succeeded in Basel. Some popular beliefs and practices survived the introduction of the Reformation, but they were incorporated into a Reformed religious culture that also included regular church and catechism attendance, particular practices associated with the reception of the sacraments, and acquiescence to the disciplinary authority of representatives of the church, whether pastors or lay ban brothers. This final chapter will consider the reasons for that success, discuss their implications for interpreting developments elsewhere in Protestant Switzerland and Germany, and point to areas where more research is needed. It will do so by looking at three issues: the professionalization of the clergy; the relationship between educational reform, confessional development, and preaching; and the role played by the clergy in the process of confessionalization.

The Ministers: Professionalization and Generational Change The concept of professionalization was developed by sociologists attempting to explain an important aspect of modernization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are caveats about applying such a concept to the early modern period, and some historians have preferred to speak of ‘‘the rise of the professions’’ rather than ‘‘professionalization’’ because of the tendency to interpret the latter as steady progress toward modernity.2 Despite these reservations, and apart from the debate about the contribution of professionalization to modernization, the concept is useful for evaluating changes to the Protestant clergy, for it provides specific criteria for describing those changes. The essential components of professionalization include education and training in specialized knowledge and skills; a hierarchical form of organization able to regulate entry and performance; a developed career structure with advancement based on merit; obligation to provide services to all (or to those able to pay), and an esprit de corps uniting the members of the profession.3 Using these criteria, historians have argued for the increasing professionalization of the Protestant clergy over the early modern period, but they have also pointed to the persistence of traditional features that characterized the clergy as an estate or order in medieval society.4 While these traditional elements certainly persisted within Basel’s Reformed clergy, it is striking how closely the city’s pastors approximated the definition of a profession by the early seventeenth century. The most important feature contributing to the professionalization of Basel’s clergy was the degree of control over recruitment and training, placement and performance exercised jointly by church and magistrate. Foundational for the professionalization of Basel’s clergy was the close linkage between church and university. The stipendiary system attracted promising young students to a clerical career by guaranteeing them the financial support necessary for their education. Although the first two decades after the

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Reformation were marked by turmoil and instability as the university, and particularly the theology faculty, worked out its new relationship with the church, by the second half of the century, the situation had settled, and the university turned out a steady supply of pastoral candidates. The tradition of joining the university’s chairs in theology with one or two city pastorates meant that the ties between the two institutions would remain close. Students attended theology lectures and sermons preached by their professors and so were exposed to the same content from both an academic and a pastoral perspective. The theologians who administered the church knew their students personally and, as members of the Kirchenrat, could nominate them for positions in the church as parishes became available. The existence of Basel’s university thus provided stability and continuity in the education of pastoral candidates and allowed closer supervision by ecclesiastical officials than was possible in most Lutheran cities and territories throughout the sixteenth century. Other Reformed cities in present-day Switzerland—Zurich, Bern, Lausanne, and eventually Geneva—also established their own academies intended specifically to train pastors.5 The foundation of these schools meant that Basel did not play the same key role in the education of the Reformed clergy that Wittenberg would play for the education of Lutheran pastors. Concern for educating its own present and future clergy was a hallmark of the Zwinglian Reformation that, with the notable exception of Strasbourg, does not seem to have had a counterpart in the imperial cities of southern Germany. Ernst Riegg has pointed to the continued loyalty that pastors in imperial cities felt to their homes or to the territories they had previously served, hence to a growing preference in the imperial cities of southern Germany for calling native sons to the ministry. This tendency began later and was never as marked in the German cities as in Switzerland, however. This difference had implications for the divergence between Lutheran and Reformed traditions that merit further study.6 Despite the existence of its own university from the outset of the Reformation, Basel does not seem to have had any advantages over the other Swiss Reformed churches in the area of training future clergy. The institutional disarray and high turnover among its faculty that plagued the university in the first two decades after the Reformation meant that the level and content of instruction was not much different from that offered at the new academies elsewhere in Switzerland. Only after midcentury did the situation improve, with significant consequences for the training of Basel’s future pastors. In one important aspect, the training and recruitment of pastors in other Reformed cities differed fundamentally from that in Basel. While the vast majority of Basel’s pastors were educated entirely within the city’s school system, future pastors in other cities received a considerable part of their education, whether at the lower level of the Latin school/gymnasium or at the higher level of the academy/university, outside of the city they would eventually serve. In Geneva through the sixteenth century, most pastors were recruited from among the French refugees who settled in the city. In Zurich, stipends were used to send pastoral candidates to study at other universities.

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Bern’s students were also sent to other universities for advanced training— not only to Basel but also to Strasbourg, Tu¨bingen, and Marburg in the decades after the Reformation, and to Heidelberg during the periods when the Palatinate was Reformed. Similarly, the Lutheran pastors who would later serve the imperial cities of southern Germany visited a variety of schools and universities, thereby expanding their educational experiences. This distinction between Basel and other cities and territories continued to exist into the seventeenth century, despite the growing tendency toward territorialization of the clergy elsewhere.7 By recruiting its future pastors from the city’s gymnasium, and then providing them with stipends to support their education at its own university, Basel’s church guaranteed a steady supply of native Baslers loyal to the city and trained in the theological positions advocated by the church’s leadership. This exclusive reliance on Basel’s own educational system had both a positive and a negative impact on the city republic’s clergy. They received a more uniform and structured education through Basel’s educational system, but they were also more parochial and limited in their personal familiarity with the world outside of Basel.8 One small but significant step on the road to professionalization was the Basel church’s control of appointments. Studies of the English clergy have shown just how crucial the right of appointment was for the process of professionalization. Through the sixteenth century, both the crown and lay advowson holders regarded their right of appointment as a source of patronage rather than as a tool for reforming the clergy. In Germany as well, the right of local patrons to appoint pastors worked against the development of a welltrained clergy. In Mecklenburg, for instance, local patrons sometimes preferred to appoint less educated candidates so that the pastors would be more dependent upon them.9 Unlike the case in England and in many Protestant territories in Germany, Basel had the authority to appoint pastors to all of the parishes in its territory. Various other groups still had the right to approve nominations to several of the rural parishes, but in practice, all appointments were made cooperatively by church and magistrate. The Senate had the final say, but the Kirchenrat’s right to nominate the three candidates gave it a decisive role in appointment. This authority, more than anything else, meant that the pastoral candidates who had been trained through Basel’s educational system and met with the approval of the church’s leadership would actually receive posts in the city’s church. By the end of the sixteenth century, Basel’s church had also developed an effective means of supervising and disciplining its clergy. The foundation for this system of clerical oversight had been laid by the strengthening of the rural chapters during the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Grynaeus was able to make use of this structure in the decade after his appointment as antistes to impose greater doctrinal conformity and the rural deans’ more vigorous oversight of their colleagues. Because of the church’s effective control of appointments, which served to screen out undesirable candidates, the task of oversight was not as onerous as it might otherwise have been. Pastors

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in office had to be disciplined, and on a few occasions removed from their posts, but for the most part candidates obviously unsuited for the ministry did not receive positions in the church. In one important respect, the Basel church did not approach the model of professionalization. Although there were gradations among entry-level posts and those that required more experienced pastors, there were few options for advancement within the church and, because of the stipendiates’ obligations to serve Basel, no genuine opportunities to accept better positions elsewhere.10 This significantly reduced the pastors’ options for career planning. The most important distinction within Basel’s church was that between rural and urban parishes, and the decision whether a pastor would serve in the city or the countryside was made by the church authorities very early in his career. Although family connections could be important in determining whether a young pastor was nominated to an urban post, the decision itself was also based on merit. The congregation’s role in the election process for the city’s churches, based on the trial sermons preached by the candidates, gave skill in preaching a particular significance. The justification that Grynaeus gave for requiring the rural pastors to preach the Thursday morning sermon in the cathedral—so that the Senate would be more familiar with how well each of them could preach when it came time to fill a vacant post in the city—reflects the importance of preaching ability in determining the career of individual pastors. The long career spans of the cathedral pastor and his colleagues at the other three parish churches served to limit movement up the career scale for most of the other city pastors. In the rural church, the position of chapter dean may have functioned as a higher position on the career ladder, but, at least in the early years after the Reformation, it was more of a burden than an honor, judging from the requests of several of the deans to be released from their duties.11 The last two elements of professionalization, the provision of a service and an esprit de corps, were inextricably linked in the minds of Basel’s pastors. The clergy’s sense of identity and purpose was shaped by their pastoral obligation above all to further the salvation of their parishioners through the public and private proclamation of God’s word. Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte has shown that an important source of the ‘‘special consciousness’’ of Lutheran clergy was their position in relation to the magistrate and housefathers within the doctrine of the three estates that developed from the mid–sixteenth century. She has argued that the greater emphasis within the Reformed tradition on the authority of the magistrate as guardian of the church, and in general a more decisive distinction between rulers and subjects, hindered a similar development in Reformed territories.12 This difference should not be exaggerated, however. Basel’s Reformed pastors, like their Lutheran counterparts, were extremely conscious of their responsibilities as watchmen and guardians charged with providing for the spiritual well-being of the city-republic. Basel’s pastors certainly emphasized the subjects’ duty to revere and obey the magistrate, not only when they preached on the commandment to honor one’s father and mother but also in the yearly sermons given at the

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oath-taking of the new Senate.13 At the same time, the pastors claimed a similar position for themselves with regard to the laity. Just as the laity were to obey the civil magistrate, so they were to revere and submit to the authority of those entrusted with spiritual responsibility for them, a point Basel’s pastors also made repeatedly in their sermons in the early seventeenth century.14 In essence, Basel’s pastors emphasized not only the hierarchy between magistrate and subject but also that between ministers and laity. One aspect of this spiritual hierarchy may have been the general reluctance of German-speaking Reformed pastors, at least in comparison to their Lutheran counterparts, to publish their sermons. The Reformed homileticist Wilhelm Zepper condemned the flood of Postillen circulating through Germany because they encouraged individuals to challenge the authority of the minister.15 The pastors who assumed leadership of Basel’s church in the early seventeenth century chose to publish their sermons and sermon schemata in Latin for other pastors and the educated elite rather than in German for a popular audience. The pastors had a monopoly on the correct interpretation of God’s word, particularly with regard to doctrinal questions. It was important for the church leaders to teach their colleagues how to interpret the Bible correctly, but the laity should receive their instruction from the minister and not independently. The publication of vernacular funeral sermons at the turn of the century only highlights this monopoly. Like Wolfgang Meyer’s description of a good Reformed death, the funeral sermons of the early seventeenth century focused not on doctrine but on consolation and the outworking of evangelical presuppositions for daily life. This type of consolation could be entrusted to the laity. The interpretation of the word of God, however, which included the inculcation of orthodoxy and the condemnation of error, remained firmly in the hands of the clergy, deepening in practice the hierarchical distinction between clergy and laity. The pastors’ monopoly on teaching God’s word contributed to their sense of divine obligation for the spiritual well-being of the souls entrusted to their care. This conviction was reinforced in the ordination, installation, and visitation sermons preached by the leaders of the church. At the installation of Johannes Tryphius as assistant pastor of St. Leonhard in 1587, Grynaeus reminded both Tryphius and the congregation that the new pastor was the watchman over the congregation, and an example to them in word, conduct, and faith. A generation later, Johann Georg Gross told his congregation during his farewell sermon that he not only had to give account of his actions to them but would also face God’s judgment seat. To his new congregation at St. Peter, he confessed his own human weakness but at the same time stressed his responsibility to watch over them without regard for the status of individuals. He reminded the four rural pastors installed in their new posts in the fall of 1613 that Christ’s power had been transferred to them as ministers of the word, and that they would be called to give account of their ministry at the Last Judgment. Similar emphases on pastors as teachers, watchmen, and models for their parishioners occur in the funeral sermons preached for Basel’s pastors in the seventeenth century.16

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Certainly elements remained of the medieval view of the clergy as a separate estate, tied to the older economic, jurisdictional, and social structures that persisted into the seventeenth century. Yet the case of Basel demonstrates how rapidly the clergy could become professionalized under the right circumstances. The high degree of control over recruitment, training, appointment, and oversight exercised by the Kirchenrat, with the approval of the Senate, was an ideal unattainable in many larger territories, especially in Germany. Nevertheless, Basel’s example is useful in providing a model for the changes to the education of the pastoral clergy elsewhere. The generational changes seen in Basel occurred in other churches as well, although at different times, depending on both local circumstances and larger ecclesiopolitical developments. Basel was fortunate, in that most of its second generation of pastors had received a university education. Other cities and territories that did not adopt the Reformation so early or that needed more time to establish stable educational and stipendiary systems were forced to rely on poorly trained pastors to fill the posts that fell vacant as the first generation of pastors died.17 What Basel achieved in the 1550s and 1560s with its second generation of pastors may not have occurred in many other places until after the 1570s, with a consequent delay of one generation in the impact on lay religious life. By the 1580s and 1590s, however, university training was increasingly seen as a fundamental requirement for the pastorate, and the number of private and public stipends established at universities throughout Germany made it possible for many more young men to spend at least some time studying at a university before entering the ministry.18 Through the end of the century Basel continued the trend toward an increasingly higher level of education. The presence of a university with the right to grant degrees made it easy for the leaders of Basel’s church to require their pastors to receive a master’s degree, especially as competition grew more intense for the small number of pastoral positions that came open each year. Studies of clergy elsewhere show a continued upward trend in the level of education over the later sixteenth century, with the most significant improvement in education coming in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. Basel was perhaps unusual in the uniformly high degree of education of its clergy, but by the early seventeenth century the great majority of Protestant pastors had at least some university education, and a significant proportion had master’s degrees.19 Moreover, the shift of what had been university-level courses to the upper level of the gymnasia and academies in the later sixteenth century means that even those pastors without a university education had learned as much at the gymnasium as previous generations that had studied at a university. Although poorly educated pastors continued to receive posts, the overall difference between the educational level of the first Protestant pastors and their successors one hundred years later is striking. The requirement that all Basel pastors receive a master’s degree eliminated one of the traditional differences between urban and rural clergy, that of varying educational levels. This seems to have been a fairly common

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development, at least among the south German city-republics with small rural territories. In the twelve imperial cities studied by Riegg, the proportion of rural pastors who had studied at a university was almost as high as it was among those in urban parishes and those who moved between the two types of posts by the 1570s. Although a smaller proportion of rural pastors received a master’s degree, at the turn of the century the percentage of pastors with M.A. degrees was higher among those who moved back and forth between rural and urban parishes than it was among those who held only urban posts.20 Only those pastors who reached positions of leadership had significantly more education than their colleagues, a finding that also holds true for Basel. The uniformity of both the content and amount of their education made Basel’s pastors unusual, but the pattern of increasing education among all clergy, and the gradual leveling of the educational differences between urban and rural pastors, was typical of the later sixteenth century. The high degree of professionalization reached by Basel’s pastors contributed in turn to the generally positive picture of religious life in Basel’s rural parishes given by the visitation reports of the early seventeenth century. The positive findings in Strasbourg’s visitation reports lend additional support to this observation, since Strasbourg was very similar to Basel with regard to the education, recruitment, and appointment of its clergy.21 The pastors of both Basel and Strasbourg might be regarded as atypical, since both served cities with only a small number of rural parishes. More important for the process of professionalization than size, however, was the control of pastoral appointments. The sooner and the more completely a territory could gain control of patronage rights, the more quickly it was able to achieve a significant improvement in the educational level and competence of its clergy. This was more easily done in smaller territories than in larger ones, but the case of Sweden shows that the development of an integrated system of education combined with control of appointments could result in significant changes in both the performance of the clergy and in popular religious practices even at the national level.22 Just as important as control of appointments for the effectiveness of the pastoral ministry was the long-term confessional stability of a territory. One of the factors hindering the inculcation of new beliefs and practices and the establishment of confessional identity among the laity was the expulsion of clergy from German territories caused either by confessional conflict or by the ruler’s conversion from one form of Protestantism to another. The turnover among the clergy in both the electoral Palatinate and in electoral Saxony certainly hampered the implantation of a confessional identity in both territories.23 By contrast, with the exception of a few dramatic incidents of confessional conflict among the city ministers, Basel’s pastors kept any existing doctrinal disagreements to themselves. Moreover, although the city’s government gradually became more oligarchic over the later sixteenth century, it could never have imposed a change of confession similar to the so-called second Reformation in Germany.24 As a consequence, each generation of Basel’s pastors was able to build on the pedagogical accomplishments of its

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predecessors rather than having to introduce new doctrines or to repudiate practices that had become familiar to their parishioners. Geoffrey Parker has suggested that another factor contributing to the ‘‘failure’’ of the Protestant Reformation, at least in comparison to postTridentine Catholicism, was the complexity of Protestant doctrine.25 The case of Basel contradicts Parker’s hypothesis on two levels. First, the message proclaimed at the beginning of the Reformation was not particularly complex and consisted as much of the criticism of traditional practices as the presentation of evangelical beliefs. In fact, the explicit contrast of evangelical doctrine with Catholic beliefs and practices may have helped make the former more understandable to the laity. One could easily see this method of teaching evangelical doctrine via explicit rejection of Catholicism as the homiletic counterpart of the popular woodcuts that contrasted evangelical and Catholic practices.26 Second, the greater doctrinal complexity typical by the time of the third generation does not seem to have presented an undue challenge to Basel’s pastors. The visitation reports from the early seventeenth century reflect a general satisfaction with the laity’s level of religious knowledge, despite the doctrinal complexity of the sermons being preached. These two points draw our attention to the evolution of the message the pastors proclaimed in the century after the Reformation.

The Message: Humanism, Orthodoxy, and the Evolution of Preaching This study has highlighted the importance of changes in rhetoric and especially dialectic instruction for the development of theological method, Reformed Orthodoxy, and preaching. The significant increase in the length of time most pastors devoted to their education was matched by an equally important change in the content of that education. As students they learned not only theology, or what they were to teach, but also the skills of communication, or how they were to teach. The example of Basel reveals an evolution in the form and content of preaching that was related to the development of arts education over the course of the sixteenth century. The result, by the early seventeenth century, was a marked shift away from the priorities that had characterized late medieval and early Reformation theology. The preaching of the first generation of Basel’s pastors had three chief characteristics. It emphasized the central evangelical message of salvation by faith in Christ alone and the authority of the Bible as the word of God. This positive message was accompanied by an equally important negative one manifested in polemic against the Catholic Church for its substitution of human traditions for God’s word and against the Anabaptists who seduced people into error and heresy. Just as important, the sermons of Basel’s pastors retained a traditional flavor in their vigorous castigation of sin and their calls for higher standards of morality in accordance with God’s law. Although the preachers urged their hearers to abandon Catholic practices, they did relatively

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little to develop a new and specifically evangelical interpretation of their hearers’ life circumstances. Their full attention, instead, was on persuading their hearers to abandon old and familiar religious beliefs and practices for the central doctrines of the evangelical message. Because the Bible revealed God’s will, the first generation of reformers felt that its contents should be made known to all. They drew few distinctions among their audience: their explanation of the Scripture text was aimed at clergy and laity, pastors and students without distinction. As good humanists, they emphasized the philological and grammatical analysis of the text and so recognized the importance of knowing Scripture’s original languages, but the laity could also learn from the text of Scripture translated into the vernacular. Oecolampadius’s preference for the homily encouraged an expository style of preaching that combined philological analysis of the text with some form of practical application, often a repudiation of Catholic beliefs or practices. This style was adopted by his colleagues in Basel with varying levels of success, depending on their background, training, and experience. Several important changes occurred at midcentury that distinguished the education of the young men who entered the ministry during the 1550s and 1560s from that of their predecessors. By this time it had become apparent to Basel’s theologians, as it was to theology professors elsewhere, that their students needed some means by which to organize and remember the theological knowledge derived from Scripture. As in other disciplines, the use of loci became the fundamental means of organizing theological knowledge.27 Melanchthon’s Loci Communes Theologici was studied and commented on in Basel, and young theology students were encouraged to assemble theological commonplace books of their own. They were also taught to study the text of Scripture using classical rhetoric and an elementary form of humanist dialectic. The homiletic texts produced during this period further developed Melanchthon’s topical method of preaching, which combined the organizational method of the loci with the skills of rhetoric and dialectic. Expository preaching continued to predominate in Basel into the 1560s, but topical preaching also became more common, introduced not only by the homiletics texts published in Basel but also by the sermons of men such as Johannes Brandmu¨ller who had studied outside of Basel and thus been exposed to this style of preaching. The sermons of this post-Reformation generation differed from those of their predecessors, in that they turned away from anti-Catholic polemic and focused instead on the more practical and pastoral application of Scripture to daily life. The job of the preacher was no longer to persuade his hearers to abandon practices of medieval Catholicism familiar from childhood but to instruct them in the significance of the practices that had been introduced at the Reformation. Moreover, the pastors began to inculcate a specifically evangelical spirituality as they taught their parishioners how to interpret the world around them in accordance with Protestant doctrines. Perhaps the most decisive turning point for Basel’s church came with the developments of the 1570s, although their ramifications would not be felt

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until the 1580s, when the third generation of pastors began to be appointed to parish posts. At the university, Grynaeus’s practice of employing advanced dialectic for scriptural exegesis brought a revolution in theological method. Whether the dialectic used was the humanist/Aristotelian form used by Grynaeus or the Ramist form introduced by his younger colleague Polanus, the result was the same. Theology was no longer taught as a form of philological and grammatical analysis of Scripture, or as a collection of topics drawn from Scripture, but rather as a system derived from Scripture using the tools of dialectical analysis and supported with logical argumentation. Grynaeus’s influence was extended beyond the lecture hall to the church at large when he was elected to the position of cathedral pastor. His topical style of preaching was ideally suited for teaching key Reformed doctrines and explaining how those doctrines were relevant to the lives of his hearers, thereby reinforcing the evangelical worldview. That style became the standard model to be studied and imitated by the city’s future pastors. The young men who entered the ministry during the last two decades of the sixteenth century had been thoroughly trained in dialectic and its application to Reformed theology, and they had significant experience both in traditional oratory and in preaching. The more expository style of preaching used by Johann Jacob Gugger may still have been popular among the laity, but Grynaeus’s authority over the church, displayed particularly in his influence on the appointment of candidates to the ministry, ensured the dominance of both his theology and his preaching style into the early seventeenth century. By this time, however, the younger generation of pastors had been exposed to yet another important development in theology and theological method. The influence of Ramism propagated first by Polanus and then by his successors would dominate theological education in the early seventeenth century. Although long-lived preachers from the second generation (like Grynaeus himself) would continue to preach topical sermons into the second decade of the seventeenth century, the next generation of pastors would apply Ramist method to their preaching. Despite Ramism’s emphasis on application, the sermons of the early seventeenth century were dominated by the elaboration of doctrine. Anti-Catholic polemic reemerged at the end of the century as well, but it differed from that at the beginning of the Reformation in its more pedantic tone: people were now told why they should reject the practices of others, rather than encouraged to abandon the beliefs they had been raised with. The broadening of theological content and deepening of doctrinal detail can perhaps be seen as a movement away from both the ‘‘spiritual theology’’ and the normative centering that Berndt Hamm has described for the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.28 The first two generations of Reformation clergy in Basel shared the concern of earlier theologians, preachers, and moral reformers to concentrate on that which was seen as essential or central to spirituality and religion. In their sermons, they emphasized the distinctive doctrines of Protestant Christianity and their implications for praxis, whether the emphasis was on the rejection of Catholicism as in the first generation or on the development of an evangelical worldview in the second.

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This emphasis on praxis continued through the sixteenth century, but the scope of doctrines that the laity needed to know was gradually expanded by the confessional conflicts within Protestantism to include more detailed discussion first of the Lord’s Supper, and then of the more abstract aspects of Christology and predestination. By the early seventeenth century, Reformed preaching in Basel presented the full range of Orthodox doctrine in all its complexity. To judge from what they included in their sermons, the pastors believed that the laity needed to know not only the central elements of the Reformed faith but all of the fine points that distinguished them from Lutherans as well. They also had to know how to respond to the arguments used by an increasingly self-confident and clearly defined Catholicism. Loyalty to one’s confession was measured by familiarity with the proper terminology, and so the laity heard those terms repeated regularly. Such repetition may not have guaranteed an active knowledge of Reformed Orthodoxy, but it probably enabled a passive recognition that allowed hearers to distinguish between ‘‘correct’’ and ‘‘incorrect’’ doctrine for themselves. The need to instill a full and detailed knowledge of correct doctrine left the preachers of the early seventeenth century less time to focus on the praxis of the Christian life in their sermons. Moreover, it was difficult to relate many of the more abstract doctrines, such as the relation of Christ’s divine and human natures, to praxis in anything more than a very general way. Last but not least, when Basel’s preachers did turn to praxis, their presentation was hindered by the structures of Ramism, which required further division and distinction rather than development and elaboration. Thus both confessional priorities and the form of theology and preaching worked against the further development of a spiritual theology such as that which had characterized the earlier period. The study of Reformed preaching in Basel reveals an important difference from Lutheran preaching in the seventeenth century. Despite changes in both content and form, the goal of all Reformed preaching was teaching, and, in comparison to Lutheranism, there was very little emphasis on the psychological or affective aspect of religious belief. Basel’s preachers emphasized the individual and personal application of the Gospel message through the second half of the sixteenth century, but in the early decades of the seventeenth century they moved away from this to focus on doctrine. There was a similar attitude with regard to pastoral care. It was the pastor’s responsibility to preach doctrine; once his parishioners understood the word of God, they were increasingly expected to be able to apply its consolatory lessons themselves. This difference became more marked over time. Only when compelled by circumstances, as in the case of funeral sermons, did the pastors of the early seventeenth century devote much time to the experiential and existential aspects of religious praxis. Walter Sparn has suggested that confessionalization and the professionalization of theology over the later sixteenth century led to a ‘‘crisis of piety,’’ an awareness that theological knowledge and personal spirituality were not necessarily connected, within Lutheranism. The result was a new emphasis

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on personal piety at the turn of the century.29 Although the sermons of the seventeenth century imply the same disjunction between teaching orthodox theology and encouraging personal piety, there was no similar feeling of crisis in Reformed Basel. Perhaps Grynaeus’s preoccupation with the establishment of Reformed Orthodoxy prevented him from seeing the implications of the shift away from the devotional aspects so central in his own preaching to the greater emphasis on knowledge of correct doctrine. The relative lack of concern with cultivating a deeper spirituality may seem surprising in light of the general association of internalized piety with the Reformed tradition, particularly Puritanism. It makes sense, however, when one contrasts the pastoral situation in Basel with that in England in the early seventeenth century. Puritan pastors had no institutional mechanisms for the exercise of church discipline among their parishioners and therefore had to rely on moral suasion to encourage appropriate behavior. Basel’s pastors, by contrast, were increasingly supported in their disciplining efforts by the ban brothers and other local officials. Although internalized piety remained important in theory, the pastors relied less on moral suasion than on the mechanisms of church and state to oversee the behavior of their parishioners. As a consequence, by the early seventeenth century, the preachers could devote their sermons less to cultivating personal piety than to reinforcing their parishioners’ confessional identity by making clear the differences between their church and those in the Lutheran and Catholic territories that surrounded Basel.30 These observations highlight the need for further study of Reformed preaching. The development of preaching in Basel certainly differed from that in Lutheran Germany and in French-speaking Reformed Geneva, at least during the time of Calvin. Whether it differed from that of the Reformed churches in Germany or the German-speaking churches in Switzerland cannot be answered until we know more about both the content and the form of sermons preached in these areas. The influence of Ramism on Reformed homiletics at the turn of the century suggests that there were parallel developments, but this hypothesis needs to be investigated through further study of Reformed sermons from both Switzerland and Germany. There can be no doubt that preaching in Basel was influenced by confessional developments outside the city. To turn the question around, what role did the pastors play in the development of a confessional identity and the process of confessionalization in Basel?

Confessional Identity and Confessionalization in Basel The traditional presentation of Basel’s confessional history, established by scholars in the nineteenth century but traceable back to the seventeenth century, is that Basel underwent a ‘‘Lutheranizing’’ process under Sulzer’s leadership during the third quarter of the sixteenth century, only to be returned to its genuine, Reformed heritage by Johann Jacob Grynaeus.31 But, as

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this study has argued, Basel’s church was never truly Lutheran, nor was there a period of ‘‘Lutheranizing,’’ unless that term is understood as any deviation from Zwinglianism—a definition vague enough that it could even be applied to Jean Calvin in the 1540s.32 It is more accurate to describe Basel’s confessional identity in the third quarter of the sixteenth century as an allegiance to an earlier stage of confessional development characterized by commitment to the nonconfessional form of Protestantism advocated by Martin Bucer during the 1530s. This policy of confessional nonalignment continued through the 1550s and 1560s, but it could be maintained only with difficulty into the 1570s. The tightening of confessional definitions in the negotiations leading to the Formula of Concord finally forced Sulzer to adopt more clearly Lutheran terminology regarding the Lord’s Supper. Nevertheless, even as theology professor and cathedral pastor he had no power to prevent the church’s eventual adoption of a Reformed confessional identity. Not only was that identity the personal and self-conscious theological choice of many of Basel’s younger pastors during the 1560s and 1570s but also it was encouraged by nontheological factors such as loyalty to the traditions established by Oecolampadius and an increasing sense that Basel was a Swiss, rather than an imperial, city. The doctrinal conflicts of the 1570s indicate the strength of Reformed sentiment among the city’s pastors and university students. In fact, Sulzer’s long tenure in office— he lived two decades beyond the average life span of Basel’s pastors—obscures the growing strength of the Reformed party into the 1580s, a strength that was then revealed by Grynaeus’s election as antistes. Grynaeus in turn did not so much change Basel’s confessional course as confirm the Reformed identity that had always been present within a part of the ministry and had only became more pronounced during the preceding decade. The rapidity with which he was able to introduce Reformed Orthodoxy reflects the already considerable support for it within the church and university. This discussion of Basel’s confessional identity raises larger questions about the process of confessionalization in the city-republic. Like the concept of professionalization, the paradigm of confessionalization has been criticized for its teleological emphasis on modernization; its claim to be understood as a fundamental social process has been undermined as well. Some critics have questioned its role in the formation of the early modern state and argued that the term should limited to the formation of confessional churches and their influence on culture. To the original concept of confessionalization imposed from above by representatives of church and state, more recent studies have argued for a confessionalization from below, as the laity selectively adopted and adapted beliefs, values, and institutions advocated by the authorities or accepted new standards of Christian behavior even in the absence of strong secular or ecclesiastical structures to impose them.33 In many respects, the case of Basel demonstrates the typical features of confessionalization from above, including its role in strengthening the early modern state. The Senate’s assumption of control over the church, including both its personnel and its property, at the onset of the Reformation

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contributed significantly to its growing authority in both city and rural territories. The morals codes and edicts governing the public exercise of religion issued in the sixteenth century were a continuation of the Senate’s concern for the spiritual well-being and proper conduct of it subjects that dated from the fifteenth century, but those edicts were given new justification by the pastors’ explicit recognition of the magistrate’s responsibility for the church.34 From the early years after the Reformation, the pastors recognized that they needed the coercive authority of the Senate to support their own responsibilities of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care. In return, the pastors provided the Senate with a new source of information about problems with local officials and subjects at the parish level. Nevertheless, these general tendencies toward strengthening the power of the state need to be balanced by a consideration of the extent to which Basel’s magistrate actively made use of its authority over the church for political purposes. For most of the sixteenth century the Senate did not take a direct hand in church affairs. The synods of the 1530s prompted it to reinforce existing morals legislation and issue new provisions. But the Senate did not seem to recognize the value of the clergy as potential agents of magisterial authority, and the conflict at the end of the 1530s established a relationship with the clergy that could be as much adversarial as cooperative. The synods of the 1550s are even more striking as an illustration of the magistrate’s failure to connect social disciplining with increased political power. Rather than using the opportunity for the religious and moral disciplining of its subjects presented to it by the pastors’ synodal grievances, the Senate weakened or rejected the proposals put forward by the committee charged with the official response.35 Only at the end of the century did the magistrate seem to grasp fully the potential for increasing its own political power by using the pastors as their agents—and here they could encounter opposition from the leaders of the church. In the spring of 1591, as unrest caused by a newly imposed tax spread through the countryside, the Senate instructed its district governors to ask each pastor in his district to exclude rebellious peasants from communion at Easter. When the Kirchenrat learned of this measure two weeks later, it reacted strongly against what it saw as a blatant misuse of the pastors’ sacramental responsibilities for political purposes.36 Moreover, the unrest of 1591 demonstrates that the Senate could not count completely on the pastors to act as its agents. Although many of the pastors promoted the magistrate’s interests by urging obedience and denouncing rebellion from the pulpit, others were seen as less reliable and had to be warned about consorting with their disaffected parishioners. The pastors could also serve as brokers or intermediaries between the two sides: pastor Heinrich Stru¨bin, for instance, played a vital role in the negotiations that ended the uprising. 37 The tensions caused by the peasant uprising were a response to extraordinary circumstances, however. At the end of the century, the relationship between clergy and Senate can best be characterized as a working partnership that recognized the magistrate’s duty to protect and support the church, as

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well as the clergy’s advisory role in matters concerning religion and morality and its responsibility for the oversight of its own members. As such, it reflected the assumptions of cooperation embedded within the doctrine of the three estates that dominated European political thought in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.38 These general observations suggest some distinctions and clarifications of terminology. Confession-building was a policy consciously pursued by the pastors, with some support by the Senate, throughout the sixteenth century. Confessionalization, in the sense of the strengthening of state power and the transformation of society and culture, occurred in only a partial and limited sense, and it did not begin in earnest until the last decades of the century.39 For most of the sixteenth century, it would be more accurate to describe confessionalization as the unintentional result of the working partnership between magistrate and ministers rather than as the conscious policy of the magistrate. The Senate’s use of the church seems to have become more deliberate at the turn of the century, at the same time that the circle of Basel’s political elite grew smaller and began to conceive of itself more as ruler over the city’s subjects rather than representatives of its citizens. This trend was accompanied by the new emphasis on the subjects’ obedience to both magistrate and clergy in the preaching of the city’s pastors.40 Both developments imply a more conscious involvement in the social disciplining process by magistrates and ministers, but this must be the subject of further research continuing through the seventeenth century. Balancing the development of confessionalization from above, there is also evidence for a process of confessionalization from below in Basel. This study has demonstrated the importance of local participation in the confessionalization process. New religious beliefs could not simply be decreed by the magistrate and imposed on its subjects. Rather, it took two generations of Reformed preaching to instill a sense of confessional identity and to win a critical mass of support for the new church at the parish level. Once this support was achieved, those in positions of authority at the local level accelerated the process of confessional formation, if not of confessionalization, by enforcing those measures most likely to strengthen confessional identity among their fellow villagers—regular attendance at church and catechism, where they learned Reformed doctrine, and greater oversight of behavior subject to the church’s disciplinary authority. As with confessionalization from above, so in Basel the results of confessionalization from below were partial and limited, if confessionalization is equated with social and moral disciplining. By the early seventeenth century, the pastors were largely satisfied with the religious behavior of their parishioners. They were not so sanguine, however, about their moral conduct. At the visitations, synods, and district chapter meetings of the early seventeenth century, they continued to complain about blasphemy, swearing, dancing, drinking, fornication, and other moral infractions committed by their parishioners. This distinction between religious and moral discipline implies that while local officials shared the pastors’ concerns about religious behavior, they

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did not necessarily agree with them on the extent to which religious beliefs were to be reflected in moral conduct. A more detailed examination of the procedures for and the results of religious and moral disciplining at the parish level is also necessary to shed more light on the laity’s role in the process of self-disciplining and confessional formation. An examination of the social disciplining process should not, however, be equated with confessionalization. A functionalist view of confessionalization, which looks only at moral conduct without considering reception of religious doctrine and acceptance of the associated rites and ceremonies, not only ignores but even distorts the priorities of the clergy. There was certainly a connection between theology and moral behavior via what Heinrich Schmidt has called the ‘‘theology of retribution,’’ the belief common to all confessions that God rewards obedience and punishes sin on a communal basis, as well as in the community’s belief in the need to maintain the purity of eucharistic fellowship.41 But these two points were not the only, or even the chief, message of the sermons preached in Basel over the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century. In accordance with the Protestant emphasis on the word of God and the evangelical message of justification by faith alone, conformity to specific moral standards can only be a secondary criterion for evaluating the long-term impact of the Reformation. More important from the clergy’s point of view, as well as from the inner logic of the evangelical Gospel, was regular attendance at sermons and catechization and the familiarity with orthodox doctrine that resulted, and the correct understanding of the sacraments, as signaled by their proper use and frequent reception. It was on this basis that Basel’s pastors expressed their contentment with their parishioners, and it is in this area, in comparison to the circumstances in the local parishes in the years immediately following the Reformation, that confessionalization had its greatest impact over the course of the sixteenth century. The significance of these changes has gone unrecognized because the pastors of the seventeenth century did not often look back at how much the ritual and liturgical acts of the church had changed since the introduction of the Reformation. Their focus instead was on the current state of the church and what could be done to bring it into conformity with their ideals. And those ideals were, in turn, shaped by the circumstances, problems, and challenges of the seventeenth century, which were much different from those of the early Reformation. To cite only one example of how those concerns had changed, the clergy did not worry that their parishioners would fall back into traditional eucharistic devotional practices, but they wanted to make sure that their parishioners knew why they should deliberately reject the eucharistic devotion practiced in neighboring Catholic villages and how they should defend their own practices. A comparison of current to ideal circumstances will always show shortcomings, but a comparison of current with past circumstances reveals the depth of change. This discussion highlights the distinctive role played by the pastors in the process of confessionalization, whether from above or below. In general, the clergy are associated with confessionalization from above, working together

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the pastor in the parish

with secular officials to impose new beliefs and practices. This discussion has pointed out that the goals of secular and ecclesiastical officials often overlapped but were not by any means identical. There was a similar overlap between the priorities of the clergy and of local officials, but again there were also significant divergences. Theologians and pastors had their own set of criteria for the effective performance of their ministry—the tasks contributing to what modern historians term confessional formation. Those criteria could not be met without the cooperation of the magistrate or their acceptance by the laity.42 The clergy thus contributed to the confessionalization process from both directions, but always with their own priorities and goals. Just as they provided the magistrate with tools for increasing their authority over their subjects, so they inculcated among the laity a new understanding of the Christian faith and provided them with new standards of religious and moral behavior. Those beliefs and behaviors would lead to significant cultural and social change, whatever the long-term consequences might have been for the formation of the early modern state or for the process of modernization. Through their preaching, teaching, and pastoral care, Basel’s pastors constantly held up their interpretation of the word of God to their audience. That audience selectively appropriated those parts of their message that resonated with and corresponded to their own beliefs, values, and priorities. Over the course of four generations there was a gradual convergence as both magistrate and laity came to share more of the pastors’ understanding of the evangelical message. That convergence was never total, and it was hindered by the fact that the message proclaimed by the pastors also changed over time. Nevertheless, it was sufficient to bring about a significant change in the praxis of Christianity in Basel. Basel’s Reformed church had come a long way from the situation of the first decade after the Reformation, when a heterogeneous group of pastors proclaimed a very general form of the evangelical message. The church would face a number of challenges in the years after 1629, not the least of which was the loss of many of its leaders in yet another plague epidemic. But it faced those challenges committed to a coherent and detailed presentation of that gospel in the form of Reformed Orthodoxy, staffed with a uniform and welltrained clergy imbued with a high view of their calling, and having at its disposal a stable system for pastoral education supported by both the city and by private endowments, a well-established structure of clerical appointment and oversight, and a satisfactory working relationship with the magistrate. Future generations of pastors would use these structures and institutions to carry out their commitment to communicate their own understanding of the word of God. The process of confessionalization and cultural change did not end in 1629 but would continue within the framework established in the century after the Reformation.

Tables

table 1.1. Geographical Origin of Clergy Entering the Basel Ministry

Unknown 1529 1530–39 1540–49 1550–59 1560–69 1570–79 1580–89 1590–99 1600–09 1610–19 1620–29

8 11 8 4 3 0 0 0 0 0 0

Total Percent

34 13.4

Basel

Adjacent Territories

Southwest Germany

Swiss Confederation

7 1 4 14 20 18 17 13 10 23 15

9 3 3 4 1 2 1 1 0 0 0

8 3 2 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0

9 2 7 3 3 0 2 0 0 1 0

142 55.9

24 9.4

19 7.5

27 10.6

North and Central Germany 1 1 0 0 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 8 3.1

Total 42 21 24 28 34 22 20 14 10 24 15 254

280

tables table 1.2. Educational Level of Clergy Entering the Basel Ministry Unknown

Matriculated

1529 1530–39 1540–49 1550–59 1560–69 1570–79 1580–89 1590–99 1600–09 1610–19 1620–29

24 13 13 6 4 0 0 0 0 0 0

6 3 4 10 8 4 1 1 0 1 0

Total Percent

60 23.6

38 15.0

B.A.

M.A.

3 2 0 5 6 9 9 2 1 0 0 37 14.6

St. Theol.

Th.D.

5 2 4 5 12 9 5 8 1 7 4

2 0 2 2 4 0 4 3 8 16 11

2 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

62 24.4

52 20.4

5 2.0

Total 42 21 24 28 34 22 20 14 10 24 15 254

table 3.1. Birth Cohorts of New Clergy versus Year of First Appointment Birth Year Before 1490 Year Entered Ministry 1529 1530–39 1540–49 1550–59 Total

1490–99

1500–09

1510–19

1520–29

1530–39

1540–49

Known Est. Known Est. Known Est. Known Est. Known Est. Known Est. 4 2

6 3

15

1 3

13 0

2 1 2 1

17

16 11 4 1 38

0 1 0

1 10 1

2 2

13

4 3 11

1 7

12 20

table 4.1. Number of Future Pastors Receiving Financial Support Matriculation Year 1540–49 1550–59 1560–69 1570–79 1580–89 1590–99 1600–09 1610–19 1620–29

Future Pastors Matriculated

Future Pastors with Stipends

Percentage

23 27 30 14 12 15 16 29 14

14 13 15 11 11 14 13 26 2

61 48 50 79 92 93 81 90 14

Est.

Total

1

42 21 24 28

1

115

tables

281

table 4.2. Stipiendiates as Percentage of Pastors in Office

Years

Rural Stipendiate Pastors

Total Rural Pastors

1559 1572 1581 1588 1597/8 1609 1619 1629

12 15 15 15 14 19 24 24

27 27 28 28 26 29 29 27

Percent

Urban Stipendiate Pastors

Total Urban Pastors

Percent

Total Percent Stipendiates

44 55 54 54 54 66 83 89

2 6 6 6 9 12 12 14

12 13 13 10 12 15 15 16

17 46 46 69 75 80 80 77

36 53 51 55 60 70 82 88

table 5.1. Number of Future Students Matriculating by Age, 1540 to 1629 Age 1540–49 1550–59 1560–69 1570–79 1580–89 1590–99 1600–09 1610–19 1620–29 a

11

12

2

1

13

14

5 1 1 2

1 4 6 2

1 2 1

2 5 3

15

16

17

2 3 4 1 3 2 6 2

3 1 2 2 3 3 2 4 3

1 2 3 3 1 6 3 5 2

18

19

1 2

20

21

1 2 1

3 2 1 4 2

1 3 2

1a

Median

Mean

Standard Deviation

13.5 14 15 15.5 16 17 17 16 15.5

14.4 14.7 15.8 15.6 16.2 16.7 16.8 15.8 15.6

1.6 2.8 2.0 1.7 1.5 1.3 3.1 1.8 1.6

This may be the result of a wrong birth date.

table 5.2. Years to Degree of Basel Pastors Each Decade

Matriculation Year 1540–49 1550–59 1560–69 1570–79 1580–89 1590–99 1600–09 1610–19 1620–29

Number of Future Pastors Matriculatinga

Time to B.A. (years)

Number of Future Pastors Earning B.A.

Time to M.A. (Years)

Number of Future Pastors Earning M.A.

Number Matriculated as Theology Students

23 27 30 14 12 15 16 29 14

3.1 3.6 3.1 3.3 3.2 1.8 2.4 1.7 1.6

18 18 24 14 10 15 16 29 14

2.4 3.9 3.9 3.7 2.8 2.5 3.0 2.3 2.0

13 13 11 7 9 14 16 27 14

0 4 1 4 3 10 10 19 13

a This number is higher than the number in the previous table because for each decade there was at least one (and for the earlier decades several) future pastor(s) whose birth year is unknown.

282

tables

table 6.1. Disputation Emphasis by Decade

1576–85 1586–95 1596–05 1606–15 1616–25 Total

Doctrinal Protestant

Doctrinal Reformed

Polemical

Anti-Catholic

Pastoral

Exegetical

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

Total

61 53 26 34 5

58.7 34.0 16.4 26.8 9.8

14 50 47 38 27

13.5 32.1 29.6 29.9 52.9

4 2 6 14 3

3.8 1.3 3.8 11.0 5.9

16 27 70 29 14

15.4 17.3 44.0 22.8 27.5

2 13 1 4 0

1.9 8.3 .6 3.1 0

7 7 9 8 2

6.7 6.7 5.7 6.3 3.9

104 156 159 127 51

179

29.5

176

29.5

29

4.9

156

26.1

20

3.4

37

6.2

597

table 6.2. Disputation Emphasis by Professor Doctrinal Protestant

Doctrinal Reformed

Polemical

Anti-Catholic

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

Total

Grynaeus Polanus Beck Gross Meyer Wollebius

108 53 6 4 0 3

42.9 22.2 12.5 27.0 0 14.0

60 81 19 1 1 11

23.8 33.6 39.6 6.7 11.1 50.0

6 9 5 7 0 1

2.4 3.7 10.4 47.0 0 4.5

40 84 15 2 7 7

15.9 34.6 31.2 13.3 77.8 31.8

17 1 0 1 1 0

6.7 .4 0 6.7 11.1 0

21 13 3 0 0 0

8.3 5.4 6.2 0 0 0

252 241 48 15 9 22

Total

174

29.5

173

29.5

28

4.8

155

26.4

20

3.4

37

1.2

587a

a

Pastoral

Exegetical

Disputations were also held by Michael Beuther (1), Balthasar Crosnievicius (4), Robert Hovaeus (3), Simon Sulzer (1), and Conrad Vorstius (1), bringing the total number of disputations 1576–1625 to 597.

table 9.1. Birth Cohorts of New Clergy versus Year of First Appointment Borna/ First Post

Before 1520

1550–59 1560–69 1570–79 1580–89 1590–99 1600–09 1610–19 1620–29

3

Total

3

a

1520–29

1530–39

1540–49

5 4

19 9 1 1 1

1 21 12 3 1

9

31

38

1550–59

8 10 1

19

1560–69

1 6 4 1 1 13

Includes both those whose year of birth is known and those whose birth year is estimated.

1570–79

7 5 5 15

1580–89

9 9 15

1590–99

1600–09

Total

9 9 13

2

28 34 22 20 14 24 24 15

22

2

167

table 11.1. Days for Baptisms in Urban Parishes 1536a

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Total a

1546b

1556

1566

1576

1586

1596

1606

no.

%

no.

%

no.

%

no.

%

no.

%

no.

%

no.

%

no.

%

63 51 53 51 51 54 27

18.0 14.6 15.1 14.6 14.6 15.4 7.7

99 40 52 51 45 28 25

29.1 11.8 15.3 15.0 13.2 8.2 7.4

111 43 32 58 49 32 24

31.8 12.3 9.2 16.6 14.0 9.2 6.9

142 38 58 25 56 23 23

40.7 10.9 16.6 7.2 16.0 6.6 2.0

200 32 94 38 73 12 7

43.9 7.0 20.6 8.3 16.0 2.6 1.5

167 42 54 25 47 28 10

44.8 11.3 14.5 6.7 12.6 7.5 2.7

152 22 93 9 93 13 12

38.6 5.6 23.6 2.3 23.6 3.3 3.1

178 38 97 13 85 13 14

40.6 8.7 22.1 3.0 19.4 3.0 3.2

350

340

349

349

456

Parish registers only for St. Martin, St. Alban, St. Leonhard, and St. Theodor. Because the number of baptisms in the filial church of St. Alban dropped from 61 in 1536 to 25 in 1546, a year in which there were 19 baptisms at the filial church of St. Elizabeth, it is possible that only the pastors of St. Martin and St. Alban administered baptisms in the cathedral parish until 1542, when the parish register for St. Elizabeth was begun. b In addition to the baptisms included here, there were 45 baptisms in the parish of St. Leonhard for which no date was given.

373

394

438

No. of Clergy

Graphs

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1529

1539

1550

1559

1571

1581

1590

1599

1509

1519

1629

Unknown

Basel

Adjacent Territory

Switzerland

Southwest Germany

North and Central Germany

graph 1.1. Geographical origin of clergy in office by decade

286

graphs

50 45 40 No. of Clergy

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1529

1539

1550

Unknown

1559

1571

Matriculated

1581 B.A.

1590 M.A.

1599

1509

1519

Theology Student

1629 Th.D.

graph 1.2. Educational level of clergy in office by decade

40

No. of Vacant Posts

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1530– 39

1540– 49

1550– 59

1560– 69

1570– 79

1580– 89

1590– 99

1600– 09

1610– 19

1620– 29

Reason for Vacancy No Record

Death

Pastor Elsewhere

graph 1.3. Turnover per decade

Left Ministry

Pensioned

Deposed

graphs

287

50 45

No. of Clergy

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1529

1539

1550

1559

1571

1581

1590

1599

1509

1519

1629

Years in Ministry 0–10

11–20

21–30

31–40

Over 40

No. of Clergy

graph 1.4. Number of years already in the Basel ministry

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1529

1530– 39

1540– 49

0–10

1550– 59

1560– 1570– 1580– 69 79 89 Career Length (Years) 11–20

graph 1.5. Career length of new pastors

21–30

31–40

1590– 99

1600– 09

Over 40

1610– 19

1620– 29

No. of Clergy

288

graphs 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1550

1559

1571

1581

1590

1599

1509

1519

Age of Clergy 30 or less

31–40

41–50

51–60

>60

graph 1.6. Birth cohorts of clergy in office

45 40

No. of Clergy

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1529

1530–39

1540–49

1550–59

Unknown

Catholic Priest

Protestant Pastor

Teacher/Professor

Student

Artisan

graph 3.1. Previous position of new clergy

1629

graphs

289

40

No. of Disputations

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 24

22

16

20

16

18

16

16

16

14

16

12

16

10

16

08

16

06

16

04

16

02

16

00

16

98

16

96

15

94

15

92

15

90

15

88

15

86

15

84

15

82

15

80

15

78

15

15

15

76

0

No. of Clergy

graph 6.1. Printed Basel theological disputations, 1576–1625

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1550–59

1560–69

1570–79

1580–89

1590–99

1600–09

1600–19

1600–29

Unknown

Catholic Priest

Baden/Episc. Terr. Pastor

Pastor Elsewhere

Teacher/Professor

Student

Printing/Notary

graph 9.1. Previous position of new clergy

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Appendix Comparison of Commentaries on Daniel 3:24–25

Johannes Oecolampadius, Johann Jacob Grynaeus, and Amandus Polanus all published commentaries on the Book of Daniel. A comparison of the three authors on one specific passage, Daniel 3:24–25 (the three young men in the fiery furnace), demonstrates the change in style and emphasis in theology instruction that occurred in Basel over the course of the sixteenth century. While Oecolampadius and Grynaeus simply give their Latin translation of the Hebrew text, Polanus inserts translation notes in italics after significant words, noting the terms used in the Vulgate, the Septuagint, the Masoretic text, and the commentary of Rashi from the rabbinic Bible and the interpretation of David Kimhi, possibly from his grammar or dictionary. The three authors then discuss the passage, as follows.

oecolampadius, in danielem prophetam ioannis oecolampadij libri duo . . . (basel: bebel, 1530), 49v–51r Oecolampadius focuses on the miracle that was performed by the true God (rather than by the false gods of the Babylonians). He then discusses the phrase ‘‘et aspectus quarti similis est filio Dei,’’ the translation of Aquila, which he prefers to the Septuagint’s ‘‘angelum Dei.’’ Oecolampadius accepts without question the identification of this fourth figure with Christ, and he compares Nebuchadnezzar’s conversion to the conversion of St. Paul: Non mirum enim est, si ad consolationem seruorum suorum Dominus Immanuel appareat, qui antea etiam et Abrahe, et Israel, ac Mose, assumpta ad tempus specie aliqua uisibili, et corpore, quod et angeli solebant, qui etiam a prophetis angelus magni consilij, et angelus testamenti dictus. Nec mireris quod Nabuchodonozori uisus est: nonne et Paulo persequenti et internetionem spiranti se ostendit? Et sicut hunc regem obstupescere fecit, ita Paulum prostrauit, et ex utroque persecutore confessorem fecit. Et sicut comites Pauli uocem quidem audiebant, sed neminem

292

appendix videbant, ita etiam qui in hoc horrendo spectaculo erant, praeter regem, quartum illum non videbant: sicut Paulus per ignorantiam, et non obstinatam malitiam peccarat, ita et Nabuchodonozor uenia dignior erat, qum inuidi delatores quos ignis deuorauit: licet perdite ac blaspheme arrogans erat, et legem suam uiolari nolebat. Nolim tamen propterea aequasse tanto apostolo regem, sed similim misericordiam communicatam ostenderim.

Oecolampadius criticizes the interpretation of Eudoxius, endorsing instead the view of Chrysostom, Hippolytus, Apollinarius, and Jerome that Nebuchadnezzar did indeed see Christ. Finally, he applies the text to his listeners: Nos uero etiam in hac uita, que tentationum fornax est, gratias illi agemus, quod ad nos descendere dignatus est, per omnia similis factus, et tentatus, ferensque crucem, leuem illam nobis reddidit, ita ut et lugentes beati sint, et consolationem assequantur, et si externus homo male habeat, internus indies magis ac magis confortetur. Quotquot enim illum fratrem ac redemptorem nostrum esse credimus, per quem nunc cum patre coelesti in gratiam redijmus, maximum spiritus solatium concepimus, ut liceat illum appellare patrem, et sic in medijs tribulationibus ac ignibus hilares deambulare, id quod in uera religione consequimur.

grynaeus, explanatio danielis prophetae quinque primorvm capitvm . . . (basel: henricpetri, 1587), 272–76 Breaking from his usual custom of commenting on one verse at a time, Grynaeus summarizes the narrative of the three verses (23–25) and then draws six points of application: 1. Deum e coelo irridere conatus hominum, dum eorum partem fieri permittit, ut altera parte, quae maxime illis cordi erat, inhibita, illorum impotentia, Dei autem sapientia et uirtus, magis elucescat. . . . 2. Deum, in cuius manu sunt Regum corda, iram eorum in moerorem et admirationem, nutu suo conuertere: et ex hostibus piorum hominum eorundem summos admiratores efficere posse. 3. Conscientiam dictare etiam Regibus, quando grauius deliquerunt, confessionem, de iniusta saeuitia et crudelitate erga innocentes Dei Seruos. . . . 4. Turpissimam esse eorum optimatum seruitutem, qui sic pendent a Principum suorum nutu et renutu, ut ad male facta eorum conniueant: et ea postea cum eorundem opprobrio fateri, cogantur. . . . 5. Documenta praesentiae Dei et defensionis piorum hominum, terrori sunt ijs, qui manus uiolentas Christis seu unctis Domini iniecerunt, eoque nomine sese grauiter deliquisse animaduertunt. 6. Eximi Sanctorum laus est, quae ab ijs proficiscitur, qui eosdem paulo ante damnauerant et perdere conati fuerant. Unlike Oecolampadius, Grynaeus rejects the patristic identification of the fourth figure with Christ. While he does not analyze these three verses according to Aristotelian causes, in his discussion of verse 27 (282–3) he identifies both the efficient cause (‘‘famulantes, fuerunt omnium ordinum Babylonici proceres) and the final cause (‘‘ut certo ipsis constaret, nullamne vim elementum ignis in sanctorum istorum corpora habuisset’’) of the miracle and discusses secondary causality as well, in order to draw the conclusion that ‘‘erroneam esse Stoicorum de Fato opinionem, quae fingit

commentaries on daniel 3:24–25

293

eiusmodi esse nexum primae caussae: hoc est, Dei, et secundarum caussarum, ut non secus Deus agere possit, quam fert secundarum caussarum ratio et uirtus.’’ Likewise, he also analyzes Nebuchadnezzar’s confession in terms of Aristotelian causality (285– 6). This is followed by two theses: ‘‘Miracula vera, Dei auctoris gloriae seruire debent,’’ and ‘‘Virtus in fide, quam veritatis testes declarant, etiam fidei hostibus admirationi esse potest, sic ut quos paulo ante condemnauerant, non multo post debita lude persequantur’’ (287–8).

polanus, in danielem prophetam visionum amplitudine difficillimum, vaticiniorum majestate augustissimum commentarius . . . (basel: waldkirch, 1599), 158–64 Polanus introduces his analysis of the verses by way of Ramist dichotomies: Amplificatur miraculum conservationis martyrum istorum ab effectis, quae tum in Nebucadnetzare, tum in Satrapis illud operatum est. Si Nebucadnetzarem spectes, is primum miraculo isto expavefactus est. Qui paulo ante superbo animo, Dei potentiam contemnebat et omni metu Numinis vacuus erat; nunc subito timore et pavore corripitur, unico potentiae divinae specimine conspecto. Secundo surrexit cum perturbatione. Sedebat enim more regio et oculos in exitio martyrum istorum pascere volebat: sed conterritus miraculo surrexit celeriter prorsusque perturbatus. Tertio compellatis Gubernatoribus Satrapisque ex admiratione et stupore sciscitatus est. . . . Cujus sciscitationis quatuor sunt membra. Polanus describes these four parts, then asserts that Nebuchadnezar made his confession in accordance with divine providence. Polanus discusses Nebuchadnezzar’s confession under five headings; the fifth concerns the king’s statement, in Polanus’s translation, ‘‘quarti formam esse similem filio deorum.’’ Polanus acknowledges that Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Augustine all identified this figure with Christ, but he rejects this interpretation. Finally, he draws five points of application from the passage, concerning divine miracles, the attitude of unbelievers when presented with divine miracles, the liberation of the saints, the good angels, and the glory of the persecuted church. Four of these points are divided into four or five subpoints, while Polanus’s discussion of the good angels is a lengthy excursus first on what these angels are, and then on what their duties are toward the elect.

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Notes

abbreviations ABR

AmKorr ARG B&A

BDS Beza Corr

BM

BLStA BStA BUB BZ CO

CR

Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Basler Reformation in den Jahren 1519 bis Anfang 1534. Edited by Emil Du¨rr and Paul Roth. 6 vols. Basel: Historische und antiquarische Gesellschaft, 1921–1950. Die Amerbachkorrespondenz. Edited by Alfred Hartmann and Beat Rudolf Jenny. Basel: Universita¨tsbibliothek, 1942–. Archiv f u€r Reformationsgeschichte /Archive for Reformation History Briefe und Akten zum Leben Oekolampads, zum vierhundertj€ ahrihrigen Jubil€ aum der Basler Reformation. 2 vols. Edited by Ernst Staehelin. Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 10, 19. Leipzig: Heinsius, 1927–34. Martin Bucers Deutsche Schriften. Edited by Robert Stupperich et al. Gu¨tersloh: Gu¨tersloher Verlag, 1960–. Correspondance de Th
eodore de Beze. Recueillie par Hippolyte Aubert. Edited by Alain Dufour et al. Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance 40–. Geneva: Droz, 1960–. Die Matrikel der Universit€ at Basel. Vols. 1–3. Edited by Hans Georg Wackernagel. Basel: Verlag der Universita¨tsbibliothek, 1951–62. Staatsarchiv des Kantons Basel-Land Staatsarchiv des Kantons Basel-Stadt Basel Universita¨tsbibliothek Basler Zeitschrift f€ ur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Joannis Calvini Opera Omnia quae supersunt, Corpus Reformatorum 29–87. Edited by J. B. Baum et al. Braunschweig, 1863–1900. Philippi Melancthonis Opera quae Supersunt Omnia. Edited by C. R. Bretschneider. Corpus Reformatorum 1–28. Halle, 1834–.

296

notes to pages 3– 4

HBBW Herminjard KRP I KRP II Schieß TB Vad BS

ZStA ZZB

Heinrich Bullingers Briefwechsel. Werke. Abteilung 2. Edited by Fritz Bu¨sser et al. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1973–. Correspondance des R
eformateurs dans les pays de langue Franc¸aise. Edited by A.-L. Herminjard. Geneva: H. Georg, 1866–97. Acta Ecclesiastica (Kirchenratsprotokolle) I, 22 March 1586–20 March 1601, BStA Kirchen Archiv D 1, 1. Acta Ecclesiastica (Kirchenratsprotokolle) II, 2 October 1595–8 May 1629, BStA Kirchen Archiv D 1, 2. Briefwechsel der Br€ uder Ambrosius und Thomas Blaurer 1509–1548. Edited by Traugott Schiess. Freiburg i.Br.: Fehsenfeld, 1908–1912. Thesaurus Baumianus, MS 660–680, Bibliothe`que nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg. Vadianische Briefsammlung, 1508–1540. Edited by Emil Arbenz and Hermann Wartmann. Mitteilungen zur Vaterla¨ndischen Geschichte 24–30a. St. Gallen: Fehr, 1884–1913 Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zu¨rich. Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich

introduction 1. C. A. L. Jarrott, ‘‘Erasmus’ in Principio Erat Sermo: Controversial Translation,’’ Studies in Philology 61 (1964): 35–40; Marjorie Boyle, Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 5–31. Erasmus’s translation in Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1969–), 6/2:13. 2. The German Nation and Martin Luther (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 182. 3. Compare Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), with the account of the reformation in Zurich, Gottfried W. Locher, Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europ€ aischen Kirchengeschichte (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 129–49. 4. Strauss initiated the debate in ‘‘Success and Failure in the German Reformation,’’ Past and Present 67 (1975): 30–63, which was the precursor to his more detailed discussion in Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), esp. pp. 268–308. His work evoked heated response, most particularly from James M. Kittelson, ‘‘Successes and Failures in the German Reformation: The Report from Strasbourg,’’ ARG 73 (1982): 153–74, and ‘‘Visitations and Popular Religious Culture: Further Reports from Strasbourg,’’ in Pietas et Societas: New Trends in Reformation Social History: Essays in Memory of Harold J. Grimm, ed. K. C. Sessions and P. N. Bebb, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 4 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1985), 89–102. 5. Gerald Strauss, ‘‘The Reformation and Its Public in an Age of Orthodoxy,’’ in The German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 194–214. 6. Natalie Z. Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975); Robert W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: Hambleton Press, 1987), and Religion and Culture in Germany (1400–1800), ed. Lyndal Roper, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 81 (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London: Routledge, 1997); Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University

notes to pages 4– 6

297

Press, 1997), 155–228; Christian Grosse et al., ‘‘Anthropologie historique: Les rituels re´forme´s (XVIe-XVIIe sie`cles),’’ Bulletin de la Soci
et
e de l’histoire du Protestantisme Franc¸ais 148 (2002): 979–1009. 7. Miriam U. Chrisman, Strasbourg and the Reform: A Study in the Process of Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 32; on the ‘‘clerical proletariat,’’ Francis Rapp, ‘‘Der Klerus der mittelalterlichen Dio¨zese Straßburg unter besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung der Ortenau,’’ Zeitschrift f u€r die Geschichte des Oberrheins 137 (1989): 91–104; Dietrich Kurze, ‘‘Der niedere Klerus in der sozialen Welt des spa¨teren Mittelalters,’’ in Beitr€ age zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte des Mittelalters: Festschrift f€ ur Herbert Helbig zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. K. Schulz (Cologne: Bo¨hlau, 1976), 272–305. 8. Louis Binz, Vie R
eligieuse et R
eforme Eccl
esiastique dans le diocese de Geneve pendant le grand schisme et la crise conciliaire (1378–1450), Me´moires et Documents Publie´s par la Socie´te´ d’Histoire et d’Arche´ologie de Gene`ve 41 (Geneva: Julien, 1973), 302–3, 312–5; Francis Rapp, R
eformes et R
eformation a Strasbourg: E´glise et Soci
et
e dans le diocese de Strasbourg (1450–1525) (Paris: Ophrys, 1974), 275–8; see also Rapp’s three articles ‘‘La paroisse et l’encadrement re´ligieux des fide`les du XIVe au XVIe sie`cle,’’ in L’Encadrement r
eligieux des fideles au moyen aˆge et jusq’au Concile de Trente: Actes du 109e Congres national des soci
et
es savants, Dijon 1984 (Paris: Comite´ des Travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1985), 27–43; ‘‘Communaute´s rurales et paroisses en Basse-Alsace jusqu’a` la fin du XVIe sie`cle,’’ in Les Communaut
es rurales: Rural Communities, vol. 4, Europe occidentale (Italie—Espagne—France). 20e Congres de la Soci
et
e Jean Bodin, Varsovie, mai 1976, Recueils de la Socie´te´ Jean Bodin 43 (Paris: Dessain & Tobra, 1984, 1984), 459–70; and ‘‘La vie re´ligieuse des campagnes alsaciennes du milieu du XVe sie`cle au de´but du XVIe sie`cle,’’ Revue d’histoire de l’
eglise de France 77 (1991): 207–20. On the terminology used to describe the clergy involved with pastoral care, L. Pfleger, ‘‘Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Pfarrei-Instituts im Elsass,’’ pt. 2, ‘‘Der Pfarrklerus,’’ Archiv f u€r Els€ assische Kirchengeschichte 7 (1932): 1–100, esp. pp. 3–14. 9. On late medieval clerical education in general, Erich Meuthen, ‘‘Zur europa¨ischen Klerusbildung vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert,’’ in Medi€ avistische Komparatistik: Festschrift f u€r Franz Joseph Worstbrock zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. W. Harms € ber die Bildung et al. (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1997), 263–92; Friedrich Wilhelm Oediger, U der Geistlichen im sp€ aten Mittelalter, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1953). According to Rapp, one-third of the diocesan clergy in Toulouse had some university education, and about the same number in the diocese of Strasbourg; ‘‘Le roˆle des paroisses dans l’encadrement re´ligieux des fide`les (XIIIe–XVIe sie`cles),’’ in Id
eologie et propagande en France: Colloque organis
e par l’Institut d’Histoire et de Civilisation franc¸aise de l’Universit
e de Ha€ıfa, ed. M. Yardeni (Paris: Picard, 1987), 75–86, and ‘‘Der Klerus der mittelalterlichen Dio¨zese Straßburg’’; see also his more general comments in R
eformes et R
eformation, 430–2. Oskar Vasella has found that over 40 percent of the pastoral clergy in the diocese of Chur had attended a university, with education rates higher among urban clergy, Untersuchungen u€ber die Bildungsverh€ altnisse im Bistum Chur, mit besonderer Ber€ ucksichtigung des Klerus, Jahrsbericht der historisch-Antiquarischen Gesellschaft von Graubu¨nden 62 (Chur, 1932), ¨ ber das Problem der Klerusbildung im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ Mitteilungen des 95–6, and ‘‘U € sterreichische Geschichtsforschung 58 (1950): 441–56. In the diocese of Instituts f u€r O Geneva, the visitation of 1413 found that roughly two-thirds of the parish clergy were sufficiently educated, although this did not necessarily mean those priests had attended a university; most of those priests known to have studied at a university were nonresident; Binz, Vie religieuse, 339–41, 352–4. In north Brabant, over half of the

298

notes to pages 6– 8

incumbents of parish cures and as many as 30 percent of the vicars had matriculated in a university, Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, ‘‘Reform in the Parishes of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century North Brabant,’’ in Reformations Old and New: Essays on the SocioEconomic Impact of Religious Change c. 1470–1630, ed. Beat Ku¨min, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1996), 21–38. On the eve of the Reformation, half of Strasbourg’s parish clergy had matriculated at a university; Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘A Tale of Three Churches: Parishes and Pastors in Basel, Strasbourg, and Geneva,’’ in Calvin and the Company of Pastors: Papers Presented at the Fourteenth Colloquium of the Calvin Studies Society, May 22–24, 2003, ed. David Foxgrover, Calvin Studies Society Papers 2003 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: CRC Product Services, 2004), 95–124. 10. Rosemary O’Day’s distinction between the educated, nonresident beneficed clergy who sought high office and the unlearned resident parish clergy may be too sharp, but it contains an element of truth; The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642, (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), 2. On the disjunction between university education and practical pastoral training, R. Emmet McLaughlin, ‘‘Universities, Scholasticism and the German Reformation,’’ History of Universities 9 (1990): 1–43; see also R. N. Swanson, ‘‘Before the Protestant Clergy: The Construction and Deconstruction of Medieval Priesthood,’’ in The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe, ed. C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 1–38. Peter A. Dykema provides a survey of late medieval pastors’ manuals, ‘‘Conflicting Expectations: Parish Priests in Late Medieval Germany’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1998), 118–246. 11. Cf. David Cornick, ‘‘The Reformation Crisis in Pastoral Care,’’ in A History of Pastoral Care, ed. Gillian R. Evans (London: Cassell, 2000), 223–51, which actually deals more with the view of the ministry than with pastoral care per se. 12. The metaphor of the clerical social pyramid is used by Hans-Ju¨rgen Goertz, ‘‘ ‘What a Tangled and Tenuous Mess the Clergy Is!’ Clerical Anticlericalism in the Reformation Period,’’ in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, Studies in Late Medieval and Reformation Thought 51 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 499–519. 13. In addition to the articles by Francis Rapp already cited, see also his ‘‘Notes sur les paroisses et les communes rurales dans le dioce`se de Strasbourg a` la fin du moyen ˆage,’’ Revue de droit canonique 25 (1975): 113–20; Rosi Fuhrmann, ‘‘Die Kirche im Dorf: Kommunale Initiativen zur Organisation der Seelsorge vor der Reformation,’’ in Zug€ ange zur b€ auerlichen Reformation, ed. Peter Blickle (Zurich: Chronos, 1987), 147–86; Immacolata Saulle Hippenmeyer, Nachbarschaft, Pfarrei und Gemeinde in Graub€ unden 1400–1600, Quellen und Forschungen zur Bu¨ndner Geschichte 7 (Desertina: Kommissionsverlag Bu¨ndner Monatsblatt, 1997), 13–48. On the corporate and sacral aspects of the parish pastor’s duties, see Robert W. Scribner, ‘‘Cosmic Order and Daily Life: Sacred and Secular in Pre-industrial German Society,’’ and ‘‘Ritual and Popular Belief in Catholic Germany at the Time of the Reformation,’’ in Popular Culture and Popular Movements, 1–43, as well as several of his articles in Religion and Culture. 14. Lawrence Duggan, ‘‘Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation,’’ ARG 75 (1984): 153–75; W. David Myers, ‘‘Poor Sinning Folk’’: Confession and Conscience in Counter-Reformation Germany (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), 27–60. 15. Michael Menzel, ‘‘Predigt und Predigtorganisation im Mittelalter,’’ Historisches Jahrbuch 111 (1991): 337–84. On Surgant, see the four-part work by Ju¨rgen

notes to pages 8– 9

299

Konzili, ‘‘Studien u¨ber Johann Ulrich Surgant (ca. 1450–1503),’’ Zeitschrift f u€r Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 69 (1975): 265–309; 70 (1976): 107–67, 308–88; 71 (1977): 322–92. On the contents of pastors’ libraries, Florenz Landmann, ‘‘Predigten und Predigtwerke in den Ha¨nden der Weltgeistlichkeit des 15. Jahrhunderts nach alten Bu¨cherlisten des Bistums Konstanz,’’ Kirche und Kanzel 6/7 (1923–24): 130–6, 203–11, 77–84; and ‘‘Drei Predigt- und Seelsorgebu¨cher von Konrad Dreuben, einem elsa¨ssischen Landpfarrer aus der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts,’’ Archiv f u€r els€ assichen Kirchengeschichte 8 (1933): 209–40; 53–61, 119–25, 207–14. On the preacherships, Steven Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 38–42. 16. Bruce Gordon also makes this point, ‘‘Preaching and the Reform of the Clergy in the Swiss Reformation,’’ in The Reformation of the Parishes: The Ministry and the Reformation in Town and Country, ed. Andrew Pettegree (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 63–84. 17. Karl Mannheim, ‘‘The Problem of Generations,’’ in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. Paul Kecskemeti (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), 276–322. 18. See, for instance, Alan B. Spitzer, ‘‘The Historical Problem of Generations,’’ American Historical Review 78 (1973): 1353–85; Allan R. Buss, ‘‘Generational Analysis: Description, Explanation and Theory,’’ Journal of Social Issues 30 (1974): 55–72; Vern L. Bengtson et al., ‘‘Time, Aging, and the Continuity of Social Structure: Themes and Issues in Generational Analysis,’’ Journal of Social Issues 30 (1974): 1–30; Raoul Girardet, ‘‘Du concept de generation a` la notion de contemporaneite´,’’ Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 30 (1983): 257–70; David I. Kertzer, ‘‘Generation as a Sociological Problem,’’ Annual Review of Sociology 9 (1983): 125–49; Hans Jaeger, ‘‘Generations in History: Reflections on a Controversial Concept,’’ History and Theory 24 (1985): 273–92; Charlotte Chorn Dunham and Vern L. Bengtson, ‘‘Conceptual and Theoretical Perspectives on Generational Relations,’’ in Life-Span Developmental Psychology: Intergenerational Relations, ed. Nancy Datan et al. (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1986), 1–27; Jane Pilcher, ‘‘Mannheim’s Sociology of Generations: an Undervalued Legacy,’’ British Journal of Sociology 45 (1994): 481–95; Ron Eyerman and Bryan S. Turner, ‘‘Outline of a Theory of Generations,’’ European Journal of Social Theory 1 (1998): 91–106; Michael Corsten, ‘‘The Time of Generations,’’ Time and Society 8 (1999): 249–72. Despite its tendency to make excessive claims for the importance of generational analysis, the most detailed description of generational analysis for historians is Anthony Esler, Generations in History: An Introduction to the Concept (Williamsburg, Va.: 1982). 19. Annie Kriegel, ‘‘Generational Differences: The History of an Idea,’’ Daedalus 107 (1978): 23–38; Esler, Generations in History, 80–2. 20. Generational change is implicit in Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, and explicit in Norman Jones, The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); see also Norman Jones, ‘‘Living the Reformations: Generational Experience and Political Perception in Early Modern England,’’ Huntington Library Quarterly 60 (1997): 273–88. 21. Louis W. Spitz, ‘‘The Third Generation of German Renaissance Humanists,’’ in Aspects of the Renaissance: A Symposium, ed. A. A. Lewis (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), 105–21; Miriam U. Chrisman, Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1480–1599 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 37–58. On the evolution of humanism more generally, see Erika Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge, Mass.:

300

notes to pages 9– 11

Harvard University Press, 1995), Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), and for Germany specifically, Erich Meuthen, ‘‘Charakter und Tendenzen des deutschen Humanismus,’’ in S€ akulare Aspekte der Reformationszeit, ed. H. Angermeier and R. Seyboth, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs Kolloquien 5 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1983), 217–66. 22. Wilhelm H. Neuser, ‘‘Die Konfessionalisierung des Protestantismus im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ in Konfessionalisierung vom 16.-19. Jahrhundert: Kirche und Traditionspflege. Referate des 5. Internationalen Kirchenarchivtags Budapest 1987, ed. H. Baier (Neustadt an der Aisch: Degener, 1989), 11–26; Heinz Schilling, ‘‘Die Konfessionalisierung im Reich: Religio¨ser und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland zwischen 1555 und 1620,’’ Historische Zeitschrift 246 (1988): 1–45. 23. Compare the essays on the background and training of the Protestant clergy in Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae III: Colloque de Cambridge 24–28 September 1968, ed. Derek Baker, Bibliothe`que de la revue d’histoire eccle´siastique 50 (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1970), with the two recent review essays of Luise SchornSchutte, ‘‘The Christian Clergy in the Early Modern Holy Roman Empire: A Comparative Social Study,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998): 717–31, and ‘‘Priest, Preacher, Pastor: Research on Clerical Office in Early Modern Europe,’’ Central European History 33 (2000): 1–39, as well as the essays in Dixon and Schorn-Schu¨tte, Protestant Clergy. See also Schorn-Schu¨tte’s own magisterial work, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Fr€ uhneuzeit: Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung fr€ uhmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft: dargestellt am Beispiel des F€ urstentums Braunschweig-Wolfenb€ uttel, der Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel und der Stadt Braunschweig, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 62 (Gu¨tersloh: Gu¨tersloher Verlagshaus, 1996); and the detailed study of Bernard Vogler, Le clerg
e protestant rh
enan au siecle de la r
eforme (1555–1619), Association des publications pris les universite´s de Strasbourg (Paris: Ophrys, 1976). 24. Meuthen, ‘‘Charakter und Tendenzen’’; Heinz Liebing, ‘‘Die Ausga¨nge des europa¨ischen Humanismus,’’ in Geist und Geschichte der Reformation: Festgabe H. R€ uckert zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. H. Leibing and K. Scholder, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 38 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966), 357–76. 25. For an example of new approaches to the study of humanist education, see Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, and for a synthesis of recent research, Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ed., A History of the University in Europe, vol. 2, Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Over seventy years ago, Erich Trunz recognized that a significant number of those who received a university education at the end of the sixteenth century were clergy, ‘‘Der deutsche Spa¨thumanismus um 1600 als Standeskultur,’’ in Deutsche Barockforschung, ed. Richard Alewyn (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1965), 147–81. Schorn-Schu¨tte and Dixon urge caution regarding the effectiveness of pastoral education; see the introduction to Protestant Clergy, 11, 23. Thomas Kaufmann has pointed out that future pastors studied theology while still students in the arts faculty, Universit€ at und lutherische Konfessionalisierung: Die Rostocker Theologieprofessoren und ihr Beitrag zur theologischen Bildung und kirchlichen Gestaltung im Herzogtum Mecklenburg zwischen 1550 und 1675, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 66 (Gu¨tersloh: Gu¨tersloher Verlagshaus, 1997), 333; and on theological education more generally, 319–65; see also Ernst Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft und Mobilit€ at: Die protestantischen Geistlichen zw€ olf s€ uddeutscher Reichst€ adte zwischen Passauer Vertrag und Restitutionsedikt (Leinfelden: DRW, 2002), 54–7. On the

notes to pages 11– 12

301

theological colleges, see, for Tu¨bingen, Martin Brecht, ‘‘Konzeptionen der Theologenausbildung,’’ in Wahrheit und Freiheit: 450 Jahre evangelisches Stift in T€ ubingen, ed. F. Hertel, Quellen und Forschungen zur Wu¨rttembergischen Kirchengeschichte 8 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1986), 29–46, and for Heidelberg, Eike Wolgast, ‘‘Das Collegium Sapientiae in Heidelberg im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur die Geschichte des Oberrheins 147 (1999): 303–18. 26. Riegg’s study shows that there was no such thing as a normative educational process for the pastors of the twelve imperial cities he has studied. Frequent interruptions in education, significant geographical mobility, and the important role played by independent study and individual mentors all contributed to highly individualized educational paths; Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft, 49–74. 27. The exception is Bruce Gordon, Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Z€ urich, 1532–1580, Zu¨rcher Beitra¨ge zur Reformationsgeschichte 16 (Bern: Lang, 1992), but Gordon is primarily interested in the institutional mechanisms for supervising the clergy rather than in the pastors themselves. David Gugerli, Zwischen Pfrund und Predigt: Die protestantische Pfarrfamilie auf der Zurcher Landschaft im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert (Zurich: Chronos, 1988), covers a much later time period and so is not directly comparable. 28. For an overview of Lutheran preaching, see Susan C. Karant-Nunn, ‘‘Preaching the Word in Early Modern Germany,’’ in Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Taylor, History of the Sermon 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 193–219, and Beth Kreitzer, ‘‘The Lutheran Sermon,’’ 35–63, in the same volume. The study of Lutheran funeral sermons is a flourishing field in itself; see the overview of Rudolf Lenz, ‘‘Leichenpredigten: Eine bislang vernachla¨ssigte Quellengattung: Geschichte, Forschungsstand, methodologische Probleme, Bibliographie,’’ Archiv f u€r Kulturgeschichte 56 (1974): 296–312; for an example of how sermons can shed light on early modern society, see Hans-Christoph Rublack, ‘‘Lutherische Predigt und gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeiten,’’ in Die Lutherische Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland, ed. H. C. Rublack, Schriften des Vereins fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte 197 (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1992), 344–95. 29. For an overview, which itself focuses on the reformers of Zurich and Geneva, see James Thomas Ford, ‘‘Preaching in the Reformed Tradition,’’ in Taylor, Preachers and People, 65–88. Lee Palmer Wandel describes the circumstances in which Reformed preaching occurred but says little about the sermons themselves, ‘‘Switzerland,’’ in Taylor, Preachers and People, 221–47. The concentration on Calvin’s preaching is due in part to the fortunate survival of manuscript transcriptions of his sermons; Thomas H. L. Parker, Calvin’s Preaching (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster, 1992), 65–75. Bullinger’s sermons have been the subject of recent study by Fritz Bu¨sser; see his two essays ‘‘Bullingers Festtagspredigten (1558): Die Zu¨rcher Reformation zwischen Tradition und Erneuerung,’’ in Oratio: Das Gebet in patristischer und reformatorischer Sicht. Festschrift Alfred Schindler, ed. Emidio Campi et al. (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 175–83; and ‘‘H. Bullingers 100 Predigten u¨ber die Apokalypse,’’ Zwingliana 27 (2000): 117–31; see also the older work by Walter Hollweg, Heinrich Bullingers Hausbuch: Eine Untersuchung u€ber die Anf€ ange der reformierten Predigtliteratur, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte und Lehre der Reformierten Kirche 8 (Neukirchen: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins, 1956). There is nothing on German Reformed sermons paralleling Franc¸oise Chevalier’s study of French Reformed preaching, Pr^echer sous l’
edit de Nantes: La pr
edication r
eform
ee au XVIIe siecle en France, Histoire et socie´te´ 30 (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1994). The manuscript and printed sermons of other Reformed clergy from the later sixteenth and seventeenth century preserved in

302

notes to pages 12– 20

archives and libraries in German-speaking Switzerland are only just beginning to receive scholarly attention. 30. The visitation reports from Saxony in particular have been exploited for this purpose, in part because they are published and so easily available; Gunter Tietz, Das Erscheinungsbild von Pfarrstand und Pfarrgemeinde des s€ achsischen Kurkreises im Spiegel der Visitationsberichte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tu¨bingen: Spangenberg, 1971), Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Luther’s Pastors: The Reformation in the Ernestine Countryside, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 69/8 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1980), and Jay Goodale, ‘‘Pfarrer als Außenseiter: Landpfarrer und religio¨ses Leben in Sachsen zur Reformationszeit,’’ Historische Anthropologie 7 (1999): 191–211. Examples from other parts of Germany include C. Scott Dixon, ‘‘Rural Resistance, the Lutheran Pastor, and the Territorial Church in BrandenburgAnsbach-Kulmbach, 1528–1603,’’ in Pettegree, The Reformation of the Parishes, 85–112, and The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg-AnsbachKulmbach, 1528–1603, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Beate Fro¨hner, ‘‘Der evangelische Pfarrstand in der Mark Brandenburg 1540–1600,’’ Wichmann-Jahrbuch 19/20 (1965–66): 5–46; Hugo Gru¨n, ‘‘Zur Geschichte des evangelischen Pfarrstandes in Nassau wa¨hrend des Reformationsjahrhunderts,’’ Jahrbuch der hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichen Vereinigung 17 (1966): 251–80; and Bruce Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners in W€ urttemberg during the Late Reformation, 1581–1621 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). 31. The form in which visitation records are made accessible to scholars can also subtly influence their interpretation. The published Saxon visitation records, for instance, separate the various visitations by parish, so that one can easily follow change over time in each individual parish, but it is much harder to gain an overview of the general situation of all of the parishes visited in each visitation, so that the larger situation may be obscured; Karl Pallas, ed., Die Registraturen der Kirchenvisitationen im ehemals s€ achsischen Kurkreise, Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und angrenzender Gebiete (Halle: Otto Hendel, 1906–14).

chapter 1 1. Hieronymus Brilinger, Ceremoniale Basiliensis episcopatus, in Konrad Wilhelm Hieronimus, Das Hochstift Basel im ausgehenden Mittelalter (Basel: Verlag der historischen und antiquarischen Gesellschaft, 1938), 111–4; on the duties of the assisius, 492. 2. The average age at first post of the pastors studied here was 28.6 years, ranging from a low of 24.1 for those who entered the ministry during the plague decade of the 1560s to a high of 42 for those who entered the ministry during the 1530s. The average life span was 57.1 years, varying from a low of 48.9 in the 1560s to a high of 66.6 during the 1530s. Both averages from the 1530s are unrepresentative, because the birth dates of only six of the twenty-one pastors appointed during this decade are known. If those few pastors entering the ministry before 1550 with known birth and death dates are excluded, the highest average age at entering the ministry was 31.3, during the 1580s, and the highest average age at death was 62.0, for those entering the ministry during the 1570s. 3. Hans R. Guggisberg, Basel in the Sixteenth Century: Aspects of the City Republic before, during, and after the Reformation (St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1982), 7–8.

notes to pages 20– 22

303

4. Hans Berner, ‘‘Die Geschichte des Fu¨rstbistums Basel von seinen Anfa¨ngen bis zu seinen Untergang (999–1792),’’ Baselbieter Heimatbl€ atter 64 (1999): 57–73, which includes a map comparing the episcopal territory with that of the diocese of Basel. Throughout this study, I use the term ‘‘episcopal villages’’ and ‘‘episcopal territory’’ to refer to the lands of the prince-bishopric rather than to the diocese of Basel. 5. Here and throughout this book I use ‘‘Senate’’ to refer to the actual governing authority in Basel as established by the constitutional changes of 1521, the (kleiner) Rat und H€ aupter. The Small Council consisted of one representative (Zunftmeister) from each of the city’s fifteen guilds and fifteen Ratsherren chosen by the outgoing members of the Small Council itself. Elections were held yearly, and no incumbent could serve for more than one year, but outgoing Council members elected their predecessors. So in practice the composition of the Small Council alternated yearly between the new or sitting Council members and the old or previous year’s Council members. Both new and old Council members or senators met together as one body, and although the new Council was responsible for all final decisions, it made them in consultation with the old Council. The four H€ aupter or ‘‘heads,’’ the old and new Oberzunftmeister and the old and new Burgermeister, presided over the Small Council. They were elected by the Small Council and served as the city’s chief executive officials. For a brief overview of Basel’s government, Guggisberg, Basel in the Sixteenth Century, 5–7; a more detailed description in Alfred Mu¨ller, ‘‘Die Ratsverfassung der Stadt Basel von 1521 bis 1798,’’ BZ 53 (1954): 5–98, esp. 19–21, 76–7, 82–6. 6. The city also profited from the impoverishment of the local nobility to purchase several secular lordships scattered through the area; Karl Gauss, Geschichte der Landschaft Basel und des Kantons Basellandschaft, vol. 1, Von der Urzeit bis zum Bauernkrieg des Jahres 1653 (Basel: Lu¨din, 1932), 211–3; 217–29; 337–43; Rudolf Wackernagel, Geschichte der Stadt Basel (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1907–25), 3:42–80. 7. Wackernagel, Geschichte, 2/2:665–6; 3:85–94; 301–5; Friedrich Meyer, ‘‘Staat und Kirche in Basel am Vorabend der Reformation,’’ Basler Stadtbuch (1965): 52–79; Hans Berner, ‘‘Die gute correspondenz’’: Die Politik der Stadt Basel gegen€ uber dem F€ urstbistum Basel in den Jahren 1525–1585, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 158 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1989), 54–6, 72–4. 8. Albert Bruckner et al., eds., Schweizerische Kardin€ ale; Das apostolische Gesandtschaftswesen in der Schweiz; Erzbist€ umer und Bist€ umer, Helvetia Sacra 1/1 (Bern: Francke, 1972), 127–45. 9. Wackernagel, Geschichte, 2/2:665–70; 3:86–94; Dieter Mertens, ‘‘Der Humanismus und die Reform des Weltklerus im deutschen Su¨dwesten,’’ Rottenburger Jahrbuch f u€r Kirchengeschichte 11 (1992): 11–28. 10. Hieronimus, Das Hochstift Basel, 1–25; Wackernagel, Geschichte, 2/2:644–56; Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 157–63. 11. Bernhard Neidiger, ‘‘Stadtregiment und Klosterreform in Basel,’’ in Reformbem€ uhungen und Observanzbestrebungen im sp€ atmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. Kaspar Elm, Berliner Historische Studien 14: Ordensstudien 6 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 539–67; Rudolf Wackernagel, ‘‘Raimundus Peraudi und die kirchlichen Zusta¨nde seiner Zeit in Basel,’’ BZ 2 (1903): 171–273; Wackernagel, Geschichte, 2/2:810–9; 830–47. 12. The religious houses were, in any case, fairly small. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, there were only fourteen Franciscans and twenty Dominicans; the

304

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monastery of St. Alban had only twelve monks. These figures include not only priests but also lay brothers and those in minor orders. The female houses were somewhat larger: about forty women in the Steinenkloster in the mid-fifteenth century, and thirty women in Klingental in the early sixteenth century; Wackernagel, Geschichte, 2/2:687. 13. Wackernagel, Geschichte, 2/2:629–31; 660–2; 671; 691–2. 14. Edgar Bonjour, Die Universit€ at Basel, von den Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart, 1460–1960 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1960), 44–7; 62–3; 70–1; 94–107; Guggisberg, Basel, 10–7. 15. Johannes Bernoulli, ‘‘Die Kirchgemeinden Basels vor der Reformation,’’ Basler Jahrbuch (1894): 220–43; (1895): 99–162; Wackernagel, Geschichte, 2/2:625–35. St. Ulrich was unusual, in that the church itself was located within the boundaries of the parish of St. Alban, while the parish was largely located outside the city’s walls. 16. Hans Fu¨glister describes the property values and the relative proportion of members of each guild for both the central city and the suburban areas, Handwerksregiment: Untersuchungen und Materialen zur sozialen und politischen Struktur der Stadt Basel in der ersten H€ alfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1981), 57–91. 17. Bernoulli, ‘‘Kirchgemeinden Basels.’’ 18. Michael Menzel, ‘‘Predigt und Predigtorganisation,’’ Historisches Jahrbuch 111 (1991): 337–84; on Basel’s endowed preacherships, Eduard Lengwiler, Die vorreformatorischen Pr€ adikaturen der deutschen Schweiz von ihrer Entstehung bis 1530 (Fribourg: Kanisius, 1955); on the founding of Basel’s mendicant houses, Wackernagel, Geschichte, 1:146–56. The first half of Surgant’s preachers’ manual was actually a homiletics text, and his work refers to preaching services both in his own church and in the other parishes in Basel; Ju¨rgen Konzili, ‘‘Studien u¨ber Johann Ulrich Surgant (ca. ¨ bersicht u¨ber Surgants schriftliche Hinterlassenschaft,’’ Pt. 3, 1450–1503),’’ pt. 2, ‘‘U ‘‘Predigt und Predigtliturgie nach Surgants ‘Manuale Curatorum,’ ’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 70 (1976): 107–67; 308–88. 19. I have identified seventeen men who held the position of curate during the 1520s. Of these, at least twelve had matriculated in a university, and six of these had master’s degrees. A biographical list of Basel’s preachers in Lengwiler, Pr€ adikaturen, 79–82. 20. Wackernagel, Geschichte, 2/2:660; 847–9; 3:317–8. 21. Guggisberg, Basel, 21–2; Wackernagel, Geschichte, 3:321–3; on Melanchthon imprints, Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Melanchthon’s Reception in Basel,’’ in Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Influence beyond Wittenberg, ed. Karin Maag (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999), 69–85. 22. On the strength of the evangelical movement in the parish of St. Leonhard, see Hans R. Guggisberg and Hans Fu¨glister, ‘‘Die Basler Weberzunft als Tra¨gerin reformatorischer Propaganda,’’ in Stadt und Kirche im 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Bernd Moeller, Schriften des Vereins fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte 190 (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1978), 48–56. 23. Ernst Staehelin, Das theologische Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1939), 189–90. 24. Paul Roth, Die Reformation in Basel, pt. 1, Die Vorbereitungsjahre (1525–1528), Basler Neujahrsblatt 114 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1936). A contemporary account said that there were two thousand men supporting the evangelical changes, and only five hundred Catholics opposed to them; the chronist Christian Wurstisen, writing a generation later, said that there were twenty-five hundred evangelicals and six

notes to pages 27– 31

305

hundred Catholics; Wilhelm Vischer and Alfred Stern, eds., Die Chronik des Fridolin Ryff, 1514–1541, mit der Fortsetzung des Peter Ryff, 1543–1585 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1872), 74–5. 25. For a detailed account and analysis, Wandel, Voracious Idols, 167–89. 26. Paul Roth, Die Reformation in Basel, pt. 2, Die Durchf€ uhrung der Reformation in Basel 1529–1530, Basler Neujahrsblatt 121 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1943), and Durchbruch und Festsetzung der Reformation in Basel: Eine Darstellung der Politik der Stadt Basel im Jahre 1529 auf Grund der o€ffentlichen Akten, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 8 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1942), 26–66, 84–9; Vischer and Stern, Chronik des Fridolin Ryff, 92–3. Within a few years after the Reformation, the church of St. Ulrich, which was virtually next door to the cathedral, was replaced as a parish church by the chapel of St. Elizabeth. 27. For a description of the church in Basel’s rural territory before the Reformation, Gauss, Geschichte der Landschaft Basel, 277–309; 314–36. 28. ABR 3:483, no. 558. 29. B&A 2:239, no. 610. 30. Peter Widmer in Waldenburg and Rudolf Ricker in Tenniken; ABR 3:484. 31. ABR 4:208–10, no. 227. 32. ABR 5:49–51. 33. Biographical information drawn from Karl Gauss, Basilea Reformata: Die Gemeinden der Kirche Basel Stadt und Land und Ihre Pfarrer seit der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Basel: Historische und antiquarische Gesellschaft, 1930), as well as from BM 1 and 2. See also the brief biographical information on several city pastors in Paul Burckhardt, Basel in den ersten Jahren nach der Reformation, Basel Neujahrsblatt 124 (Basel, 1946), 56–60. 34. Gierfalk and Lu¨thardt both held the position of Lesemeister. On Gast’s education, Paul Burckhardt, ed., Das Tagebuch des Johannes Gast: Ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte (Basel: Schwabe, 1945), 47–55. 35. Karl Gauss, ‘‘Jakob Immeli und die Reformation in Pratteln,’’ Schweizerische Theologische Zeitschrift 33 (1916): 193–218. 36. Albert Bruckner, ‘‘Basels Weg zum Schweizerbund,’’ in Edgar Bonjour and Albert Bruckner, Basel und die Eidgenossen: Geschichte ihrer Beziehungen: Zur Erinnerung an Basels Eintritt in den Schweizerbund, 1501 (Basel: Birkha¨user, 1951), 13–143; K. Stenzel, ‘‘Straßburg, Basel und das Reich am Ende des Mittelalters,’’ Zeitschrift f u€r die Geschichte des Oberrheins 104 (1956): 455–88; Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450–1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 57–72. 37. Guggisberg, Basel, 3–17. The populations of Zurich and Bern were only slightly more than half that of Basel; for a characterization of the differences between the Confederation’s members, particularly the city-republics and the inner cantons, Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 6–25. Edgar Bonjour describes the slow growth of a ‘‘Swiss national consciousness’’ in the years before the Reformation, ‘‘Basel im Schweizerbund,’’ in Bonjour and Bruckner, Basel und die Eidgenossen, 160–69. 38. On the gradual hardening of Basel’s many types of boundaries, Wolfgang Kaiser, ‘‘Gesellige Rivalita¨t: Zum Umgang mit Grenzen im Basler Raum (16.–17. Jahrhundert),’’ BZ 102 (2002): 23–36. 39. Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Basel and the Wittenberg Concord,’’ ARG 96 (2005): 33–56. By 1546, Heinrich Bullinger was advising Zurich students in Strasbourg to refrain from receiving communion there and suggesting how they should justify their abstention to the church authorities; Bullinger to Ludwig Lavater, 31 August 1546, ZZB Ms F 64, 645a, and the letter of the Strasbourg pastors to the Zurich pastors

306

notes to pages 31– 33

complaining about the Zurich students’ refusal to participate in communion, 6 December 1546, CO 12:437–42, no. 806. On Basel’s unique situation from its entry into the Confederation through the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566, Julia Gauss, ‘‘Basels politisches Dilemma in der Reformationszeit,’’ Zwingliana 15 (1982): 509–48. 40. Julia Gauss, ‘‘Etappen zur Ablo¨sung der reformierten Schweiz vom Reich, aus dem Nachlaß herausgegeben von Heinzpeter Stucki,’’ Zwingliana 18 (1990): 234–55. 41. Ulrich Ga¨bler, ‘‘Das Zustandekommen des Consensus Tigurinus vom Jahre 1549,’’ Theologische Literaturzeitung 104 (1979): 321–32; Ernst Bizer, Studien zur Geschichte des Abendmahlsstreits im 16. Jahrhundert, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1962); Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘The Myth of the Swiss Lutherans: Martin Bucer and the Eucharistic Controversy in Bern,’’ Zwingliana 32 (2005): 45–70. For a description of Bullinger’s ‘‘late Zwinglian’’ theology and his differences with Calvin, Paul Sanders, ‘‘Heinrich Bullinger et le ‘zwinglianisme tardif’ aux lendemains du ‘Consensus Tigurinus,’ ’’ in Reformiertes Erbe: Festschrift f€ ur Gottfried W. Locher zu seinem 80. Geburtstag, ed. Heiko A. Oberman et al., Zwingliana 19 (Zurich: Theologische Verlag, 1992), 1:307–23. 42. Theodor Mahlmann, Das neue Dogma der lutherischen Christologie: Problem und Geschichte seiner Begr€ undung (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1969); Hans Christian Brandy, Die sp€ ate Christologie des Johannes Brenz, Beitra¨ge zur historischen Theologie 80 (Tubingen: Paul Siebeck, 1991), 13–69. 43. The standard account of Basel’s confessional development under Sulzer and his successor Johann Jacob Grynaeus is Max Geiger, Die Basler Kirche und Theologie im Zeitalter der Hochorthodoxie (Zollikon-Zu¨rich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1952), 5–49; it needs to be modified by what follows. 44. Although he was branded as a Lutheran by his opponents, a label repeated by nineteenth-century historians and repeated uncritically since then, Sulzer’s eucharistic theology in Bern was in fact a faithful reproduction of Bucer’s interpretation of the Wittenberg Concord; Burnett, ‘‘Myth.’’ Gottlieb Linder’s biography of Sulzer suffers from Linder’s conviction that Sulzer was a Lutheran from the beginning of his career; Simon Sulzer und sein Antheil an der Reformation im Land Baden, sowie an den Unions-bestrebungen (Heidelberg: Winter, 1890). More accurate in describing Sulzer’s conciliatory position between the two fronts is the older article by J. R. Linder, ‘‘Lebensabriß von Simon Sulzer gewesenem Antistes zu Basel (1553–1585),’’ Zeitschrift f u€r die gesamte lutherische Theologie und Kirche 30 (1869): 666–89. There were efforts to recruit both Ambrosius Blarer and Wolfgang Musculus as Myconius’s successor in Basel, but neither man was interested in the post; on Blarer, AmKorr 10/2:753–4; on Musculus, Marc van Wijnkoop Lu¨thi, ‘‘Wolfgang Musculus in Bern (1549–1563),’’ in Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563) und die oberdeutsche Reformation, ed. Rudolf Dellsperger et al., Colloquia Augustana 6 (Berlin: Akademischer Verlag, 1997), 281–98. 45. On the efforts of Basel’s church leaders to maintain their mediating theological position and avoid official identification with a clearly Reformed confession, Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Simon Sulzer and the Consequences of the 1563 Strasbourg Consensus in Switzerland,’’ ARG 83 (1992): 154–79; Hans Berner, ‘‘Basel und das Zweite Helvetische Bekenntnis,’’ Zwingliana 15 (1979): 8–39; Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Generational Conflict in the Late Reformation: The Basel Paroxysm,’’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32 (2001): 219–44. Hans Guggisberg’s brief summary of Sulzer’s leadership of Basel’s church is distorted by his acceptance of Linder’s identification of Sulzer as a Lutheran, ‘‘Das lutheranisierende Basel. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag,’’ in Die

notes to pages 33– 34

307

Lutherische Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland, ed. Hans Christoph Rublack, Schriften des Vereins fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte 197 (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1992), 199–201. 46. Andre´ Che`vre, Jacques-Christophe Blarer de Wartensee, prince-
ev^eque de Baˆle (Dele´mont: Bibliothe`que jurasienne, 1963); Berner, ‘‘Die gute correspondenz,’’ 153–90; Karl Gauss, ‘‘Der Badische Vertrag zwischen dem Bischof und Domkapitel von Basel vom Jahre 1585 und seine Geschichte,’’ BZ 21 (1923): 171–267. 47. There were close ties between Grynaeus’s father, Thomas (a nephew of Simon Grynaeus, professor of Greek at Basel’s university during the 1530s) and Simon Sulzer. The two men were students together in Basel in the early 1530s and then became teachers in Bern. Thomas Grynaeus supported Sulzer in the sacramental controversies of the 1540s, which led to his dismissal by the Bernese magistrate in 1546. The Grynaeus family returned to Basel, and Thomas taught at the university for several years before becoming a pastor and superintendent of the district of Roeteln in Baden in the mid-1550s. Johann Jacob succeeded his father in this position. The account of Grynaeus’s early years given in the most detailed account of his life is also distorted by a misunderstanding of the confessional circumstances in Basel; Fritz Weiss, ‘‘Johann Jakob Grynaeus,’’ Basler Biographien 1 (1900): 159–99. 48. Grynaeus’s confession of faith, written to demonstrate his orthodoxy when he was being considered for the chair of theology in 1574, deliberately appeals to Bucer’s interpretation of the Wittenberg Concord; BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 84d, 445–55. The confession he published in 1578, however, was more clearly Reformed, Bericht von dem heiligen Abentmal Jesu Christi, unsers Seligmachers (Zurich: Froschauer [1578]); for the circumstances of its publication, Frank Hieronymus, ‘‘Gewissen und Staatskirchentum: Basler Theologie und Zensur um 1578,’’ ARG 82 (1991): 209–38. 49. Hans R. Guggisberg, ‘‘Reformierter Stadtstaat und Zentrum der Spa¨trenaissance: Basel in der zweiten Ha¨lfte des 16. Jahrhunderts,’’ in RenaissanceReformation: Gegens€ atze und Gemeinsamkeiten, ed. A. Buck, Wolfenbu¨tteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung 5 (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1984), 197–206, and ‘‘Basel: Die Stadt, die Kirche und die Universita¨t in der zweiten Ha¨lfte des 16. Jahrhunderts,’’ in Les Universit
es du Rhin Sup
erieur de la fin du Moyen Age a nos jours: Actes du Colloque, organis
e a l’occasion du 450e Anniversaire des enseignements superieurs a Strasbourg (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires, 1988), 49–61, and ‘‘Die kulturelle Bedeutung der Stadt Basel im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ in Studia Polono-Helvetica, ed. H. Madurowicz-Urbanska and M. Mattmu¨ller, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 157 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1989), 49–66. Guggisberg links Basel’s gradual decline with the move toward Reformed Orthodoxy under Grynaeus in the 1580s, but points out that this was balanced by the city’s attraction for those seeking to study under Grynaeus and Polanus. The high number of matriculations through the end of the sixteenth century attests to the university’s continued attractiveness to foreign students. The real decline did not begin until the first half of the seventeenth century; Bonjour, Die Universit€ at Basel, 242–57. 50. The death toll was estimated to be four thousand people, out of a total population that may have been as high as fifteen thousand before the outbreak of the plague. The great epidemic of 1563–64 was also estimated to have claimed four thousand lives; Valentin Lo¨tscher, ed., Felix Platter: Beschreibung der Stadt Basel 1610 und Pestbericht 1610/11, Basel Chroniken 11 (Basel: Schwabe, 1987), 74–5. The traumatic nature of the 1610 outbreak of plague is reflected by the number of publications that listed the names of those who died, not only Platter’s Pestbericht but also the appendix to Wolfgang Meyer, Spiegel der Geistlichen vnd allerheilsamsten Cur oder Artzney aller Krancken . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1611), and Johann Gernler’s appendix to the sermon by

308

notes to pages 35– 37

Johann Jacob Grynaeus, Ob man auch zur zeit der einreissenden Pestilentz einandern verlassen . . . m€ oge (Basel: Genath, 1611). Meyer estimated that in addition to the deaths, another thirty-five hundred people recovered from the plague. 51. Geiger reduced Wollebius’s decade as leader of Basel’s church to a footnote, Die Basler Kirche, 49 n. 24. 52. Samuel Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl, ‘‘Ha¨upter und Herren: der Kleine Rat zu Basel 1585 bis 1590: Verhalten einer politischen Elite,’’ BZ 95 (1995): 57–105; Albert Burckhardt, ‘‘Basel zur Zeit des Dreissigja¨hrigen Krieges,’’ Basler Neujahrsblatt 58 (1880); 59 (1881); Paul Burckhardt, Geschichte der Stadt Basel von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1942), 55–60; Robert Stritmatter, Die Stadt Basel w€ ahrend des Dreissig-j€ ahrigen Krieges: Politik, Wirtschaft, Finanzen, Europa¨ische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 3, 84 (Bern: Lang, 1977), 16–79; Andreas Staehelin, Geschichte der Universit€ at Basel 1632–1818, Studien zur Geschichte der Wissenschaften in Basel 4/4 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1957), 399–400; matriculation numbers from BM 3:599–600. The year 1629 was a plague year, which accounted for the drop in matriculations, but the matriculation number never rose above one hundred before the mid–seventeenth century. 53. Thomas Maissen, ‘‘Zum politischen Selbstversta¨ndnis der Basler Eliten, 1501–1798,’’ BZ 100 (2000): 19–40; Staehelin, Geschichte der Universit€ at Basel, 404–11; Friedrich Wilhelm Euler, ‘‘Entstehung und Entwicklung deutscher Gelehrtengeschlechter,’’ in Universit€ at und Gelehrtenstand 1400–1800, ed. H. Ro¨ssler and G. Franz, Deutsche Fu¨hrungsschichten in der Neuzeit 4 (Limburg: Starke, 1970), 183–232. 54. Three of the twenty-two pastors from Basel’s rural possessions came from the episcopal villages that were under Basel’s control until 1585. 55. Data on family origin and networks drawn from Gauss, Basilea Reformata; W. R. Staehelin, ed., Wappenbuch der Stadt Basel (Basel: Lips, n.d.); and the genealogical notes that comprise BStA Privatarchiv 355: Nachlass Arnold Lotz. 56. Forty-two were sons of artisans (36 percent), twenty-one the sons of officials, and nine the sons of merchants. Thirty-three were themselves the sons of pastors. On the composition of this inner circle of government, Fu¨glister, Handwerksregiment, 137–56. 57. Parcus’s first wife died within a year of their marriage. He had eight children with his second wife and another eight with his third who lived past early childhood. His other sons were apprenticed to a saddler, a butcher, a shoemaker, a hatmaker, a locksmith, and a knifesmith, while one daugher married a tailor, another a shoemaker, and a third a knifesmith. Parcus was himself the son of a printer. On the Parcus (Ku¨ndig) and Luterburger families, see Staehelin, Wappenbuch der Stadt Basel; Parcus noted the apprenticeships and marriages of his children in his Chronik, BLStA PA 809, 4, Kirchgemeinde Benken-Biel. 58. Staehelin, Wappenbuch der Stadt Basel, s.v. ‘‘Brandmu¨ller,’’ ‘‘Falkner,’’ ‘‘Merian’’; BStA Privatarchiv 355: Nachlass Arnold Lotz. On the Merian family, Samuel Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl, Schl€ ussel zur Macht: Verflechtungen und informelles Verhalten im Kleinen Rat zu Basel, 1570–1600, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 173 (Basel: Schwabe, 2002), 2:165. 59. For another example involving Grynaeus, see Schu¨pbach-Geggenbu¨hl, Schl€ ussel, 1:177–81. 60. For examples, see chapter 9; Ernst Riegg discusses the significance of family connections for the careers of pastors in the imperial cities of southern Germany, Konfliktbereitschaft und Mobilit€ at: Die protestantischen Geistlichen zw€ olf s€ uddeutscher

notes to pages 38– 41

309

Reichst€ adte zwischen Passauer Vertrag und Restitutionsedikt, Schriften zur su¨dwestdeutschen Landeskunde 43 (Leinfelden: DRW, 2002), 84–91. 61. Cf. Ott’s complaint at the general chapter, 25 March 1590, KRP I, 158: ‘‘Item Herr Weitz sein schwager, hasse inne vffn todt, der habe sein schwester selig u¨bel gehandlet’’; and dean Thomas Schorendorf’s account of his investigation of the situation: ‘‘habe die allt Muter etwan vil angericht vnd geredt, da sich als dann das widerspil befuonden, wie aber dem mo¨chte mein heren ordnen, so sie nach wehrendem Capitels verglichen thetten.’’ 62. Table 1.2 is arranged according to level of education upon entering the ministry, thus the men who received their doctorates while serving as Basel pastors are not included in the ‘‘Th.D.’’ column. Four of these five became pastors at the time of the Reformation or soon after; the fifth was Johann Jacob Grynaeus. 63. Study at Heidelberg fell almost evenly into four periods. Two pastors had attended the university before the Reformation, another four studied there between 1535 and 1553, five students matriculated in the first half of the 1590s, and a final four students attended Heidelberg between 1612 and 1617. Six of those matriculating at Wittenberg attended the university between 1549 and 1556, when Wittenberg’s most prominent professor was Philipp Melanchthon, and a seventh matriculated there in 1570, when the university was a Philippist stronghold. In addition, three non-Baslers who had studied at Wittenberg were later appointed to pastoral posts in Basel. 64. Two studied in Geneva during the 1580s, one in 1597, and four in the period 1616–1623. Of the five Tu¨bingen students, two matriculated at that university before the Reformation and two during the 1530s and 1540s, while Johann Jacob Grynaeus received his doctorate in theology there in 1565. One of the Leipzig matriculations occurred before the Reformation, the others in 1551, 1568, and 1588. 65. To ensure accuracy, I have checked the information from Gauss, Basilea Reformata, against lists of participants at synods or pastors examined during visitations. Since the synods and visitations were held infrequently after 1535, I have had to approximate. Thus the pastors included in the decade ‘‘1539’’ were actually those listed either at the synod held in July 1538 or the synod of January 1540. For this reason, as well as vacant posts, consolidation of existing parishes, or creation of new positions, the number of pastors in office listed for each year is not constant. 66. Burnett, ‘‘Simon Sulzer.’’ 67. Although the exact configuration changed over time, there were thirteen positions in the city and twenty-seven in the rural territory, making a total of forty posts. 68. Three pastors removed from office after 1590 were deposed, respectively, for adultery, for drunkenness, and for harboring someone who had robbed a church in the territory of neighboring (Catholic) Solothurn. The fourth, who held a post combining the responsibilities of pastor and schoolmaster, was deposed for neglecting the schoolchildren. A fifth pastor was removed from office in 1624 for overpricing the wine and grain he sold, but he was given another parish position a year and a half later. 69. The number of vacancies per decade does not match the number of new pastors because in some cases parishes were merged or new posts were created. The Basel church also left posts vacant, originally for six months and later for a year, after a pastor died so that his widow and children could receive financial support during this time. Gauss, Basilea Reformata, lists the parishes and their incumbents. 70. Bruce Gordon sees a similar shift from ‘‘foreign’’ to native clergy in Zurich but dates the transition earlier, to the period between 1530 and 1550; ‘‘The Protestant

310

notes to pages 42– 49

Ministry and the Cultures of Rule: The Reformed Zurich Clergy of the Sixteenth Century,’’ in Dixon and Shorn-Schu¨tte, Protestant Clergy, 137–55. 71. Both of these students, Hans Ulrich Falkner II and Friedrich Koch, continued to receive university stipends for several years after receiving their bachelor’s degrees and until they were appointed to parish posts. 72. Martin Brecht, ‘‘Herkunft und Ausbildung der protestantischen Geistlichen des Herzogtums Wu¨rttemberg im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur Kirchengeschichte 80 (1969): 163–75; Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners, 5–23; Bernard Vogler, ‘‘Rekrutierung, Ausbildung und soziale Verflechtung: Karrieremuster evangelischer Geistlichkeit,’’ ARG 85 (1994): 225–33, ‘‘Formation et recrutement du clerge´ protestant dans les Pays Rhe´nans de Strasbourg a` Coblence au XVIe sie`cle,’’ in Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae III: Colloque de Cambridge 24–28 September 1968, ed. Derek Baker, Bibliothe`que de la revue d’histoire eccle´siastique 50 (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1970), 216–21, and ‘‘Recrutement et carrie`re des pasteurs strasbourgeois au XVI sie`cle,’’ Revue d’histoire et philosophie religieuses 48 (1968): 151–74; Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft, 49–51, 91–110; Erdmann Weyrauch, ‘‘Informationen zum Sozialprofil der evangelischen Geistlichkeit Kitzingens im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ in Die b€ urgerliche Elite der Stadt Kitzingen: Studien zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte einer landesherrlichen Stadt im 16. Jahrhundert, ed. I. Ba´tori and E. Weyrauch, Spa¨tmittelalter und Fru¨he Neuzeit 11 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), 291–312; Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Fr€ uhneuzeit: Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung fr€ uhmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft. Dargestellt am Beispiel des F€ urstentums BraunschweigWolfenb€ uttel, der Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel und der Stadt Braunschweig, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 62 (Gu¨tersloh: Gu¨tersloher Verlagshaus, 1996), 84–98. 73. Both of these approximations may be a few years too high, but especially for those whose estimated ages are based on their first Basel post, they are more likely too low. Most of the latter had careers elsewhere before entering the Basel ministry, and so were well beyond the age of twenty-five at the time of their appointment in Basel. See chapter 5 for a discussion of matriculation ages in the decades after the Reformation. 74. On the rationale for using birth cohorts and the distinction between birth cohorts and generations, Norman B. Ryder, ‘‘The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change,’’ American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 843–61; David I. Kertzer, ‘‘Generation as a Sociological Problem,’’ Annual Review of Sociology 9 (1983): 125–49. 75. None of those with unknown birth dates could fall into this category, since they had all served the church for more than five years and must therefore have been at least thirty years old. 76. As I will show in chapter 9, one must distinguish here between the older men who were appointed to Basel posts in the 1580s after several years of ministry elsewhere and those who received their first pastoral post in the 1580s.

chapter 2 1. Karl Rudolf Hagenbach, Kritische Geschichte der Entstehung und Schicksale der ersten Basler Konfession (Basel: Georg, 1857), 26–8. Oecolampadius’s confession was part of an oration delivered at the synod of 1531 and was printed in his posthumous Enarratio in Evangelium Matthaei (Basel, 1536). 2. ABR 3:383–409, no. 473; esp. 384, 386. 3. ABR 3:391–5.

notes to pages 49– 51

311

4. For instance, both the Bern synod of 1532 and the Strasbourg synod of 1533 endorsed doctrinal statements as binding for their pastors; on Bern, Gottfried W. Locher et al., eds., Der Berner Synodus von 1532: Edition und Abhandlungen zum Jubil€ aumsjahr 1982, 2 vols. (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984–88); on Strasbourg, Franc¸ois Wendel, L’E´glise de Strasbourg, sa constitution et son organisation (1532–1535), E´tudes d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 38 (Paris: Alcan, 1942). The Basel Confession is reprinted in ABR 6:403–10, no. 400. For a detailed analysis of the Basel Confession’s contents, Richard Stauffer, ‘‘Das Basler Bekenntnis von 1534,’’ in Ecclesia Semper Reformanda: Vortr€ age zum Basler Reformationsjubil€ aum 1529–1979, ed. Hans R. Guggisberg and Peter Rotach (Basel: Reinhardt, 1980), 28–49. 5. ABR 6:406–7. The gloss also cited John 6, which Zwingli frequently cited against Luther’s interpretation of the sacrament. 6. Burnett, ‘‘Basel and the Wittenberg Concord’’; see Bucer’s explanation of the Lord’s Supper prepared for the Basel church, BDS 6/1:209–62. 7. Hagenbach, Kritische Geschichte, 34–5; Burnett, ‘‘Basel and the Wittenberg Concord.’’ 8. Markus Jenny believes that the revised agenda was published in 1529 to accompany the city’s official adoption of evangelical doctrine, although the first extant version dates from 1537, Die Einheit des Abendmahlsgottesdienstes bei den els€ assischen und schweizerischen Reformatoren, Studien zur Dogmengeschichte und systematischen Theologie 23 (Zurich: Zwingli, 1968), 84; see his bibliography of Basel’s agenda through the sixteenth century, as well as his edition of the revised communion liturgy, 144–57. For a brief description of the Basel liturgy, K. G. Go¨tz, ‘‘Die Geschichte der Basler Liturgie seit der Reformation,’’ Schweizerische Theologische Zeitschrift 25 (1908): 113–32. 9. Form vnd gstalt wie der kinder tauff . . . (s.l., 1526), A3r–A7v; see the description of the late medieval ceremony and the liturgy of Basel’s 1526 agenda, with some English excerpts, Hughes Oliphant Old, The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the Sixteenth Century (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 1–31; 66–73. Old apparently was unaware of the later revision of the baptismal liturgy, for he does not discuss it. On late medieval baptismal practices, see also Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany, Christianity and Society in the Modern World (London: Routledge, 1997), 43–50. 10. Form der Sacramenten bruch/wie sy zuo Basel gebrucht werden/mit sampt eynem kurtzen kinder bericht (Basel: Schouber, 1537), A5v–B2r. 11. Olaf Kuhr analyzes the provisions concerning exclusion from the Lord’s Supper, ‘‘Die Macht des Bannes und der Buße’’: Kirchenzucht und Erneuerung der Kirche bei Johannes Oekolampad (1482–1531), Basler und Berner Studien zur historischen und systematischen Theologie 68 (Bern: Lang, 1999), 149–56; on Oecolampadius’s interpretation of the Ten Commandments, see the discussion of his catechism below. 12. Compare Form vnd gstalt, B4r and C5v, with Form der Sacramenten bruch, B3v and C2r. For a discussion of the liturgy’s impact outside of Basel, Bruno Bu¨rki, ‘‘Das Abendmahl nach den Basler Ordnungen,’’ in Coena Domini 1: Die Abendmahlsliturgie der Reformationskirchen im 16./17. Jahrhundert, ed. Irmgard Pahl (Freiburg, Switzerland: Universita¨ts Verlag, 1983), 199–225. 13. Compare Form vnd gstalt, C6v–C7r, with Form der Sacramenten bruch, C3v–C4r. Zurich’s theologians were firmly opposed to anything that bore a resemblance to auricular confession, including the Lutheran precommunion examination; Erich Roth, Die Privatbeichte und die Schl€ usselgewalt in der Theologie der Reformatoren (Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann, 1952), 71–132.

312

notes to pages 52– 54

14. Compare Form vnd gstalt, D5v, with Form der Sacramenten bruch, C6v. In 1533, Bullinger told Myconius he did not criticize Basel’s retention of sickbed communion, but he believed that Oecolampadius had allowed it only on a provisional basis, 17 July 1533, HBBW 3:155, no. 243. A decade later, however, Bullinger protested vigorously against both private confession and sickbed communion to a pastor in Vaud (probably Andre´ Zebede´e); Herminjard 9:116–22, no. 1312; see Chap. Eleven. 15. Capito’s Kinderbericht was published in 1527; cf. Ferdinand Cohrs, ed., Die evangelischen Katechismusversuche vor Luthers Enchiridion, Monumenta Germaniae Paedagogica 20–3, 39 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1978), 2:92. The catechism of Jacob Otther, at that time a pastor in Aarau, was published in 1530, August Lang, ed., Der Heidelberger Katechismus und vier verwandte Katechismen (Leo Juds und Microns kleine Katechismen sowie die zwei Vorarbeiten Ursins (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), XVII–XVIII; on Megander’s catechism, Rainer Henrich, ‘‘Ein Berner ‘Kunzechismus’ von 1541: Bucers verloren geglaubte Bearbeitung des Meganderschen Katechismus,’’ Zwingliana 24 (1997): 81–94. In addition to these German catechisms, the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes, in essence a Latin catechism for adults, was published in Basel in 1536. 16. Johannes Oecolampadius, Frag und antwort jn verh€ orung der Kinder. The first printed version of the catechism was included in the 1537 liturgical agenda, Form der Sacramenten bruch. Cohrs convincingly argues for Oecolampadius’s authorship and places its composition between 1525 and 1526, at a time when Anabaptists first became a problem in Basel, because the catechism contains passages specifically aimed at Anabaptists. I am inclined to place the catechism’s composition in 1529–30, because of clear similarities in phrasing between the catechism and the Reformation Ordinance. Anabaptist activity continued to plague the Basel church during these years, which could account for the catechism’s anti-Anabaptist edge; cf. Cohrs, Katechismusversuche, 4:3–9; the catechism is reprinted, 10–7. 17. Cohrs, Katechismusversuche, 4:13. 18. Cohrs, Katechismusversuche, 4:15 (on prayer to the saints); 16 (on fasting). 19. Cohrs, Katechismusversuche, 4:15 (on baptism); 16 (on the Lord’s Supper). 20. Cohrs, Katechismusversuche, 4:13–4. 21. Cohrs, Katechismusversuche, 4:16. 22. See especially Erasmus’s ‘‘Confabulatio pia’’ of 1522, Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1969–), 1/3:171–81; English translation, ‘‘The Whole Duty of Youth,’’ in The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 30–41. 23. Christofel Wyßga¨rber, Ein Kurtze Underwißung der Jugent jm Vatter unser, Glouben, Touff, Herren nachtmal . . . (Basel: Wolfgang Frieß, 1538); cf. the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, 4v: ‘‘Frog: worumb sprichstu Geheyliget werde din namm: Antwort: Do bitten vnd bega¨ren wyr gnod/Gott zeloben vnd zdancken/vnd ein Go¨ttlich Christenlichs la¨ben ze fu¨ren.’’ Contra Cohrs, who did not see the catechism, this was not a reworking of Oecolampadius’s Frag und Antwort. Markus Jenny analyzes the catechism and discusses its sources in ‘‘Christoffel Wyssgerber, alias Christoforus Alutarius. Ein Beitrag zur baslerischen Kirchen-, Humanisten- und Musikgeschichte der Reformationszeit,’’ BZ 49 (1950): 53–80. 24. Institutio Christiana, sive Catechismus puerorum Reipub: Basiliensis (Basel: Oporinus, 1544); there were at least four further editions through 1574; Ernst Staehelin, ‘‘Oekolampad-Bibliographie (Verzeichnis der im 16. Jahrhundert erschienenen Oekolampaddrucke),’’ BZ 17 (1918), 1–119. Myconius’s preface, A2r. 25. Institutio Christiana, A5r.

notes to pages 54– 56

313

26. Institutio Christiana, A5v: ‘‘Patres liberauit, ad infernum damnatos propter peccatum originale: et sic liberauit, ut agnosceremus effectus miserationis Christi, quousque pertigisset: tum ut nos in Domino mortui, eo descendere non cogeremur. Posterius confirmat, Iesum esse filium Dei.’’ This was also Oecolampadius’s understanding of the descent into hell; cf. B&A 2:251–5, no. 615. 27. Institutio Christiana, A5v: ‘‘Dominum non mansisse in terris (quod Iudaicus error de Messia conceperat) sed ascendisse in coelum, ut nossent fideles, unde nam descendisset.’’ 28. Institutio Christiana, A7v. On the variations in numbering of the ten commandments, Bo Reicke, Die zehn Worte in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Z€ ahlung und Bedeutung der Gebote in den verschiedenen Konfessionen, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der biblischen Exegese 13 (Tu¨bingen: Mohr, 1973). On the contrasting view of Scripture that determined whether to use the traditional wording of the commandments of the text of Exod. 20, Walter Dress, ‘‘Die zehn Gebote und der Dekalog: Ein Beitrag zu der Frage nach den Unterschieden zwischen lutherischem und calvinistischen Denken,’’ in Dress, Evangelisches Erbe und Weltoffenheit: Gesammelte Aufs€ atze, ed. Wolfgang Sommer (Berlin: Christlicher Zeitschriftenverlag, 1980), 67–75. Myconius’s structure reflects that of the Strasbourg catechism table printed in the 1520s; Cohrs, Katechismenversuche, 1:117–21. 29. Institutio Christiana, A2r: ‘‘Inter: Agis ne tu Christianum? Res. Ago, Domino sit laus. Int: Quando coepisti quod profiteris? R: Mox, ubi in lucem editus, sacro fonte lotus sum. . . . IN: Quid fit igitur, ut hic Christianismus incipiat? R. In hoc lauacro regeneratus sum, et regenerati sunt Christiani. In. Tantum ualet aqua? R. Non qua simpliciter, sed aqua baptismi. IN. Quid ita? R. Habet Verbum, et Spiritum s. agentem, Verbo mediante, per aquam. IN. Quid agit? R. Efficit hominem nouum, purgat enim a peccato originali, malorum omnium fonte et scaturigine.’’ Myconius’s position differed from the catechisms of Leo Jud and Kaspar Megander, both written in the mid1530s and both of which took pains to emphasize that the sacraments only signified but did not actually bring rebirth; Jud, Kurtze Catechism, in Quellen zur Geschichte des kirchlichen Unterrichts in der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands zwischen 1530 und 1600, pt. 1, Quellen zur Geschichte des Katechismus-Unterrichts, ed. Johann Michael Reu (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1976), 1/3c:1055–6; a portion of Megander’s catechism is printed in BDS 6/3:266–9. 30. Institutio Christiana, B5v. On the eucharistic theology underlying this position, see Burnett, ‘‘Basel and the Wittenberg Concord.’’ 31. Both it and the shorter catechism of Oecolampadius were included in an undated agenda, Form der Sacramenten bruch (Cohrs’s text C), as well as those printed in 1564 (in Mulhouse, Staehelin, ‘‘Oekolampad-Bibliographie,’’ no. 215), 1569 (no. 217), 1572 (no. 219), 1578 (no. 220), and 1584 (no. 221). The Myconius/Oecolampadius catechism was also adopted and printed in 1580 by the pastors of Mulhouse; this version is edited, with annotations comparing it to Basel’s catechism, in Reu, Quellen, 1/1:155–67. 32. ABR 3:389–90. 33. BStA Kirchen Akten B 1, dated 10 March 1540. 34. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 391r–96r: complaints from rural pastors and synodal articles from synod held 20 May 1555. 35. ABR 3:395–6. The Reformation Ordinance also established 6 a.m. weekday sermons in St. Peter, but if these services were ever introduced, they did not last for many years after the Reformation. 36. Note by Christian Wurstisen, on the cover of his ‘‘Verzeichnuß, so dann von wa¨gen mines Amt . . . mit mich ist verhandlet worden,’’ BStA Kirchen Archiv CC 1.

314

notes to pages 56– 58

37. ABR 3:505–6, no. 594, repeated in December 1532 (ABR 6:187–8, no. 224) and March 1533 (ABR 6:245–6, no. 253), i.e., shortly before the Lord’s Supper would be celebrated in the city’s churches at Christmas and at Easter. The requirement of church attendance in the rural territory was reissued as part of the Liestal Acts, a codification of previous mandates, issued in August 1540, BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 40, 290r–292v. 38. The Bannherren were the three laymen from each parish charged with administering church discipline. In almost all cases, the Bannherren referred these individuals to their pastors for further instruction in the faith. One man, probably a Catholic, said that he could not in good conscience receive the sacrament in the city and would therefore renounce his citizenship and move away; minutes of Bannherren sessions between September and December 1533, ABR 6:307, no. 321; 315, no. 329; 327–8, no. 338; 386–7, no. 375. 39. For a brief description of the structure of a scholastic thematic sermon, Eduard Lengwiler, Die vorreformatorischen Pr€ adikaturen der deutschen Schweiz von ihrer Entstehung bis 1530 (Fribourg: Kanisius, 1955), 9–15. 40. On Calvin’s sermons and the expository method of preaching, Thomas H. L. Parker, Calvin’s Preaching (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster, 1992), 79–92, 131–8; Heinrich Bullinger, ‘‘Das Amt des Propheten 1532,’’ in Schriften, ed. Emidio Campi et al. (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2004–), 1:21–3; Fritz Bu¨sser, Heinrich Bullinger: Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2004), 1:164–8. On Bullinger’s earliest thoughts regarding preaching, Peter Opitz, ‘‘Bullinger’s Decades: Instruction in Faith and Conduct,’’ in Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504–1575, ed. Bruce Gordon and Emidio Campi, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2004), 101–16. The contemporary editor of Calvin’s sermons criticized the topical sermons advocated by Melanchthon and preached by Bullinger, Olivier Millet, ‘‘Sermon sur la resurrection: Quelques remarques sur l’homiletique de Calvin,’’ Bulletin de la Soci
et
e de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Franc¸ais 134 (1988): 683–92. For further discussion of the topical style of preaching and Melanchthon’s contribution to homiletics, see chapter 7. 41. Hughes Oliphant Old is correct to point to the importance of both Nazianzus and Chrysostom on Oecolampadius’s preaching, although he overstates their influence and does not consider that of Zwingli, ‘‘The Homiletics of John Oecolampadius and the Sermons of the Greek Fathers,’’ in Communio Sanctorum: M
elanges offerts a JeanJacques von Allemen, ed. Yves Congar et al. (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1982), 239–50. 42. For example, his De laudando in Maria Deo doctoris Jo. Oecolampadii theologi sermo (Augsburg: Grimm & Wyrsung, 1521) is built on the premise that praise of Mary must lead to praise of God who gave her the virtues she possessed. His two Easter sermons, De Gaudio resurrectionis Sermo . . . (Augsburg: Grimm & Wirsung, 1521), are on the topics of joy and on the meaning of the terms ‘‘lord’’ and ‘‘God,’’ respectively. All three sermons are summarized in Ernst Staehelin, Das theologische Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1939), 138–42. 43. See, for instance, his Advent sermons preached on 1 John in 1523 and published the following year, In Epistolam Ioannis Apostoli Catholicam primam . . . hoc est homiliae una & XX (Basel: Cratander, 1524); these are described in Staehelin, Le€ kolampads benswerk, 221–31, and published in German translation, R. Christoffel, O Bibelstunden, volksfaßliche Vortr€ age u€ber den ersten Brief Johannes (Basel: Schweighauser, 1850). 44. Several of the sermons from the spring of 1525 were printed with Oecolampadius’s Enarratio in Evangelium Matthaei (Basel, 1536); see Staehelin, Lebenswerk,

notes to pages 58– 60

315

235. Oecolampadius began the sermons on Mark, later published as a commentary, in 1529, Staehelin, Lebenswerk, 489–92. 45. His commentary on 1 John and his commentary on Colossians, edited and published by the Basel pastor Johann Gast, In Epistolam D. Pauli ad Colossenses, Conciones . . . (Bern: Apiarius, 1546). Oecolampadius published several commentaries based on his lectures before his death, while others were published posthumously; see the description in Staehelin, Lebenswerk, 396–410; 553–85. 46. Enarratio in Evangelium Matthaei, sermo 1, on Luke 8, 143v–147r; and sermo 3, on John 14, 151v–156v; cf. also the sermons posthumously published in the commentary on Colossians. For more on Oecolampadius’s lectures, see chapter 3. 47. In Psalmos LXXIII, LXIIII etc. Conciones Ioannis Oecolampadii . . . (Basel: Winter, 1544), introduction, 67–8. The Psalms sermons were preached in the second half of 1525; Staehelin, Lebenswerk, 411–8. 48. Zwen Sch€ on Sermon: Inhaltende, das man von wegen des Herren Nachtmals Br€ uderliche Liebe nitt soll zertrennen [1526], B3v: ‘‘Das es aber brot sey, geben die meu¨ß und die wurm kundtschaft, obs schon des Bapsts hauff verleugnet. Ja warlich es ist vor und nach dem brauch nichts weder brot, und darumb so bedarff man es nit mit so grosser Abgo¨tterey in die ka¨stlein behalten, dass es ist nun brot, so hats auch Christus nit darumb eingesetzt, das man Abgo¨tterey darmit treyben soll.’’ 49. Oecolampadius, Enarratio in Evangelium Matthaei, sermo 2, 147v–151r; citation at 149v: ‘‘Dominus enim dicit, paucos operarios: et hodie pauci sunt, quantumuis mundus conqueratur de multitudine sacerdotum. Pauci enim ex illis fideles sunt. Multa in ijs sunt mancipia uentris, multi pietatem quaestum faciunt, multa sua quaerunt, et qui Christum quaerant paucis sunt. Dominus autem uult rogari, quia nihil sine illo proficitur. Hic non uideo illum promouendi modum, ut fiant lectores, exorcistae, acolati, subdiaconi. Quantum ex oratione funebri Basilij et Cypriano colligere potui, hic erat modus. Si quis fideliter seruisset, et inuentus idoneus in lectionibus, admonitionibus, exhortionibus, et praeterea honestae uitae, is prouehebatur. . . . Hodie omnium rerum abusus. Ordinantur quotquot pecuniam habent, uel seruierunt: heri sutor, hodie episcopus: heri in stabulo, hodie in alterio. Et illi se ordinatos putant, cum ne minimo officio fungi queant, imo ne uersiculum legere.’’ Because the sermon was preached on the feast of St. Matthias, it was loosely based on Acts 1:15–26 (the selection of Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot). 50. Enarratio in Evangelium Matthaei, sermo 4 in LX, 156v–162v; cf. 160r. 51. Cf. the 1531 diary of Bonifacius Amerbach, in Theophil Burckhardt-Biedermann, Bonifacius Amerbach und die Reformation (Basel: Reich, 1894), Beilage B, 325–72, entries for 16 July (336), 23 July (337), 13 and 20 August (338), 17 September (344), 8 October (349), 15 October (353). 52. Cf. Amerbach’s account of the sermons by the Augustinian preacher (Burckhardt-Biederman identifies him as Telemonius Limpurger, but it was more likely the cathedral archdeacon and former Augustinian Thomas Gierfalk), Burckhardt-Biederman, Bonifacius Amerbach, 12 November (366–7), and by Johannes Gast, 19 November (369). 53. According to Platter, Myconius was to give the early morning sermon at the church, but he overslept. When Platter woke him up to get to the church, Myconius asked what he should preach on. Platter told him that he should preach on the cause of the recent calamities, which Myconius did, to the praise of his hearers. The ‘‘calamities’’ to which Platter referred were the recent death of Zwingli and the loss of the Second Kappel War; Heinrich Boos, ed., Thomas und Felix Platter, Zur Sittengeschichte des XVI. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1878), 82–3.

316

notes to pages 60– 62

54. To Bullinger, 29 October 1539, HBBW 9:243–5, no. 1324; to Wolfgang Capito, 9 November 1539, TB 12:115–6: ‘‘Id quod ad haec valet, ut numerus auditorum ejus [Karlstadt] in dies minuatur et ex concionibus ejus omnibus flagitiis aperiatur janua. Nugatur enim, praeterea nihil; Exempli gratia. Nuper duos dies consumpsit in terra promissionis dividenda, dum interim exposuit quam hic opus fuerit Geographiae et Geometriae cognitione, quamquam nemo Christianus illas artes deberet ignorare.’’ 55. The sermon against the Carthusians was apparently so inflammatory that Bonifacius Amerbach, hearing a secondhand account of it, feared that it might cause an attack on the Carthusian monastery; cf. his letter to Theodor Brand, 24 January 1539, AmKorr 5:191, no. 2292; Brand’s response, describing Myconius’s sermon, 26 January 1539, AmKorr 5:191–2, no. 2293. Myconius’s description of his sermon on school funding to Bullinger, 14 January 1542, ZStA E II 343, 233. The pastors’ defense of their preaching, BStA Kirchen Akten C 3 (Liber Synodorum), 39r; see chapter 3 for a more detailed description of this synod. 56. Cf. Johann Gast’s sarcastic comments about the sermons on mercenary service to Bullinger, 11 July 1544; Paul Burckhardt, ed., Das Tagebuch des Johannes Gast: Ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte (Basel: Schwabe, 1945), 66. On sermons concerning the French alliance, see Myconius to Bullinger, 26 August 1549, ZStA E II 336a, 304: ‘‘[St. Peter pastor Simon] Sultzerus Dominica nona clamavit tam arciter contra, ut minati sint ex pagis quidam, se iure ipsum conventuros (ita Gastius). Valtius [Spitalprediger Valentinus Boltz] eadem Dominica contrarium egit, et proxima sequente adhuc vehementius: et indetur vicisse. Effecerunt illi duo, ut et nos simus in periculo quod tamen in Domino possumque contemnere egregie.’’ On Bertschi, see Gast to Bullinger, 25 January 1543, CO 11:500, no. 448. 57. Bullinger to Myconius, 12 February 1544, ZStA E II 342, 115. 58. 12 March 1544, ZStA E II 347, 279: ‘‘Agnosco conciones habitas non solum diebus, quos tu nominas, sed per annos iam xii pluribus de eucharistia, quas nemo reprehendit unquam exceptis anabaptistis vel horum similibus.’’ See also Burnett, ‘‘Basel and the Wittenberg Concord.’’ The sermon is preserved in BUB MsKiAr 22a, 238r–242r, and MsKiAr 23a, 282r–288r. It is dated only ‘‘1543.’’ 59. Bucer’s explanation in BDS 6/1:209–26; for an analysis of the sermon’s theological content, Burnett, ‘‘Basel and the Wittenberg Concord.’’ In his letter to Bullinger, Myconius explicitly cited Bucer’s Bericht auß der heylige Geschrifft, the First Helvetic Confession, and his own commentary on Mark as containing the same interpretation of the sacrament. 60. Gast to Bullinger, 15 February 1544, ZStA E II 366, 260: ‘‘[Myconius] a quodam exacerbatus ob eucharistiae negotium, et ita ut publice excandescenti animo locum illum tractarit volens ita bono zelo Lutherum et Oecolampadium, Zvinglii nulla habito mentio, conciliare, particulam ex epistolis Oecolampadii rapiens publice . . . in rostro praelegebat dicens: ‘‘Videte, an non idem dicat Oecolampadius, quod et Lutherus scripsit.’’ 61. ZStA E II 347, 279: ‘‘De Oecolampadio vero quae adieci, hanc causam habuerunt: homuncio quidam loquacitate notus in tota civitate sparserat Myconium crassius quid docuisse de praesentia Christi in coena, quam ipse didicisset ab initio, nimirum Oecolampadio doctore. Mendacium istud me coegit, ut famam tuerer. . . . Addidi: ‘‘Consonat hoc loco Oecolampadius cum Lutheri (cum tum praeter consuetudinem pro suggestu nominavi) epistola, quam annis superioribus misit ad civitates nostras evangelio donatas pro concordia.’’ Cf. Martin Luther’s letter to the Swiss cities of 1 December 1537, in Luther, Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefe (Weimar: Bo¨hlaus Nachfolger, 1883–1986), 8:149–53, no. 3191.

notes to pages 62– 63

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62. Myconius wrote that he taught ‘‘quod Christus in panegyri hac cum pane nos pascat suo corpore et cum vino potet suo sanguine, non quidem ratione crassa et, ut Capernaitae putabant, sed ratione coelesti et spirituali, interim tamen vera et hanc quidem veritatem credendam esse, non inquirendam, imo credibilem, non inquisibilem, id quod dico de modo ineffabili, quo Christus in dextera patris sedens suos in sancta coena corpore et sanguine suo reficit ad vitam. . . . Doceo igitur simplex simpliciter et iuxta dominum et apostolos, a quorum verbis et sensu non discedo. Arbitror autem, quod hi sint loquuti forma optima, nedum simplicissima, et qui eos sequuntur, nequeant aberrare.’’ This would certainly be an unfamiliar position to visitors from Zurich, and it was apparently what they remembered from the sermon; cf. BUB MsKiAr 23a, 282. 63. ABR 4:420–4, no. 474, citation at 420: ‘‘das der barfusser zuo Waldenburg offentlich gepredget unnd gelert, das weger were, es gienge einer ein hund an, dann das er sin ee breche.’’ The preacher is further identified as ‘‘the Franciscan Johann, preacher at the Spital’’; cf. Willy Bra¨ndly, ‘‘Johannes Lu¨thard, ‘der Mo¨nch von Luzern,’ ’’ Zwingliana 8 (1946): 305–41. Norbert Schindler discusses the incident, emphasizing its offensiveness to a popular audience that felt its masculine honor besmirched by the preacher, ‘‘Die Prinzipien des Ho¨rensagens: Predigt und Publikum in der Fru¨hen Neuzeit,’’ Historische Anthropologie 1 (1993): 359–93. 64. Bernhard Riggenbach, ed., Das Chronikon des Konrad Pellikan (Basel, 1877), xxxviii. 65. ABR 4:424: ‘‘Herr hanns erstlich so ein gutte bredig getan, als er kum von einem priester geho¨rtt.’’ Cf. the warnings to Widmer at the first synod on 11–12 May 1529, ABR 3:484; the second synod of 29 November 1529, ABR 4:209; and the third synod of 2 May 1530, ABR 4:418. Could it be that the city preacher was invited to give the wedding sermon for Widmer? In any case, Waldenburg seemed particularly unfortunate in its preachers. Widmer’s successor, Wilhelm Hildtoch, was criticized at the synod held in 1542: ‘‘das der zu Waldenburg seltzame Glichnusse gebe, die da wenig buwennd,’’ BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 40v–41r. 66. ABR 4:421. 67. Cf. his allusion to Eph. 5:22–32, where the relationship between husband and wife is compared to that of Christ and the church; both Eph. and Matt. Gen. 2:24. 68. ABR 4:421. The connection between Lu¨thardt’s condemnations of the Anabaptists and of adultery emerges more clearly in the statements of other witnesses, e.g., Erhartt Jost, ABR 4:422. 69. Complaints at the synod of 2 May, ABR 4:419; Rudolf Heiden from Niderdorf (part of the Waldenburg parish) was released from jail on 23 April, ABR 4:410. It is unclear whether he was the same Anabaptist from Waldenburg who was brought to Basel in mid-March, ABR 4:372. On Anabaptists from other rural parishes, see ABR 4:356, 358, 360, 372, 374–5, 378–9, 382, 386, 389, 395–7, and 472, all from March– April 1530. The harsh meaures introduced at the end of 1530 contributed significantly to the suppression of Anabaptism in Basel’s rural territory, Paul Burckhardt, Basel in den ersten Jahren nach der Reformation, Basel Neujahrsblatt 124 (Basel, 1946), 51–3; Karl Gauss, Geschichte der Landschaft Basel und des Kantons Basellandschaft, vol. 1, Von der Urzeit bis zum Bauernkrieg des Jahres 1653 (Basel: Lu¨din, 1932), 489–501; Hanspeter Jecker, ‘‘Die Basler Ta¨ufer: Studien zur Vor- und Fru¨hgeschichte,’’ BZ 80 (1980): 5–131, esp. 104–17. 70. An eighth witness who did not mention the portion of the sermon on the Anabaptists said that he had not heard the entire sermon, ABR 4:424.

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notes to pages 63– 69

71. In this respect, the Basel example urges caution in accepting Bernd Moeller’s argument that early evangelical preaching was a fairly faithful reproduction of Luther’s message, Bernd Moeller, ‘‘Was Wurde in der Fru¨hzeit der Reformation in den deutschen Sta¨dten Gepredigt?’’ ARG 75 (1984): 176–93, and adds another element to Susan Karant-Nunn’s depiction of the variety and radical nature of preaching in Saxony and Thuringia, ‘‘What Was Preached in German Cities in the Early Years of the Reformation? Wildwuchs versus Lutheran Unity,’’ in The Process of Change in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Miriam Usher Chrisman, ed. P. N. Bebb and S. Marshall (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988), 81–96. 72. One of the complaints of the rural deans at the 1542 synod was ‘‘negligence in hearing God’s Word,’’ BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 39v.

chapter 3 1. Bruce Gordon, Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Z€ urich, 1532–1580, Zu¨rcher Beitra¨ge zur Reformationsgeschichte 16 (Bern: Lang, 1992), 73–8; Emil Egli, ‘‘Zwingli und die Synoden: Besonders in der Ostschweiz,’’ in Analecta Reformatoria (Zurich: Zu¨rcher & Furrer, 1899), 80–98. 2. ABR 3:386–8, no. 473. Although spring and fall synods were held in Basel in 1529 and 1530, from 1531 on, the pastors met only once a year for the remainder of the decade. 3. Quotation from fall synod, 1529, ABR 4:208–11: ‘‘et sunt persone subscripte tamquam ydonee ad concionandum verbum dei et in plebanos admisse; cf. ABR 3:483–5 (spring 1529) and ABR 4:417–9 (spring 1530). 4. The H€ aupter or ‘‘heads’’were the old and new Burgermeister and the old and new Oberzunftmeister (superior guild master); on Basel’s governmental structure, Alfred Mu¨ller, ‘‘Die Ratsverfassung der Stadt Basel von 1521 bis 1798,’’ BZ 53 (1954): 5–98. 5. ABR 6:119–20, no. 162 (9 September 1532). 6. ABR 6:186–7, no. 222 (22 December 1532). This edict refers to an earlier edict dated 22 June 1532 rather than the edict of the previous September. ABR does not contain an edict dated 22 June, and the synodal and ban ordinance of November 1539 that abolished this committee refers explicitly to the edict of 9 September 1532. I suspect the September edict was intended to reinforce the authority of the committee established by the (now lost) edict of June 22. 7. Paul Burckhardt, Basel in den ersten Jahren nach der Reformation, Basel Neujahrsblatt 124 (Basel, 1946), 60. Myconius described the composition of this commission when he complained of its abolition in a letter to Vadian, 7 March 1540, Emil Arbenz, and Hermann Wartmann, eds., Vadianische Briefsammlung, 1508–1540, Mitteilungen zur Vaterla¨ndischen Geschichte 24–30a (St. Gallen: Fehr, 1884–1913), 5:612–3, no. 1104. The three Deputaten, senators charged with the oversight of the university and schools, were among the eight senatorial members of the Kirchenrat. The remaining synodal lords may have been chosen from among the Bannherren, the two senators and one burgher from each of the city’s four parishes responsible for church discipline, but there are no lists of Bannherren from the 1530s to prove this. Hans Fu¨glister assumes that the offices of Bannherren and Synodalen were two separate offices and sees the latter as carrying out the responsibilities of the examiners described in the Reformation Ordinance, Handwerksregiment: Untersuchungen und Materialen zur sozialen und politischen Struktur der Stadt Basel in der ersten H€ alfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1981), 234–5, 237–9.

notes to pages 69– 71

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8. Myconius and Phrygio are listed among the presiding officials in 1533, but there are no pastors included among the presiding officials for the years 1534–1538. Usually only one of the four H€ aupter attended the synod. The largest number of presiding officials was in 1538, when all four H€ aupter and ten of the twelve senators and burghers attended; their presence was the result of the confrontation between pastors and synodal lords that had occurred the previous year; see hereafter. The change from semiannual to annual synods was encouraged by the creation of the Kirchenrat, since the secular members of the Kirchenrat may have found it too burdensome to prepare for and attend two synods every year and to respond to the grievances presented at each synod. The Kirchenrat described here should not be confused with, or seen as a direct precursor of, the Kirchenrat that originated in the weekly meeting of the city’s pastors and became the governing organ of Basel’s church at the end of the sixteenth century, as described in chapter 9. 9. This point was mentioned in seven out of the eight complaint lists from 1529 to 1538. 10. ABR 6:100, no. 130. 11. ABR 6:186–7, no. 222. 12. ABR 6:297–9, no. 309. 13. ABR 6:390–1, no. 381. 14. 1535: BStA Kirchen Akten C 2, 12r–13v; 1536: BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 159r–171v. 15. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 169r: ‘‘ist war, das zuo abstellung der lastern, vil ordnungen vnd mandaten die nit zuverbessern, vffgericht, da so sollen diß artickel der oberkeit anzeigt werden, man ouch die bannhern vnzu¨chter vnd mer vber die laster zustehen bevelch hat, tru¨lich ins ampts nachzekommen warnen, ermanen, deß glichen anhaben vogten den also stat zethun schriben solle.’’ 16. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 172r: ‘‘Sye kein fliß nach rechter Ernst inn den kilchengeschefftenn by der oberkeit, sy horen wol ir clagen, vnd nemen die artickel, als ob man mit ernst die gebresten erbesseren welle, an, Ee wu¨rt aber nu¨t vßgemacht.’’ 17. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 172r–174v; citation at 172r: ‘‘sye kein vnderscheid mer vnder denen, die das Evangelium lieben vnd denen, die bißhar darwider gewa¨sen; man suche fruntschafften zusamen, bruche sy zum emptern, man soge sy in Rhat.’’ 18. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 176r–v: ‘‘Der ersten sol unsern lieben hern vnnd bru¨dern den predicanten fru¨ntlich anzeigt werden, das vnns . . . nit wenig beschwa¨rt die gross clag vnd anzug jungst im vermelten sinodo . . . vnd das nit darumb, das wir bru¨derliche straff vnd warnung anzenemen noch die mit christenlicher gedult zetragen vnwillig, oder das wir als presthafftige mentschen der straff nit noturfftig vnns selbs darfu¨r hielten, als ob wir deren nit bedo¨rfftenn sein, sonder bekennen vnd wussen wie wol das wir leider inn den sachen der kilchenn nit den ernst vnd yffer bruchennd, der aber zu erbuwung der kilchen christi vonno¨ten, deßhalben wir vns bru¨derlicher warnung vnd tribens nit allein nit bschwa¨rent, sonder derselbigenn anho¨chsten noturfftig sin erkennent. Das unns aber wie obgemelt bedacht verclagenn, vnd anziehen misfalt, geschicht der vrsach, das vnser liebe bru¨der die predicanten (mit denen wir doch bißher so trulich gehandelt) vns nit so fru¨ntlich gsin, das sy unns am Sontag vor gehaltenen Sinodo, da wir allein darumb by Inen versamlet, ir anligenn vnd clagenn ero¨ffnet fru¨ntlichenn bscheid vnnd bericht daruff empfangenn, Sonder ein frome Oberkeit, die doch die Eere Gottes zeu¨ffnen, vnnd die laster sampt aller vngerechtigkeit mit der gnad Gottes vßzeru¨ten, vnd zestraffen gsynnet, vor so eerlicher versamlung, so hoc zu¨verunlimpffen, vnd als ob sy allein, dar die sachen by vns

320

notes to pages 71– 73

ergerlicher vnnd u¨bler dann nie gestanden schuld trage, by allen zuho¨ren zeverbitteren lustiger gewesenn.’’ 19. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 176v: ‘‘Dagegen ist aber gmeinen bru¨dren was by inen falt, mit den wa¨nigstenn wort, nit anzeigt. Dann wiewol der predig ampt, auch wie der diener des hern worts sin solle ordenlichem ußgestrichen, so sind doch die gebra¨chlicheiten so vnder der dienern des hern worts, ouch an irn wib vnd kinden leyder erfunden so gar mit keinen wort beclagt da niemantz anderst gedenken mo¨gen, dann sy alle syen inn ho¨chster vnschuld, vnd hab allein die Oberkeit gesu¨ndiget vnnd mag aber nit verneint werden, das vnder den fu¨r gesetzten erfunden, deren etliche so eins lichtverigen leben, die andern im leeren so vngeschickt, etliche Ir wib vnd kinder so ubel regierennt, dass viler leer allein vff den Cantzel yfferig, aber im thun nit vil fruchtet die kilchenn christi wa¨nig erbuwet, zu ethliche mit irem Arbeitseligen leben die gemeinde gottes ergerennd.’’ 20. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 176v–177r: ‘‘Das zeigen wir an, nit das wir vnser farlessigkeit hiemit entschuldigen, sonder darumb, das es guot gsin auch diß gebrechen zeru¨gen, damit nit der Ein teil, mit beclagung siner armut, sich selbs one schuld, vnd allein die oberkeit gesu¨ndigt haben verdencken mo¨cht. Wir haben etlicher bru¨dern vngeschickte sachen, voracher gern vnnd mit willen zu etwan mit u¨belho¨ren der underthanen zum besten verta¨diget, verstrichen, geduldet vnd hingegen das an Inen vbel begangen sovil vnns wussent, nit vngestrafft gelassen, damit sy irer Emptern inn der stille vnnd friden gewarten mo¨chten’’ One of the specific complaints presented for the first time in 1537 was the poverty of the rural clergy, who were unable to support their family on their salaries. The pastors asked that they be given additional support from the income generated by church property now administered by the magistrate. 21. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 177r–179v. 22. Egli, ‘‘Zwingli und die Synoden’’; Gordon, Clerical Discipline, 73–4. 23. Protocol of synod held 6 August 1535, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 155r–163v. The district officials from Farnsburg, Homburg, Waldenburg, and Mu¨nchenstein all reported ‘‘das sy an den predicanten, iren wib, kindern, oder der kilchen dhein mengel oder clagt wu¨ssen noch erfunden haben’’ (155v). 24. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 182r–185r. 25. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 188r–193r. 26. BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 34, 258r–260r; citation at 260r: ‘‘Ferners, haben vnsere Herren erkant, daß mann alle Jahre an statt des einen Synodi, in die Aempter, durch die H. Predicanten, ein Visitation anrichten vnd halten: damit dieselben der Kirchen vnd der Pfarrherren Haußhaltung auch was sonst in der Kirchen zu verbessern nothwendig erkundigen vnd bessern mo¨gen.’’ 27. The only record of this visitation is in a brief list of earlier visitations compiled in 1601; BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 2, no. 8b, 218: ‘‘Anno 1539 D. D. Wolfgang Weissenburger, dabej keinen Raths gesandten gedacht wirdt.’’ 28. BUB MsKiAr 23a, no. 93, 278. 29. On the controversy, see Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘ ‘Kilchen Ist uff dem Radthus’? Conflicting Views of Magistrate and Ministry in Early Reformation Basel,’’ in Debatten u€ber Legitimation von Herrschaft: Politische Sprachen in der Fr€ uhen Neuzeit, ed. Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte and Sven Tode (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006), and the literature cited there. The letters of Rudolf Gwalther, who was a student in Basel at the time, to Heinrich Bullinger reveal the deep divisions within the church; 13 April 1539, HBBW 9:106–9, no. 1254; 12 May 1539, HBBW 9:137–8, no. 1270. Grynaeus was so upset by the affair that he threatened to leave Basel; see his letters explaining his position addressed to the Zurich pastors (December 1539, HBBW

notes to pages 73– 75

321

9:253–6, no. 1332) and to Bullinger (1 January 1540, HBBW 10, no. 1343). The matter was never truly resolved but was ended by the deaths of both Grynaeus and Karlstadt in 1541. 30. BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 35, 267–71; citation at 267r: ‘‘Da so haben vnser Herren beid Ra¨ht, New vnd Alt . . . einseliglichen erkand, das sie Synody, so man ku¨nfftiger zeit halten wu¨rdet, nach der ersten Institution wie die mit raht, weyland des Tru¨wen Gottsforchtsamen Mans, doctor Oecolampadij seeliger gedechtnus, an die hand zenemmen fruchtbar geachtet, gehalten, vnd wie volgende form anzeigt beschrieben werden sollend.’’ 31. BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 35, 269r–v: ‘‘Vnd seye aber zuvorderist vnsers herren ernstlicher bevelch will vnd meinung . . . das sy das wort Godtes lauter vnd heiter, vnvermischt menschlicher Satzung, allein nach rechten waren verstandt heiliger Biblischer schrifft, mit ernstlicher zucht vnd eyffer predigen vnd dem volck Godtes fu¨rtragen, vnd sonst alle stempeneyen, Schmitz- vnd Scheltworten, vnd was ein jeder dergleichen, auß eignen anfechtungen, erdencken mo¨chte, vnderlassen, sich deren nit gebrauchen, sonder wan sie die laster (wie sie dann thun sollend) zestraffen vrsach haben, dasselbig mit dem wort Godtes, ernstlich außrichten, ihr eigner tru¨tzige, resse, rauche wort, so gar nit erbawen, fallen lan. . . . Ferner soll man auch gemeiner priesterschafft sagen, das sie sich mit allem ihrem handel, wandell, vnd Kleidungen, es seye auff den Gassen, bey den leu¨dten, oder auch in ihren heu¨ssern, mit ihren weiberen, Kinder vnd gsinde, Ehrbarlich vnd vnergerlich halten, ausserhalb Ehrlichen Gesell: vnd Wirthschafften, bey denen sie zu lieb vnd leydt woll erscheinen mo¨gen, sonst alle anderer leichtfertigen geselschafften, Tauernen, Trinckhstu¨ben vnd anderer Vppigkeiten sich mu¨essigen, aber anheimbsch mit allem fleiß vnd ernst ob ihren bu¨echern sitzen Studieren, vnd in der Schrifft sich vben, darmit sie den Volckh desto baß vorstohn mo¨gen.’’ 32. BUB MsKiAr 22a, 271r: ‘‘Zu letst soll allen Predicanten fru¨ndtlich gesagt werden, wann hinfu¨r sachen an sie gelange, die (wann sie vor) Straffwu¨rdig, vnd deßhalben billich abgestelt, vnd gestrafft werden sollend, das sie dieselben nit so wie bißhar beschehen, gleich auff den Cantzlen außschreyendt ein Oberkeit vnd ganze gemeindt verkleinen vnd vnruohwig machen, sonder solche vbelthaten, zuvor vnseren Herrn den Hau¨bteren abzuostellen vnd zuostraffen anzeigen, damit die einem Ehrsamen Raht, solliche Sachen fu¨rbringen, erfahren vnd wie sich gebeu¨rt straffen mo¨gen, wie dann ein Ehrsamer Raht jederzeit das vnrecht abzestellen vnd zuostraffen gesinnet vnd willens ist.’’ 33. BUB MsKiAr 22a, 270v: ‘‘In bedenckhung das vnsere H. auß bewegenen vrsachen, den Kilchraht aberkandt, vnd den gewalt der ihnen, laut der erkandtnus, Montags den 9nd Septembris Anno 1532 vergangen, gegeben gsin, hiemit auffgehebt, vnd darbey haben wo¨llen, das hinfu¨ro dergestalten gehandelt, das sollicher mit beyden Ra¨hten, als der ordenlichen oberkeit, vnd nit von sonderen personen geschehen solle.’’ 34. Peter Ochs, Geschichte der Stadt und Landschaft Basel (Basel, 1821), 6:145–7; the original in BStA Ratsbu¨cher B 4, Erkanntnisbu¨cher 1, 1525–44, 158v–159r. 35. BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 36, 272r: ‘‘Vnd wann es dahien kompt, daß die verordneten u¨ber den Bann, mit jemanden zuo Stadt oder Land, so ferr gehandlet, daß die dritte wahrnung beschehen, vnd demnocht noch kein besserung bey dem gewarneten erfunden, daß dann die verordneten alhie zuo Statt fu¨r sich selbs, aber vf dem Land vf anzeigen der Bannherren die Obervo¨gt alle, so dreymahlen gewarnet, vnsern Herren, den Ha¨uptern, vnd sonst niemanden anzeigen.’’ 36. Myconius’s correspondence from November and December of 1539 is full of complaints about the changes that had been introduced; see his letter of 9 November

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1539 to Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito on the rotating leadership, TB 12:115–6. He was particularly incensed by the charge that the clergy had departed from what Oecolampadius had instituted and feared that the censure of the clergy would cause great damage if those involved were not bound by an oath of silence; to Capito, 23 December 1539, BUB MsKiAr 25a, no. 10. He reported to Vadian that a seventy-yearold man had said that that he had never seen such impiety during Carnival, 7 March 1540, Vad BS 5:612–3, no. 1104. 37. Participant list, BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 35r–36r. On 12 January, Myconius wrote to Bullinger and asked for a description of the Zurich synod, and especially how the censure was conducted. In particular, he wanted to know about the oath of silence the magistrate’s delegates were required to take, HBBW 10:33–4, no. 1349. 38. Myconius was disgruntled at the way the Senate had called the synod, without consulting first with the pastors; Myconius to Bucer, 29 May 1542, BUB Ms FrGr II 9, no. 318. At the pastors’ request, the entire council attended the synod; BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 37r. There was no synod in 1541; the visitation was perhaps considered sufficient. 39. A brief summary of Bertschi’s presentation in BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 38v–39v: ‘‘Her Marx Bertschi [hat] furgetragen, Lobt den Christenlichen Yfer sollicher zusammenkunfft, dann das sye Ein zeichenn, das das Rich Gotes vnder vns sye.’’ A longer and more detailed version, submitted at the Senate’s request, in BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 43r–44v; cf. his reaction to the Senate’s charge, ‘‘als ob wir die syend, so die lester nit straffend nach vermo¨g go¨ttlichs worts oder Christenlicher yfer, besunder vß eignen anfa¨chtungen, eignen tra¨tzigen ra¨ssen, Ruchen worten, on alles erbawen, das aber wir dem vrtheil Gottes mit fro¨licher Conscientz du¨rffen befa¨lhen, vnd erbitten vns allwegen vnsers predigens halb rechnung zgend, vor allen Gottsgelerten, vnd glo¨ubigenn gmeinden.’’ 40. BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 44r: ‘‘Deren sachen halb die wir so¨llend ghandlet han, die fu¨r ein Oberkeit gho¨rend, vnd nit dem Synodum, wussend wir gar nit von dann wir rychlich dar thuon wo¨llend, dan wie vnd was Inn den Ersten Synodis zum zydten Oecolampadij, vnd inn allen Christenlichen Synodis ye ghandlet ist, vnd ghandlet werden soll, furgnomen hand, Als do sind sachen, den glauben betreffend, die hußhalltung der Kilchen, pflantzung eins Christenlichen la¨bens, abstellen der lasteren, u¨bertrettung Gottes vnd einer Christenlichem Oberkeit botten vnd verbotten, vom kilchen guot, daruß allwegen die kilchen diener, die armen vnd schuolen so¨llend erhallten werden.’’ 41. BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 45v: ‘‘das nit darum geratthen wurde, se gieng keinen vbler zu den hie, wir hetten dhein kilchen mee, alle ding gieng hinder sich, da were dhein straff, die laster giengind im schwanck, das wort, daßglichen die predicanten, werden achten, Es du¨rffte sich iren nieman annemen vnd were dhein arbeitsteliger volck dan sy etc. Dann wiewol war, das wir vil widerspenniger mutwilliger luten haben, so ist doch Got hab lob, ouch war, das wo der sachen der Religion, ouch Christenlicher Lebens vnnd wandels, allhie Baß standen an vil anderen orten im Babstumb, vnd da das Evangeli geprediget wirdt.’’ 42. BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 45r–48r. 43. BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 375v–376v. 44. Synods were held in 1543, 1545, and 1550, but protocols of these synods are not as detailed as those from the 1530s. Although the ban and visitation ordinance of 1538 had specified that a visitation be held instead of a second general synod, the visitations of the 1540s and 1550s seem to have been held every few years in place of, rather than in addition to, the yearly synod. There are no records of the visitations held

notes to pages 76– 79

323

in 1546, 1549, and 1551, other than their dates and the names of the visitors. An undated letter asking that a synod be held may date from this period; it acknowledges that no synod had been held ‘‘for some years,’’ due to war and ‘‘the dangerous times,’’ but argues that ‘‘now that things have moderated and changed somewhat,’’ it is necessary to call a new synod; BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, no. 2. 45. Similarly, the pastors and magistrate in Strasbourg saw their relationship as a mutually beneficial partnership; Birgit Emich, ‘‘ ‘Als ob es ein new bapstum were . . . ’ Straßburg auf dem Weg zur Konfessionalisierung,’’ Freiburger Di€ ozesan-Archiv 113 (1993): 129–76. 46. For an analysis of only the urban clergy, see Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘A Tale of Three Churches: Parishes and Pastors in Basel, Strasbourg, and Geneva,’’ in Calvin and the Company of Pastors: Papers Presented at the Fourteenth Colloquium of the Calvin Studies Society, May 22–24, 2003, ed. David Foxgrover, Calvin Studies Society Papers 2003 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: CRC Product Services, 2004), 95–124. 47. Eleven of the twenty-four had at least matriculated at a university; eight had been pastors elsewhere, and four of these were former priests. 48. BM 2:507. In 1536–37, the matriculations reached a high of fifty-three, and the following year there were forty-four matriculations, but these comparatively high numbers were balanced out by the low matriculations of 1534–35 (eleven) and 1541–42 (twelve). The low figure for the latter year is due to the severe outbreak of plague that hit the city in 1541. 49. Franz Eulenburg, Die Frequenz der deutschen Universit€ aten von ihrer Gr€ undung bis zur Gegenwart, Sa¨chsische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philologische-Historische Klasse, Abhandlung 54 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904), 52–64; Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universit€ aten: vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart mit besonderer R€ ucksicht auf den klassischen Unterricht, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: Veit, 1919–21), 1:194–215; Arno Seifert, ‘‘Das ho¨here Schulwesen: Universita¨ten und Gymnasien,’’ in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte 1: 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert: Von der Renaissance und der Reformation bis zum Ende der Glaubensk€ ampfe, ed. Notker Hammerstein (Munich: Beck, 1996), 256–8; for a closer examination of the decline in matriculation in the south German universities, Dieter Mertens, ‘‘Austausch und Abgrenzung: Die oberrheinischen Universita¨ten an der Wende zum 16. Jahrhundert,’’ BZ 102 (2002): 7–22. 50. ABR 6:249–50, no. 258. 51. Marcus Ho¨pperli, Severinus Erzberger and Jacob Wild were awarded bachelor’s degrees in 1538 and master’s degrees in 1541, Johann Heinrich Munzinger his bachelor’s degree in 1541 and master’s degree in 1546; BM 2:4–5; list of promotions in BUB MsKiAr 167. 52. On the problems of reestablishing the arts faculty, Theophil BurckhardtBiedermann, ‘‘Die Erneuerung der Universita¨t zu Basel in den Jahren 1529–1539,’’ Basler Beitr€ age zur vaterl€ andischen Geschichte 14 (neue Folge 4) (1896): 403–87. Severinus Erzberger became a pastor and Marcus Ho¨pperli a law professor. A third stipendiate, Johann Heinrich Munzinger, served briefly as rector of the cathedral’s Latin school, but he was a failure in this position. He became apprenticed to an apothecary and ended up as physician to the bishop of Eichsta¨tt; Beat Jenny, ‘‘Humanismus und sta¨dtische Eliten in Basel im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ in Humanismus und h€ ofisch-st€ adtische Eliten im 16. Jahrhundert: 23. deutsch-franz€ osisches Historikerkolloquium des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris in Verbindung mit dem Fachbereich Geschichtswissenschaften der Philipps-Universit€ at in Marburg vom 6. bis 9. April 1987, ed. Klaus Malettke and Ju¨rgen Voss (Bonn: Bouvier, 1989), 319–59.

324

notes to pages 79– 81

53. ‘‘D. Capitos bedencken der Schulen und Kirchen halben,’’ 3 November 1535, BStA Erziehungs Akten X 1.4, no. 3: ‘‘By dem schulmeister uff burg Hugwaldo befind ich ein zimbliche anzal knaben, aber nit uber drey, wie er selbs uff mein erforschen, mir anzeigt, von denen zuverhoffen, der sy im studieren fu¨rfaren.’’ 54. The original stipendiate was Severinus Erzberger; Erhard Battmann also received a stipend and became a pastor in 1549. A third student, Heinrich Pantaleon, apparently received support from the Senate to study at Heidelberg; see his undated letter from Heidelberg requesting support for another three or four years of study, either in Heidelberg or Wittenberg, BStA Erziehungs Akten X 15, no. 12; for details of his early education, Hilda Lietzmann, ‘‘Zu einem unbekannten Brief Heinrich Pantaleons aus dem Jahre 1576,’’ BZ 94 (1994): 75–102. Pantaleon matriculated at Basel in the spring of 1539 but was in Heidelberg by the fall of 1540, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. in June 1541. He returned to Basel, where he earned his M.A. while serving as pastor in one of the episcopal villages under Basel’s protection. In 1544, he was appointed to a post in Basel itself. For his subsequent career, see later discussion. 55. The same is true of the Zurich Prophezei, after which the new pattern of theology instruction was modeled; see Christoph Zu¨rcher, Konrad Pellikans Wirken in Z€ urich 1526–1556, Zu¨rcher Beitra¨ge zur Reformationsgeschichte 4 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), 34–9. 56. On the theology faculty, see Eberhard Vischer, ‘‘Die Lehrstu¨hle und der Unterricht an der theologischen Fakulta¨t Basels seit der Reformation,’’ in Festschrift zur Feier des 450–j€ ahrigen Bestehens der Universit€ at Basel, ed. Rektor und Regenz der Universita¨t Basel (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1910), 113–242; Ernst Staehelin, ‘‘Die Entstehung der evangelisch-theologischen Fakulta¨t in Basel,’’ in Festschrift f€ ur Hans von Schubert zu seinem 70. Geburtstag, ed. Otto Scheel (Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1929), 137–54. 57. ABR 3:388; Amy Nelson Burnettt, ‘‘Preparing the Pastors: Theological Education and Pastoral Training in Basel,’’ in History Has Many Voices, ed. Lee Palmer Wandel, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 63 (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2003), 131–51. 58. Phrygio had studied in Freiburg and Paris and received his doctorate in theology at Basel in 1513; Peter G. Bietenholz, ‘‘Phrygio, Paulus Constantinus,’’ in Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985–87), 3:79–80. Oecolampadius had studied at Heidelberg and Tu¨bingen; he then came to Basel, where he received his doctorate in theology in 1518. On Grynaeus’s education, Peter G. Bietenholz, ‘‘Grynaeus, Simon,’’ in Contemporaries of Erasmus, 2:142–6; Heinz Scheible, ‘‘Simon Grynaeus Schreibt an Joachim Camerarius: Eine Neue Werbung der Universita¨tsbibliothek Heidelberg,’’ in Melanchthon und die Reformation: Forschungsbeitr€ age, ed. Gerhard May and Rolf Decot, Vero¨ffentlichungen des Instituts fu¨r europaische Geschichte Mainz 41 (Mainz: von Zabern, 1996), 517–32. On Mu¨nster’s education, Karl Heinz Burmeister, Sebastian M€ unster: Versuch eines biographishen Gesamtbildes, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 91 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1963), 15–29. 59. Rudolf Thommen, Geschichte der Universit€ at Basel, 1532–1632 (Basel: Detloff, 1889), 109–14. Johann Werner Herzog, Athenae Rauricae sive Catalogus Professorum Academiae Basiliensis . . . (Basel: 1778), writes that Myconius held the chair in New Testament. Regardless of who was officially responsible for the theology lectures, Grynaeus’s departure was a significant loss for Basel. The Senate was so adamant about Grynaeus’s return that he was told to ride the horse lent to Phrygio back to Basel;

notes to pages 81– 82

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Karl Gauss, ‘‘Die Berufung des Simon Grynaeus nach Tu¨bingen, 1534–1535,’’ Basler Jahrbuch (1911): 88–130, at pp. 104–5. 60. On 14 July 1534, Karlstadt reported to Bullinger that he was lecturing on Deuteronomy on alternate days; HBBW 4:253–4, no. 417. 61. Myconius received his B.A. from Basel in 1514 and had spent most of the intervening time as a schoolmaster in Basel, Lucerne, and Zurich. His first pastoral post was the church of St. Alban in Basel, where he served for only a few months before being elected Oecolampadius’s successor at the cathedral. 62. Myconius to Bullinger, 7 April 1536, HBBW 6:215, no. 786. 63. Between 1540 and 1547, Myconius lectured on Matt. 1–25, then began a series of lectures on Luke 1–4 that lasted at least until 1549; BUB Ms A II 45. The pace at which he covered the material suggests that he no longer bore primary responsibility for theological instruction. Myconius’s declining health over the last few years of his life also contributed to the slower pace at which he covered the Scripture text. 64. Wissenburg’s doctorate implies that he had already been giving theology lectures, since the statutes of the theology faculty required that candidates for the doctorate attend theology lectures for seven years, and from the fifth year to lecture on both the Old and New Testaments, before they could receive the degree; Vischer, Lehrst€ uhle, 130–2. On Wissenburg, Karl Gauss, ‘‘Der Basler Reformationspfarrer Wolfgang Wissenburg,’’ Christlicher Volksfreund 51 (1925): 487–9, 498–502, 508–13, 524–5, 533–7, 548–9. 65. Burmeister, M€ unster, 97–100. Guillaume Farel was suggested as a possible successor to Grynaeus, but the Senate rejected his candidacy since he could not also serve as a pastor—presumably because he spoke French rather than German; Myconius to Farel, 8 February 1542, Herminjard 7:417–9, no. 1093. 66. Vermigli described the situation in a letter to Bullinger, 5 October 1542, ZStA E II 340, 112a. 67. Johann Gast told Conrad Hubert that the real reason for the failure to hire Vermigli was that Basel’s professors did not want to hire any foreign scholars, Paul Burckhardt, ed., Das Tagebuch des Johannes Gast: Ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte (Basel: Schwabe, 1945), 62. 68. Gast to Bullinger, 3 June 1544, ZStA E II 366, 230: ‘‘Habebimus brevi insignem actum: Lepusculus cum [Ulrich] Hugvaldo insignia doctoris accipient. Quis unquam credidisset ex anabaptista fieri doctorem et Lepusculum tanta dignitate ornantum iri.’’ Hugwald, the former Anabaptist, went on became professor of logic. There is no record in the theology Matrikel of Lepusculus having been awarded a theology degree, but he had already received his master’s degree in 1541; BM 1:343. 69. Gast to Bullinger, 19 October 1544, ZStA E II 366, 246: ‘‘Verum heus tu, Cellarius, forte melius nosti hominem quam ego, in lectorem theologum a deputatis, quorum duo sanguine illi propter uxorem, quam nuper duxit, coniuncti sunt, electus est. Academia nostra conata est irritam hanc sententiam facere; sed frustra laboravit. Miconius dedit illi calculum, neque credo, quod id ex animo fecerit; nam et ipse ambivit hanc lectionem. Lepusculus etiam spe falsa delusus est, qui doctoris titulum assumere, si lectio ei daretur sacra, se velle promisit.’’ At the beginning of the year Gast had already reported to Bullinger that Borrhaus was trying to obtain the theology post; 1 February 1544, St. Gallen MS 34 (VBS V), 249: ‘‘Cellarius lectionem theologicam ambivit, idem et Myconius noster; sed Myconius apud deputatos assecutus est, quod volebat.’’ Borrhaus had been considered as Grynaeus’s possible successor in the position of New Testament professor in 1541, but Myconius told Capito he opposed

326

notes to pages 82– 84

Borrhaus’s candidacy because of his views on the Lord’s Supper; 3 August 1541, BUB Ms Fr Gr II 9, 317: ‘‘De substituendo Cellario in locum Grynaei mecum est sermo habitus clam (ut et ego in aurem nobis hoc) prohibui, quantumvis amo: et hoc quidem propter dogma eius de Eucharistia: Nescio siquis alius de hoc negocio sentiat adversum nos pertinacius. Apud se quidem sententiam suam retinuit (excepto qui ad me librum ea de re scripsit) hucusque. At vereor, ne si sublatus fuerit in cathedram, alitur sit facturus. In suum haec nobis.’’ As Myconius reported at greater length to Martin Bucer two years later, Borrhaus had abstained from the sacrament in Basel for years and had only received it for the first time at Pentecost in 1543, when he was again being considered for a theology chair; Myconius to Bucer, 24 June 1543, ZZB Ms F 81, 388. 70. On Borrhaus/Cellarius, see Lucia Felici, Tra riforma ed eresia: La Giovinezza di Martin Borrhaus (1499–1528) (Florence: Olschki, 1995); Irena Backus, Martin Borrhaus (Cellarius), Bibliotheca dissidentium: Re´pertoire des non-conformistes religieux des seizie`me et dix-septie`me sie`cles 2 (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1981). 71. CO 38:402–6 (the preface to Calvin’s Romans commentary published in 1539); reprinted in Herminjard 6:74–8, no. 828. 72. 15 September 1534, HBBW 4:319–21, no. 440. 73. Reprinted in Thommen, Geschichte, 319–21; citation at 320. 74. Myconius to Bucer, 24 June 1543; ZZB Ms F 81, 388, partially cited in J. V. Pollet, Martin Bucer: E´tudes sur la correspondance (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958–62), 2:364–5 n. 10. 75. Vadian to Bullinger, 22 November 1545, Vad BS 6:463–4, no. 1423. Vadian was referring to the first edition of Borrhaus, In Salomonis regis filii David sacrosanctam Ecclesiastis concionem commentarius (Basel: Robert Winter, 1539). 76. For example, Oecolampadius’s Annotationes piae ac doctae in Euangelium Ioannis (Basel: Bebel, 1533), published posthumously by Oswald Myconius, is divided into 102 lectures. The first of these is an introduction to the Gospel, and each of the remaining lectures covers several verses of the Gospel text. The lectures are almost all from seven to nine pages long. On occasion they end halfway through a verse, which is then finished at the beginning of the next lecture. See the appendix for an excerpt from Oecolampadius’s commentary on Dan. 3:24–25. 77. Myconius lectured on John between June 1533 and April 1534. He apparently began these lectures immediately after sending the manuscript of Oecolampadius’s commentary on the same Gospel to the printer, for the colophon for Oecolampadius’s commentary on John gives the publication date as June 1533. Myconius’s lectures were copied by the Basel pastor Jacob Christoph Ryter sometime between 1570 and 1577, apparently from an earlier (and now lost) original; BUB Ms A II 40. Myconius’s lectures on Mark were published in 1538: In Evangelivm Marci Docta et pia Osvaldi Myconii Lucernani, iam primum in lucem edita expositio. Cum Rerum ac Verborum diligentißimo indice (Basel: Thomas Platter, 1538). Myconius gave his lectures on Matt. 1–25 from 1540 to 1547 and on Luke 1–11 between 1547 and 1549, both in BUB Ms A II 45. 78. For a lengthier discussion of Borrhaus’s commentaries, see chapter 6. 79. This varied audience was also characteristic not only of the Zurich Prophezei at its inception but also of the student body at the Genevan Academy in its early years. A number of former Catholic clergy retraining for the Reformed ministry matriculated at the Academy after its creation in 1559; Hans Nabholz, ‘‘Zu¨richs Ho¨here Schulen von der Reformation bis zur Gru¨ndung der Universita¨t, 1525–1833,’’ in Die Universit€ at Z€ urich 1833–1933 und ihre Vorl€ aufer, ed. Zu¨rich Erziehungsrat

notes to pages 84– 85

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(Zurich: Verlag der Erziehungsdirektion, 1938), 1–50, here at 5–6; Karin Maag, Seminary or University? The Genevan Academy and Reformed Higher Education, 1560–1620, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1995), 21. 80. On his inaugural disputation, Karlstadt to Bullinger, 11 January 1535, HBBW 5:56–7, no. 509. There are two more printed disputations, over both of which Karlstadt presided, from April 1538 and February 1540, in the BUB; see Barge’s description of all three disputations, Hermann Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (Niewkoop: de Graff, 1968), 2:467–8; 487–8; and 501–3; the 1540 theses are printed as an appendix, 611–3, no. 56. The theses, on the subject of self-denial (abnegatio), reflect the continued influence of mysticism on Karlstadt’s theology. For an analysis of Karlstadt’s theology during his Basel years, Martin Anton Schmidt, ‘‘Karlstadt als Theologe und Prediger in Basel,’’ Theologische Zeitschrift 35 (1979): 155–68. There are also manuscript copies of three theology disputations by Heinrich Pantaleon, presided over by Martin Borrhaus, from March 1549 and June and December 1551, BUB Ms O IV 3, 97–110, 201–11, and 213–5. Some of Myconius’s disapprobation may have been due to his animosity toward Karlstadt; Myconius to Bullinger, 26 February 1540, HBBW 10:56–8, no. 1363. Johann Gast was just as disparaging about the disputations in his correspondence with Conrad Hubert, 6 March 1540, ZZB Ms S 47:159: ‘‘Mitto etiam disputationum nostrarum propositiones alphabeticas, et satis monstrosas, minimeque cohaerentes, quas disputamus in aula collegii, egregii certe puelli, brevi alias propositiones, quae iam sub prelo sunt misearus.’’ 81. Vischer, ‘‘Lehrstu¨hle,’’ includes the theology statutes of 1540 as an appendix, 229–32. As can be seen from the careers of Martin Borrhaus and Ulrich Koch, the theology faculty enforced its rule requiring several years of teaching experience on both Old and New Testaments before an individual could receive a doctorate. Neither man had a doctorate in theology when appointed to his position, and both received their degrees roughly five years later. On 8 November, 1571, Sulzer told Johann Marbach that it would be very difficult for the latter’s sons, who had just received their master’s degrees at Basel, to receive their theology degrees at Basel because of this requirement, J. Fecht, ed., Historiae Ecclesiasticae Seculi A.N.C. XVI. Plurimorum et Celeberrimorum ex illo aevo Theologorum epistolis ad Joannem, Erasmum et Phillippum Marbachios (Durlach, 1684), 397–8. Both Marbachs received doctorates in theology from Basel in 1579, BM 2:196–7. 82. Manuscript lectures, BUB Ms O IV 3: Jonah lectures, 1–95; Mark, 113–96; Titus, 218 (lectures begun on 20 December 1551). For the practice of allowing advanced students to lecture during the summer vacation, Thommen, Geschichte, 40–1. In addition to being the assistant pastor of St. Peter, Pantaleon also taught in the Pedagogium. He resigned his pastoral post in 1551. After receiving his licenciate in theology in 1552, he began the study of medicine and taught on the medical faculty from 1557 until his death in 1595. Pantaleon’s first disputation was an exegesis of the Book of Job, on which he had lectured the previous year. At the beginning of those lectures, he had stressed how useful the book was for understanding ‘‘these dangerous times.’’ His other disputations concerned Creation and original sin, and divine providence. The 1538 disputation is an exegesis of Ex. 1–8; the 1540 disputation deals with the Christian virtues of humility, fear of God, faith, etc.; see the analysis in Barge, Karlstadt, 2:501–3 and the theses themselves, 2:611–3. 83. Burckhardt, Tagebuch, 264–6: ‘‘Quo sermone commotus admodum Miconius dixit: ‘Ut te Deus perdat, mentiris ut nebulo, du leugst wie ein Lecker.’ ’’ Jacob Grimm et al., Deutsches W€ orterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1854), defines a Lecker as a ‘‘vera¨chtlicher Schmeichler,’’ 12:482.

328

notes to pages 85– 93

84. Cf. the laments cited by Gerald Strauss, ‘‘Success and Failure in the German Reformation,’’ Past and Present 67 (1975): 30–63. 85. Four more pastors were older clergy from other areas called to Basel posts, and a fifth had worked briefly in Basel as a printer before entering the ministry. The background of the remaining six pastors is unknown. 86. The disproportion is even greater than that indicated by table 3.4, which does not include pastors appointed after 1559. In fact, when later appointments are considered, the number of pastors born during each decade changes, as follows: 1520–29, fifteen pastors; 1530–39, thirty-two pastors; 1540–49, thirty-eight pastors. 87. Valentin Lo¨tscher, ed., Felix Platter, Tagebuch (1536–1567) Basler Chroniken 10 (Basel: Schwabe, 1976), 87–8. The incident probably took place in 1547. 88. Karl Buxtorf-Falkeisen, Baslerische Stadt- und Landgeschichten aus dem sechszehnten Jahrhundert (Basel: Schweighauser, 1868), 2:92–6, citation on 94. 89. Platter was born in 1536. He writes in his autobiography that he and Johann Jacob Grynaeus matriculated at the university on the same day (in September 1551); Lo¨tscher, Felix Platter, Tagebuch, 123. Two other boys who would become pastors are listed between Platter and Grynaeus, BM 2:72–3. Zwinger was born in 1533 and matriculated in 1548 but left for Lyon later that year; BM 2:55.

chapter 4 1. On the link between humanism, Reformation, and educational reform, see the overview by Notker Hammerstein, Bildung und Wissenschaft vom 15. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert, Enzyklopa¨die deutscher Geschichte 64 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003), 1–54, as well as the literature cited there. For a brief introduction in English, Lewis Spitz, ‘‘The Importance of the Reformation for the Universities: Culture and Confessions in the Critical Years,’’ in Rebirth, Reform, Resilience: Universities in Transition 1300–1700, ed. James M. Kittelson and Pamela Transue (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), 426–67. For an overview of individual humanist school foundations and reorganizations, Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universit€ aten: Vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart mit besonderer R€ ucksicht auf den klassischen Unterricht, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: Veit, 1919–21), 1:276–326. 2. The education of future pastors was similar in Strasbourg and other Lutheran territories, James M. Kittelson, ‘‘Learning and Education: Phase Two of the Reformation,’’ in Die d€ anische Reformation vor ihrem internationalen Hintergrund, ed. Leif Grane and Kai Ho¨rby, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 46 (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 149–63. 3. Theophil Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte des Gymnasiums zu Basel: Zur dritten S€ acularfeier im Auftrag der Schulbeh€ orde (Basel: E. Birkhaeuser, 1889), 3, 113–4; Ernst Staehelin, Das theologische Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1939), 541–52. Amerbach’s proposal also included recommendations for the university. Over the next halfcentury, the Pedagogium was more closely linked to the university. For more details on both, see chapter 5. Amerbach’s proposal is reprinted in Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte des Gymnasiums, 269–75. 4. Platter’s lesson plan in Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte des Gymnasiums, 280–83; citation at 280: ‘‘Uff [Samstag] lert man sy ouch ba¨tten, wie woll sy alle tag morgens und abends in allen Classibus ba¨ttend.’’

notes to pages 93– 95

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5. Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte des Gymnasiums, 283. Castellio’s Dialogi Sacri were retellings of Bible stories in simple Latin; they are reprinted in Quellen zur Geschichte des kirchlichen Unterrichts in der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands zwischen 1530 und 1600, pt. 2, Quellen zur Geschichte des biblischen Unterrichts, ed. Johann Michael Reu (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1976), 82–150. The quarterly examination on the catechism was a specific application, for the Latin school students, of the provision in Basel’s Reformation Ordinance that parish pastors were to examine all children between the ages of seven and fourteen on their knowledge of the catechism, ABR 3:389. 6. Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte des Gymnasiums, 39. 7. The following description is based on the schedule of classes in BStA Kirchen Archiv A 3, no. 1 (Ludi Literarij), and the description of each class excerpted in Peter Ochs, Gechichte der Stadt und Landschaft Basel (Basel: Schweighaus, 1821), 6:423–7; summarized in Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte des Gymnasiums, 66–7, and partially reprinted, 284–90; supplemented by the printed ‘‘Distributio Lectionum classis quinctae in certos dies atque Horas,’’ BStA Kirchen Archiv A 3, no. 2. 8. Classis Sextae Exercitia, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 3, no. 3: ‘‘Secundo, praecipui Christianae religionis Articuli, ea Methodo, qua in Catechesi D. Oecolampadij breviter tractantur, diffusius explicantur, ita ut Adolescentes huius Classis, brevem quandam et perspicuam, Locorum Communium Theologicorum, diagrafZ ` n animo comprehensam, teneant.’’ 9. Ochs, Geschichte, 425–6; BStA Kirchen Archiv A 3, no. 3: ‘‘Tertio, Conciones singulae, quae audiuntur, sic repetuntur, lingua Latina, ut simul usus praeceptorum Logicorum et Rhetoricorum, iamprius explicatorum, domonstretur, dum quaeritur, quo genere Exordij Minister verbi usus sit, quam Propositionem vel Partitionem constituerit, quibus argumentis, quaque argumentandi forma Propositionem confirmarit, aut singula membra tractarit; et similia multa, quae ad Inventionem prudentem, aut Dispositionem artificiosam spectant, huic Auditorio demonstrantur.’’ Erasmus had recommended that boys be taken to hear sermons and then questioned about the sermon’s rhetorical structure in his Ecclesiastes sive de ratione concionandi, Opera Omnia, 5/4:263–4. 10. Beat Hel, appointed rector of the new gymnasium in 1590, served until his death in 1620. He was assisted by teachers Peter Scho¨ck, who taught from 1592 to 1628, Leonhard Na¨f (Naevius) (taught 1594–1624), and Timotheus Sturn (taught 1601–31). Both Hel and Scho¨ck had been pastors before becoming teachers, while Sturn was the son of one of Basel’s rural pastors, had received a civic stipend while a university student, and had been a teacher and assistant pastor in Biel before returning to Basel in 1595; he may have been appointed to the gymnasium post soon after, though he does not appear in any records until 1601, BUB MsKiAr 55b, 262; see Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte, 80–91. 11. The catechism was published as part of Das Geistliche vnd herrliche Kleinot der Kirchen Gottes in Statt vnd Landtschafft Basel . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1590), which also contained the Basel Confession and the city’s liturgical agenda; Ernst Staehelin, ‘‘Oekolampad-Bibliographie (Verzeichnis der im 16. Jahrhundert erschienenen Oekolampaddrucke),’’ BZ 17 (1918): 113–4, no. 224. 12. These changes had already been incorporated into the catechism that was endorsed by Mulhouse’s pastors at a synod of 1579 and printed the following year; Reu, Quellen, 1/1:156; the new interpretation of the descent into hell, 159. 13. Grynaeus explained the reason for making these changes at a general chapter meeting of the Basel clergy in 1598, BUB MsKiAr 23c, 22v: ‘‘[Er] seye vor achtzehen

330

notes to pages 95– 97

Jahren uff ein zeit von der Herren zu Mu¨llhusen ersucht worden, den Catechismum inn zwen vnd fu¨nffzig teyl zustellen, damit jeder Sontag ein articul bey Innen geleert werde. Dieweil auch der Articul Augustini, so dunckel daß etlich dz fegfeu¨r damit bestettigen, hab er nit die worth Oecolampadij, Sonder Moeconij ausgelassen vnnd inn also außgelegt’’ (here he quoted the wording from the catechism). Ironically, Calvin’s understanding of the descent into hell reflected in this passage was derived from that of Luther, who identified it with Christ’s overwhelming affliction and experience of God’s judgment. This view differed from that of Zwingli and Bullinger, who equated the descent with Christ’s burial; Erich Vogelsang, ‘‘Weltbild und Kreuzestheologie in den Ho¨llenfahrtsstreitigkeiten der Reformationszeit,’’ ARG 38 (1941): 90–132; Markwart Herzog, ‘‘Das Jenseits in der schwa¨bischen Spa¨treformation: Ein Beitrag zur Konfessionalisierung des ‘Descensus ad inferos’ mit besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung des Augsburger Ho¨llenfahrtstreits (1564–1581),’’ Bayerisches Jahrbuch f€ ur Volkskunde (2001): 1–30. 14. Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Basel’s Rural Pastors as Mediators of Confessional and Social Discipline,’’ Central European History 33 (2000): 67–85; see chapter 9. 15. Catechism copied by Thomas Platter, Jr., in 1587, followed by commentary, BUB MsKiAr 101; unpaginated; see the explanation on the first article of the creed: ‘‘In hoc primo symboli apostolici articulo duo praecipui loci communes sese exerant: 1) De Deo; 2) De providentia Dei, de quibus breuissime agemus. De Deo: Deus est spiritus aeternus, omnipotens, sapiens, bonus, clemens, misericordiens, iustus, verax, et liberrimae potestatae et est 3, pater, filius, et spiritus sanctus, conditor coeli et tarrae, et omnium qui illis continetitur [sic], redemptor, et sanctificator electione suorum.’’ This introduction is followed by twenty-five pages of further discussion, most of it concerning the doctrine of predestination. 16. Compendium Theologico-apostolico-Christianum, Das ist, Die Articul unsers Christenlichen Glaubens/wie durch den thewren Mann Gottes Johann Haußschein/ erkl€ arungs weiß/in Frag vnd Antwort gestellt . . . BUB Falk 934, no. 3; Die Lehr von deß Herren Nachtmal/wie sie von dem thewren Mann Gottes Johann Haußschein in Frag unnd Antwort gestelt . . . BUB [aleph] F XI 30, no. 3. Neither of these pamphlets has a publication date, but they could not have been printed before 1595, for a prayer in the Compendium is dated September 1594, while the pamphlet on the Lord’s Supper reproduces Biel’s testimony for Sturn, dated 11 January 1595. Both works may have been published at the same time as the third, dated pamphlet: Baptismvs ad vivvm illustratus. Die Lehr von dem Hl. Tauff/sampt was dem anhangt . . . ([Basel], 1617). On the title page of the Compendium, Sturn is identified as ‘‘der ju¨ngern Kilchen in Basel mitarbeitern.’’ 17. Baptismvs ad vivvm illustratus, 3–4: Catechism text: ‘‘Wenn hast du angefangen ein Christ seyn? Alsbald wie ich geboren vnd getaufft bin.’’ Commentary: ‘‘Ich bin von ewigkeit zu einem Christen erwo¨lt/vnd hernacher in der zeit/namblichen alsbald wie ich an diß Lieche geboren vnd darauff zum zeichen vnd bestetigung getaufft bin. Welches doch nicht also zuverstehn/als ob der Christen Kinder/so etwan in Mutter Leib absterben oder an der geburt verbleiben/darumb/weil sie nicht getaufft/solten verloren seyn: dann diese auch in der Gnadenwal begriffen.’’ 18. Die Lehr von deß Herren Nachtmal, A2r–v. Catechism text: [The Lord’s Supper] ist ein gemeine Dancksagung vnd hohe preisung deß Sterbens vnd Blutvergiessens vnsers HERren Jesu Christi/mit bezeugung Christenlicher liebe vnd einigkeit.’’ Commentary: ‘‘Deß Sterbens/welches ein wahre trennung vnd abscheidung war der Seelen von dem Leib vnsers herren Jesu Christi/doch ohne verletzung persohnlicher vereinigung beeder Naturen.’’ 19. The explanation of the Lord’s Supper was published with Grynaeus’s Zwo Christenliche Predigen, Die erste von dem grossen Trost . . . Die ander von der seligen

notes to pages 97– 99

331

Gemeinschafft der Gleubigen mit Jesu Christo . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1586), 35. The ‘‘Christian Instruction’’ was printed with his Dreizehen Christenliche Predigen . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1587), 183–95. 20. The Kirchenrat discussed the fact that children and foreigners were receiving communion without first being examined; this was a regular concern for the pastors; KRP II, 9 March and 7 December 1621, p. 337, 341. The edict requiring examination of first communicants was issued on 6 April 1622, just before Easter, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 98. Wollebius’s catechism was first published in 1622; the pastors were told on 28 March that the catechism was being produced by Sebastian Henricpetri, Kirchen Archiv DD 1, 2, 346; see also the edict’s reference to the ‘‘Christenliche Vorbereitung in wenig Fragstucken begriffen, verfassen und schon hievor in Truck geben lassen,’’ but the earliest extant version is Vorbereitung zu dem Heiligen Abendmahl: Oder Kurtzenn einfeltige Fragstuck . . . (Basel: Henrichpetri, 1628), MsKiAr 22c, no. 99. 21. Wollebius’s Christianae Theologiae Compendium is divided into two books. Bk. 1, ‘‘on God,’’ begins with a consideration first of God and then of God’s works, and then moves from Creation to the fall, the person and work of Christ, and the sacraments. Bk. 2, ‘‘on worshiping God,’’ is much shorter and considers good works as exemplified in the precepts of the Ten Commandments; Ernst Bizer, ed., Johannis Wollebii Christianae Theologiae Compendium (Neukirchen: Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins, 1935). For more on Wollebius as a theologian, see chapter 6. 22. Vorbereitung zu dem Heiligen Abendmahl, pp. 12–3, 16–7, 25 (‘‘Sie sind sichtbare Zeichen/vnd Pfa¨nder/durch welche die verheissung Gottes bekrefftiget/vnd unser Glaub noch mehr versicheret wird’’), 29. 23. For a similar example of religious education in the schools of Zweibru¨cken and Sponheim, Bernard Vogler, ‘‘La politique scolaire entre Rhin et Moselle (1556–1619),’’ Francia 3 (1975): 236–320, esp. 271–8. 24. The disagreement between Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte and Thomas Kaufmann over the degree of theological knowledge among pastors who did not matriculate in theology but studied only within the arts faculty does not take account of this development; Kaufmann, ‘‘Fru¨hneuzeitliche Religion und evangelische Geistlichkeit,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur historische Forschung 26 (1999): 381–92. In fact, these pastors had received considerable theological training, compared to their medieval predecessors, even before their matriculation at a university. 25. Eberhard Vischer, ‘‘Das Collegium Alumnorum in Basel,’’ in Aus f u€nf Jahrhunderten schweizerischer Kirchengeschichte: Zum sechzigsten Geburtstag von Paul Wernle, ed. Theologische Fakulta¨t der Universita¨t Basel (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1932), 95–162; here at pp. 98–9. Vischer provides an extensive overview of the Alumneum’s history from its founding through the eighteenth century, but, as his title implies, he does not clearly differentiate between the Alumneum—i.e., the stipendiary system that eventually required residence in one of the university’s two colleges—and the colleges themselves. Although the two institutions gradually merged, they were distinct in the sixteenth century. 26. Statutes from BStA Universita¨ts Archiv L 4 (Liber Stipendiorum), 29r–32r, 49r–52r; another copy in BUB VB Ms O 21d, where the date is given as 18 March 1545. Citation at 29v: ‘‘Es sollend auch die selbigen angenummen stipendiaten, nit wo sy wollen, oder Inen gela¨gen, sunder an denen ortten vnd enden wonen vnd vffenthalten werden . . . domit ein yeder noch siner gelegenheit, vnnd inn gu¨tter zucht gehalten, vnd nit minder inn ein erbaren, zu¨chtigen leben, dann inn der leer vfferzgen werde.’’

332

notes to pages 99– 101

27. BStA Universita¨ts Archiv L 4, 30r: ‘‘Zum sibenden, so soll ein solcher stipendiat (diewil man der Theologen inn sunders zu statt vnd land mer notturfft) fu¨r vnd fu¨r die lection der heiligen geschrifft neben anderen sinen lectionen flissig ho¨ren, vnd dorinnen fu¨rfarenn, damit er zu siner zyt, inn die kilch vnd vff die Cantzell, gebrucht werden mo¨chte, es were zu statt vnd land wo man sin bedo¨rffte.’’ In addition to supporting twelve Baslers, the Senate also provided a smaller sum to support eight ‘‘foreign’’ students who would later be able to ‘‘spread God’s word’’ abroad. Like their Basel counterparts, these foreigners were liable to repay the cost of their support to the city if they did not abide by the conditions of the stipend, and they were obliged to serve the city if needed. Only six of these foreign stipendiates became Basel pastors. The Senate also set aside a smaller amount to support a number of poor but deserving boys in the Latin schools, with the promise that they would be eligible for the Alumneum once they were ready to attend the university. 28. BStA Universita¨ts Archiv L 4, 85r–90r; citations from 85r: ‘‘Jeronimus Bothanus: assiduus auditor, verum proficiendo tum caret ingenio; Isreahel Eschenberger: tediosus in studio; Balthasar Hummel: contulit se ad Apothecarum, nulla lectiones audit; Jacobus Huckelin: vagabundus, lutenista, negligens procedens in studio.’’ From this point on, all new stipendiates swore in the presence of witnesses to accept the statutes, and their names were recorded in the Liber Stipendiatorum. The residency requirement was a revival of that which applied to the late medieval bursa; see later. 29. Original edict of 12 December 1548, BStA Ratsbu¨cher A 6, Schwarzes Buch, 1523ff, 136v–138r; petition concerning nonenforcement of the ban on marriages and the Senate’s response, BStA Erzeihungs Akten X 15, nos. 8 (2 August 1553), 9 (3 February 1554), and 13 (12 February 1554). 30. See the letter of Johann Gast to Conrad Hubert, 4 December 1552; Paul Burckhardt, ed., Das Tagebuch des Johannes Gast: Ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte (Basel: Schwabe, 1945), 64. 31. Forty stipendiates became pastors in the city or territory of Basel, and one became a professor at the university. In addition, four stipendiates became pastors in Baden, across the Rhine from Basel. At least one of the sixty-three stipendiates died while still a student; it is likely that a few of the fifteen stipendiates for whom there is no information also died while still students. If the foreign pastors are added into the total of those who entered the service of the church and the overall number of stipendiates reduced by the number of students who died before leaving school, the proportion of graduates who served the city and church rises to over 70 percent. 32. The ‘‘Sulzer minus’’ endowment, for example, amounting to five Pfunde per year, was almost always given to one of the civic stipendiates. The donors who created these stipends were generally individuals whose families had died during the plague and thus had no surviving heirs. 33. A complete listing of the bequests, including the terms for their use, in BUB VM Ms O 21c. 34. BUB VB Ms O 21c, 37–41. 35. The Ru¨din, Euglin and Keller stipends each paid thirty Pfunde per year. 36. For the university stipendiates, forty-two out of seventy-five; for the civic stipendiates, forty-three out of eighty-nine. For the sake of convenience, I have counted the small number of students who received both civic and university stipends among the civic stipendiates. The lower proportion of future clergy among the civic stipendiates is a minimum number, since there is a larger percentage of civic stipendiates on whose future careers there is no information. There is no information on

notes to pages 101– 104

333

almost 40 percent of the civic stipendiates (thirty-four out of eighty-nine) while only 20 percent of the university stipendiates (sixteen out of seventy-five) are unaccounted for. Since it can be assumed that some of the civic stipendiates died while still students, the actual percentage of surviving students who entered the ministry would be somewhat higher, but probably not as high as the proportion of surviving university stipendiates who entered the ministry. 37. See, for instance, BStA Universita¨ts Archiv Bu¨cher B 1, 1, 57r (Johann Jacob Molitor deprived of his stipend), 64v (three students deprived of their stipends), 67r (Theodor Werenfels deprived of stipend). University officials were also far more careful about recording the deaths of stipendiates. During this period, at least seven of the university stipendiates died (six of them during the epidemic of 1610–11), while the deaths of only three of the civic stipendiates are recorded (all in 1610). It can reasonably be assumed that some of the civic stipendiates for whom there is no information died while still students. I was unable to locate any record of the civic stipendiates between 1613 and 1618. Basel was not the only university to benefit from the creation of private stipends; individuals established private stipends for students at Tu¨bingen as well. There are striking similarities between the stipends at the two universities. In both places there was an overwhelming preference to support students of theology, an increasing tendency to designate family members as having first opportunity for financial support, and an increasing burden placed on the Academic Senate in administering the stipends; Volker Scha¨fer, ‘‘ ‘Zur Beforderung der Ehre Gottes und Fortpflanzung der Studien’: Bu¨rgerliche Studienstiftungen an der Universita¨t Tu¨bingen zwischen 1477 und 1750,’’ in Stadt und Universit€ at im Mittelalter und in der fr€ uheren Neuzeit, ed. E. Maschke and J. Sydow, Vero¨ffentlichungen des Su¨dwestdeutschen Arbeitskreises fu¨r Stadtgeschichtsforschung 3 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1977), 99–111. The private stipends established at Wittenberg and Leipzig also tended to favor family members, and some (although not all) were intended for theology students, Andreas Go¨ßner, Die Studenten an der Universit€ at Wittenberg: Studien zur Kulturgeschichte des studentischen Alltags und zum Stipendienwesen in der zweiten H€ alfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Arbeiten zur Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte 9 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003), 90–101; 145–64. 38. Terms of the Erasmianum in BUB VB Ms O21c, pp. 69–75. In addition to the regular stipends, additional funds were available to support poor students on a discretionary basis; the recipients of these funds are examined by Lucia Felici, ‘‘The Erasmusstiftung and Europe: The Institution, Organization, and Activity of the Foundation of Erasmus of Rotterdam from 1538 to 1600,’’ History of Universities 12 (1993): 25–63. 39. BUB Ms C VIa 71, vol. 2, 293r–296r; vol. 3, 443r. Hahn’s widow was given a final installment from the fund in 1572, since her husband died only a few days before the payment was scheduled. 40. Ernst Riegg also stresses the importance of financial support that enabled future pastors to complete the many years of study required for their careers, Konfliktbereitschaft und Mobilit€ at: Die protestantischen Geistlichen zw€ olf s€ uddeutscher Reichst€ adte zwischen Passauer Vertrag und Restitutionsedikt, Schriften zur su¨dwestdeutschen Landeskunde 43 (Leinfelden: DRW, 2002), 29–36, 76–84. 41. Often students were housed in church property that had been taken over by a city government or territorial ruler; for descriptions of the process in Heidelberg, Eike Wolgast, ‘‘Das Collegium Sapientiae in Heidelberg im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur die Geschichte des Oberrheins 147 (1999): 303–18; in Zurich, Heinzpeter Stucki, ‘‘Bullinger, der Zu¨rcher Rat und die Auseinandersetzung um das Alumnat

334

notes to pages 104– 105

1538–1542,’’ in Heinrich Bullinger 1504–1575: Gesammelte Aufs€ atze zum 400 Todestag, ed. U. Ga¨bler and E. Herkenrath, Zu¨rcher Beitra¨ge zur Reformationsgeschichte 7 (Zu¨rich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), 291–303; in Tu¨bingen, Martin Brecht, ‘‘Herkunft und Ausbildung der protestantischen Geistlichen des Herzogtums Wu¨rttemberg im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur Kirchengeschichte 80 (1969): 163–75; in Marburg, Walter Heinemeyer, ‘‘ ‘Pro studiosis pauperibus’: Die Anfa¨nge des reformatorischen Stipendiatenwesens in Hessen,’’ in Studium und Stipendium: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des hessischen Stipendiatenwesens, ed. W. Heinemeyer, Vero¨ffentlichungen der historischen Kommission fu¨r Hessen 37 (Marburg: 1977), 77–100. 42. Arno Seifert, ‘‘Das ho¨here Schulwesen: Universita¨ten und Gymnasien,’’ in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte 1: 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert: Von der Renaissance und der Reformation bis zum Ende der Glaubensk€ ampfe, ed. Notker Hammerstein (Munich: Beck, 1996), 262–64. On the late medieval bursa see Rainer Christoph Schwinges, ‘‘Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte Spa¨tmittelalterlicher Studentenbursen in Deutschland,’’ in Schulen und Studium im Sozialen Wandel des hohen und sp€ aten Mittelalters, ed. Johannes Fried (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1986), 527–64. On the bursa in Basel before the Reformation, Edgar Bonjour, Die Universit€ at Basel, von den Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart, 1460–1960 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1960), 74–7; Marc Sieber, ‘‘Ungehobelte Studenten, Wo¨lfe und singende Professoren: Das Basler Universita¨tsleben im ausgehenden Mittelalter,’’ in Begegnungen mit dem Mittelalter in Basel: Eine Vortragsreihe zur medi€ avistischen Forschung, ed. Simona Slanicka (Basel: Schwabe, 2000), 123–41. 43. Myconius’s account of the incident to Bullinger, 26 November 1537, HBBW 7:307–9, no. 1071. 44. Vischer, ‘‘Collegium Alumnorum,’’ 99; edict of 12 December 1548, BStA Ratsbu¨cher A 6, Schwarzes Buch, 1523ff, 136v–138r. The Senate made an exception for the sons of pastors, who could continue to live with their parents, but from 1557 pastors’ sons were also required to live in one of the colleges; Vischer, ‘‘Collegium Alumnorum,’’ 104. The Lower College was the only one of Basel’s medieval bursa that survived the university’s refounding. Basel’s stipendiary system was originally more like that of Wittenberg, where the students were not required to live together, than like that of Marburg or Wu¨rttemberg, where stipendiates were housed together and lived separately from nonstipendiates; see the discussion of this provision of the Marburg Studienordnung in Gerhard Mu¨ller, ‘‘Philipp Melanchthon und die Studienordnung fu¨r die hessischen Stipendiaten von Mai 1546,’’ ARG 51 (1960): 223–42. 45. Amerbach’s recommendations in BUB Ms C VIa 70, 143–4; he recommended a ‘‘vir aliquis doctrina et prudentia excellens, pietate et auctoritate gravis.’’ 46. The statutes of the respective colleges are contained in the opening pages in the Matricula Superioris Collegii, BUB Ms A N II 12, 1–22, and the Matricula Inferioris Collegii, BUB Ms A N II 17, 1–40. I have cited provisions from both sets of statutes to give a more complete sense of student life within one of the colleges. 47. The duties of the prefect were described in the statutes of each college; an ordinance specifically detailing his duties as oeconomus, or housemaster, was adopted on 10 October 1562; BUB Ms O II 46, no. 16. 48. List of prefects for the Upper College, BUB Ms AN II 6, 30–3; for the Lower College BUB Ms AN II 17, 169. A few of the prefects were only in their teens when appointed to the position. At the other end of the spectrum, the position could also be given to more experienced men who arrived in Basel and needed a job: Thomas Grynaeus and Simon Sulzer, both expelled from Bern for their so-called Lutheran sympathies (in 1546 and 1548, respectively) served as prefects of the Upper College.

notes to pages 105– 108

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49. List of coregents for the Upper College, BUB Ms AN II 6, 45; there is no equivalent list of coregents for the Lower College. Marcus Ho¨pperli, who taught successively Greek, physics, and law, was coregent of the Upper College for fourteen years. His successor, the professor of Organon Johann Hospinian, was coregent for thirteen years. Johann Fu¨glin, professor of rhetoric, succeeded Hospinian. All three men men died in office. 50. BStA Universita¨ts Archiv, Bu¨cher, B 1, 1, 41r; 42r. 51. Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Generational Conflict in the Late Reformation: The Basel Paroxysm,’’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32 (2001): 219–44. 52. BUB Ms C VIa 70, 150–1. 53. BStA, Universita¨ts Archiv Bu¨cher, B 1,1, 28 June 1594, 83v. 54. The oath in BStA Universita¨ts Archiv Bu¨cher L 4, 64–7r; new statutes: BstA Universita¨ts Archiv Akten VII 1, 1, ‘‘Leges Collegiorum,’’ copy in BUB Ms O II 46, no. 13, 9r–10v. 55. For example, Senior Heinrich Brucker received the Bertschi stipend in 1621 ‘‘officii nomine’’; BStA Universita¨ts Archiv Bu¨cher L 5, 7; in 1624 it was resolved to give the ab Andlau stipend to the senior of the Upper College, BStA Universita¨ts Archiv Bu¨cher L 5, 34. 56. Vischer assumes that the Upper College stopped accepting paying boarders, but he cites no evidence for this assumption, and by the early eighteenth century such boarders were again (or still) being accepted; ‘‘Collegium Alumnorum,’’ 108–9. On the merger of the two colleges, Andreas Staehelin, Geschichte der Universit€ at Basel 1632–1818, Studien zur Geschichte der Wissenschaften in Basel 4/4 (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1957), 377–8. The university Pedell continued to live in an apartment in the Lower College. 57. In addition to the studies cited in note 41, see Bruce Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners in W€ urttemberg during the Late Reformation, 1581–1621 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 24–43. 58. Complaints about both the quantity and quality of the food served in the colleges were common. The statutes specified how often college residents were to be served meat, and how much bread and wine they could consume each day. The prefects were in a difficult situation, because they could not cover the cost of adequate meals from what they were given; Vischer, ‘‘Collegium Alumnorum,’’ 107–8. 59. Sergei N. Eisenstadt first proposed this structural/functional approach as an explanation of generational conflict, From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1956). Although he applied it to modern society, his ideas also illuminate the key role played by young men who were making the transition from student to the lower levels of power and prestige in the restricted and intertwined social web of Basel’s university and church. Over the course of the seventeenth century there were frequent complaints about the conduct and laxity of several of the prefects, which may indicate not only the difficulty of the job itself, given the financial contraints, but also the differing priorities of prefects and university officials; Staehelin, Geschichte, 345–49. It should also be noted that the cases Staehelin cites are from the later seventeenth and eighteenth century, not from the period discussed here. 60. Erzberger’s attitude toward Fu¨glin is clear in his description of the controversy over the Lord’s Supper that erupted after a sermon Erzberger gave on Christmas Day, 1570; BUB Ms Falk 819. The controversy is more fully described in Burnett, ‘‘Generational Conflict.’’ Karl Mannheim first pointed to the importance for transmitting cultural values of ‘‘intermediate generations,’’ i.e., those whose age places

336

notes to pages 108– 113

them between the biological generations of father and son, ‘‘The Problem of Generations,’’ in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. Paul Kecskemeti (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), 276–322.

chapter 5 1. For the conceptualization of rhetoric and dialectic as communication theory, see Wilbur Samuel Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 3–5. 2. This is the now canonical formulation of Paul Kristeller; see, for instance, the essays collected in Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanist Strains (New York: Harper, 1961); Hanna H. Gray, ‘‘Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence,’’ Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 497–514. 3. On the changes to logic at the turn of the sixteenth century, T. Heath, ‘‘Logical Grammar, Grammatical Logic and Humanism in Three German Universitites,’’ Studies in the Renaissance 18 (1971): 9–64. E. J. Ashworth provides a brief overview of the developments in logic between the late fifteenth and early seventeenth century, Language and Logic in the Post-medieval Period, Synthese Historical Library 12 (Dordrecht: Riedel, 1974), 1–25; see also Wilhelm Risse, Die Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 1500–1640 (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1964), 9–14. 4. Peter Mack, ‘‘Humanist Rhetoric and Dialectic,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 82–99; Alan Perreiah, ‘‘Humanist Critiques of Scholastic Dialectic,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982): 3–22. 5. Mack, ‘‘Humanist Rhetoric’’; Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 92–130; Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Topica Universalis: Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft, Paradeigmata 1 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983), 3–21; John Monfasani, ‘‘Humanism and Rhetoric,’’ in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy, ed. A. Rabil (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 171–235. 6. On Agricola’s impact and Erasmus’s role in his popularization, see Lisa Jardine, ‘‘Distinctive Discipline: Rudolph Agricola’s Influence on Methodical Thinking in the Humanities,’’ in Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius (1444–1485): Proceedings of the International Conference at the University of Groningen, ed. R. Akkerman and A. J. Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 38–57, and ‘‘Inventing Rudolph Agricola: Cultural Transmission, Renaissance Dialectic, and the Emerging Humanities,’’ in The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 39–86. For a survey of many of these texts, including an analysis of the three editions of Melanchthon’s dialectic, see Risse, Logik, 14–78. 7. CR 13:517–28; the first two of the ten tractates that make up Caesarius’s text deal with predicables and predicaments, Dialectica Ioann. Caesarii . . . (Mainz: Schoeffer, 1543), 1–52. The predicables (genus, species, difference, propria, and accidents) were the five qualities by which all concepts could be described; the predicaments (substance, quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, time, place, position, and habitus) were categories used to organize concepts; Howell, Logic and Rhetoric, 16–21. Risse calls Caesarius’s dialectic ‘‘a historically more influential and systematically interesting type of rhetorical logic [than the pure Ciceronianism of Valla and Agricola, built] on an Aristotelian base,’’ Logik, 25–31; he characterizes Melanchthon’s approach

notes to pages 113– 114

337

to dialectic as ‘‘theologically orthodox, Aristotelian in its conceptual structure and Ciceronian-rhetorical in its method of presentation,’’ 83; a description of the various editions of Melanchthon’s text, 83–105. See also Gu¨nter Frank, ‘‘Melanchthons Dialektik und die Geschichte der Logik,’’ in Melanchthon und das Lehrbuch des 16. Jahrhunderts: Begleitband zur Ausstellung im Kulturhistorischen Museum Rostock 25. April bis 13. Juli 1997, ed. Ju¨rgen Leonhardt (Rostock: Universita¨t Rostock philosophische Fakulta¨t, 1997), 125–45. 8. Neal Ward Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 67–115; Ong, Ramus, 225–69. 9. Gerhard Mu¨ller, ‘‘Die Aristoteles-Rezeption im deutschen Protestantismus,’’ in Die Rezeption der Antike: Zum Problem der Kontinuit€ at zwischen Mittelalter und Renaissance, ed. August Buck (Hamburg: Hauswedell, 1981), 55–70. On dialectic instruction, see Joseph S. Freedman, ‘‘Philosophy Instruction within the Institutional Framework of Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era,’’ History of Universities 5 (1985): 117–66. 10. Ju¨rgen Leonhardt, ‘‘Melanchthon als Verfasser von Lehrbu¨chern,’’ in Leonhardt, Melanchthon und das Lehrbuch, 13–32; Frank, ‘‘Melanchthon’s Dialektik.’’ 11. Carl Joachim Classen, ‘‘Melanchthon’s First Manual on Rhetorical Categories in Criticism of the Bible,’’ in The Passionate Intellect: Essays on the Transformation of Classical Traditions. Presented to Professor I. G. Kidd, ed. Lewis Ayres (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995), 297–322; Kees Meerhoff, ‘‘The Significance of Philipp Melanchthon’s Rhetoric in the Renaissance,’’ in Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. Peter Mack (Basingstoke, England: St. Martin’s, 1994), 46–92; Uwe Schnell, Die homiletische Theorie Philipp Melanchthons, Arbeiten zur Geschichte und Theologie des Luthertums 20 (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1968), 17–36; Lowell C. Green, ‘‘Melanchthon’s Relation to Scholasticism,’’ in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, ed. Carl R. Trueman and R. Scott Clark (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 1999), 273–88. For an example of Melanchthon’s use of rhetorical/dialectical method in his John commentary, Timothy J. Wengert, Philipp Melanchthon’s Annotationes in Johannem in Relation to Its Predecessors and Contemporaries, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 220 (Geneva: Droz, 1987), 167–212. On the use of Melanchthon’s method by his students, see especially the three articles by Robert Kolb, ‘‘The Advance of Dialectic in Lutheran Theology: The Role of Johannes Wigand (1523–1587),’’ in Regnum, Religio et Ratio: Essays Presented to Robert M. Kingdon, ed. J. Friedman, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 8 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1984), 93–102; ‘‘Teaching the Text: The Commonplace Method in Sixteenth Century Lutheran Biblical Commentary,’’ Bibliotheque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 49 (1987): 571–85; and ‘‘Philipp’s Foes, but Followers Nonetheless: Late Humanism among the GnesioLutherans,’’ in The Harvest of Humanism in Central Europe: Essays in Honor of Lewis W. Spitz, ed. Manfred P. Fleischer (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), 159–76. I will discuss the discipline of rhetoric more fully in chapter 7. 12. On Zurich, see Jacob Bedrot to Oswald Myconius, 16 August 1540, TB 12:180, cited in J. V. Pollet, Martin Bucer: E´tudes sur la correspondance (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958–62), 2:302, n. 2; on Bullinger and the Genevans, Olivier Fatio, M
ethode et Th
eologie: Lambert Daneau et les d
ebuts de la scholastique r
eform
ee, Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance 147 (Geneva: Droz, 1976), 35–43; Bullinger is cited p. 65 n. 34; Hyperius, De Theologo, seu de ratione studii theologici Libri IIII (Basel: Oporinus, 1582), 50 (bk. 1, chap. 4). See Beza’s defense of Aristotelian logic applied to theology in his introduction to Daneau’s Christianae Isagoges; Beza Corr 24:375–81.

338

notes to pages 115– 116

13. On the developments in Ramus’s dialectic, see Wilhelm Risse, ‘‘Die Entwicklung der Dialektik bei Petrus Ramus,’’ Archiv f€ ur die Geschichte der Philosophie 42 (1960): 36–72; for its connection to the humanist dialectical tradition, Ong, Ramus, 172–24; Lutz Danneberg, ‘‘Die Analysis logica in den ramistischen Dialektiken,’’ in Terminigebrauch und Folgebeziehung: Festband zu Ehren von Prof. Horst Wessel, ed. Uwe Scheffler and Klaus Wuttich (Berlin: Logos, 1998), 129–57. 14. This characterization of Ramist dialectic draws on the discussions of Ong, Ramus, 171–213; Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts, 129–44; Howell, Logic and Rhetoric, 146–72; Danneberg, ‘‘Analysis logica’’; Schmidt-Biggemann, Topica Universalis, 31–66; and Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 146–53. 15. Barbara Bauer, ‘‘Dialektik,’’ in Melanchthon und die Marburger Professoren (1527–1627): Katalog und Aufs€ atze, ed. Barbara Bauer, Schriften der Universita¨tsbibliothek Marburg 89 (Marburg: [Universita¨tsbibliothek Marburg], 1999), 1:86–97. E. J. Ashworth’s statement reflects both the perceived strength and fundamental weakness of Ramist dialectic, and it typifies the attitude of most philosophers toward Ramism: ‘‘If logic had to be learned at school or university, far better from the student’s point of view to learn it from a book written in a lively manner with a minimum of technical jargon and, indeed, a minimum of logic’’; Language and Logic, 16. 16. Joseph S. Freedman, ‘‘The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c. 1570–c. 1630,’’ Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993): 98–152; see also Ong, Ramus, 295–318. The arts faculty of Marburg also opposed attempts to introduce Ramist methodology in the Pedagogium in 1575; Arnd Friedrich, Die Gelehrtenschulen in Marburg, Kassel und Korbach zwischen Melanchthonismus und Ramismus in der zweiten H€ alfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Quellen und Forschungen zur Hessischen Geschichte 47 (Darmstadt: Historische Kommission Darmstadt, 1983), 62–71. 17. Gerhard Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn in ihrer Fr€ uhzeit (1584–1660): Ein Beitrag zum Hochschulwesen des deutschen Kalvinismus im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation (Wiesbaden: Historisches Kommission fu¨r Nassau, 1981), 205–7; see Howard Hotson’s comparison of Ramism in Herborn and Heidelberg, Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588–1638: Between Renaissance, Reformation, and Universal Reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 14–50. 18. On the varieties of semi-Ramists, see Risse, Logik, 179–88. Ong refers to them as Mixts or Systematics, Ramus, 298–301. On the context for the development of semi-Ramism, and especially the role played by Bartholomaeus Keckermann, Howard Hotson, ‘‘Philosophical Pedagogy in Reformed Central Europe between Ramus and Comenius,’’ in Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication, ed. Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 29–50. Ju¨rgen Moltmann suggested that Ramism was adopted especially by those Reformed theologians who opposed the Genevan form of Orthodoxy and was responsible for a form of Calvinist humanism and pietism, ‘‘Zur Bedeutung des Petrus Ramus fu¨r Philosophie und Theologie im Calvinismus,’’ Zeitschrift f u€r Kirchengeschichte 68 (1957): 295–318. More recent scholars of Ramism have rejected this claim. Christoph Strohm, for example, explains Ramism’s popularity as a reflection of the contemporary need to see order in society, ‘‘Theologie und Zeitgeist: Beobachtungen zum Siegeszug der Methode des Petrus Ramus am Beginn der Moderne,’’ Zeitschrift f u€r Kirchengeschichte 110 (1999): 352–71. 19. Inge Mager, ‘‘Lutherische Theologie und aristotelische Philosophie an der Universita¨t Helmstedt im 16. Jahrhundert: Zur Vorgeschichte des Hofmannschen

notes to pages 116– 118

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Streites im Jahre 1598,’’ Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft f€ ur nieders€ achsische Kirchengeschichte 73 (1975): 83–98; Walter Sparn, Wiederkehr der Metaphysik: Die ontologische Frage in der lutherischen Theologie des fr€ uhen 17. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Calver, 1976), 5–20; Kristian Jensen, ‘‘Protestant Rivalry: Metaphysics and Rhetoric in Germany c. 1590–1620,’’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (1990): 24–43. 20. Hans Emil Weber, Die philosophische Scholastik des deutschen Protestantismus im Zeitalter der Orthodoxie (Leipzig, 1907), and Der Einfluß der protestantischen Schulphilosophie auf die orthodox-lutherische Dogmatik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969); Paul Althaus, Die Prinzipien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik im Zeitalter der Aristotelischen Scholastik (Leipzig: Scholl, 1914). 21. On the varieties of ‘‘Renaissance Aristotelianisms,’’ see Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 10– 33. John Patrick Donnelly does not make clear the distinction between dialectic and metaphysics or take into account the evolution of the former in northern Europe over the sixteenth century; as a consequence, he overestimates the importance of, as his title says, ‘‘Italian Influences on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 7 (1976): 81–101. Richard A. Muller has not always been clear in his definition of ‘‘philosophy,’’ although he tended to use it as synonymous with metaphysics in ‘‘Vera Philosophia cum Sacra Theologia Nusquam Pugnat: Keckermann on Philosophy, Theology and the Problem of Double Truth,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 15 (1984): 341–65. More recently, however, he has pointed to the difficulties of discussing the sixteenth-century use of ‘‘Aristotelian philosophy’’ in ‘‘Reformation, Orthodoxy, ‘Christian Aristotelianism,’ and the Eclecticism of Early Modern Philosophy,’’ Dutch Review of Church History 81 (2001): 306–25. 22. On the ease of learning Ramism, see Hotson, Alsted, 14–24; Lazarus Scho¨ner, the rector of the Marburg Pedagogium, was an ardent defender of Ramism because he believed it was much easier for students to learn, especially at the lower levels; Arnd Friedrich, ‘‘Das Pa¨dagogium der Universita¨t Marburg zwischen Melanchthonianismus und Ramismus,’’ in Bauer, Melanchthon und die Marburger Professoren, 2:707–36. 23. See the more detailed description of the curriculum in Rudolf Thommen, Geschichte der Universit€ at Basel, 1532–1632 (Basel: Detloff, 1889), 264–67; the Studienordnungen are reprinted as appendices, 339–48. Wolfgang Rother briefly summarizes the contents of the curricular statutes, with some corrections to Thommen, ‘‘Zur Geschichte der Basler Universita¨tsphilosophie im 17. Jahrhundert,’’ History of Universities 2 (1982): 153–91. On the importance of Aphthonius for humanist education, Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 122–60. The dialectic text referred to by the statutes was Johann Caesarius’s Dialectica in decem tractatus digesta. The Basel philosophy professor Johannes Hospinian published a variety of dialectic texts that were dependent on Caesarius; these are described by Risse, Logik, 32. 24. After the creation of the Pedagogium, students were required to pass an examination before proceeding on to the baccalaureate level as well; Thommen, Geschichte, 264. 25. Rother claims that the Pedagogium was established already in 1540, but the statutes from 1540 make no mention of this introductory level of instruction, ‘‘Geschichte,’’ 154. 26. Only in 1617 did the Academic Senate require that students of theology attend lectures on Hebrew; Stephen G. Burnett, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies:

340

notes to pages 118– 121

Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 68 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 23–4. 27. Before being granted the master’s degree, a student had to pass two oral examinations and participate in a public disputation, although the disputation could be waived; Thommen, Geschichte, 83–5. 28. On the conflict, see Thommen, Geschichte, 41–2; Theophil Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte des Gymnasiums zu Basel: Zur dritten S€ acularfeier im Auftrag der Schulbeh€ orde (Basel: E. Birkhaeuser, 1889), 39–44. Platter was told to use a text that was even more elementary than Willichius. Willichius’s Erotematum dialectices libri tres was first published in Strasbourg in 1544. In the introduction to his own Erotemata dialectices of 1547, Melanchthon recommended both Caesarius and Willichius as elementary introductions to Aristotle; Risse, Logik, 89; 108–10. 29. Perionius’s text, De dialectica libri III, was first published in Paris in 1543. It had a strong advocate in the person of Coelio Secundo Curione, appointed to Basel’s chair of rhetoric in 1546. Curione published the text together with his commentary on it in 1549; two years later, he produced an epitome of Perionius’s dialectic, with a preface to Thomas Platter, stating his intention to make the text ‘‘minus spinosa et planiora’’ for schoolboys, Epitome Dialecticae Ioachimi Perionij (Basel: Oporinus, 1551); Risse, Logik, 143 n. 86. In 1554, the student Gerwig Blarer wrote to his father, the reformer Ambrosius Blarer, that as a new student at the baccalaureate level, he was attending lectures on Perionius’s dialectic and later would study either Caesarius or Sturm. He was also still attending study sessions using Willichius’s dialectic; Traugott Schiess, ed., Briefwechsel der Br€ uder Ambrosius und Thomas Blaurer 1509–1548. 3 vols. (Freiburg im Bresgau: Fehsenfeld, 1908–12), 3:267–8, no. 1942. According to Risse, Perionius was ‘‘more an Aristotelian with his mouth than with his heart, for behind his programmatic defense of Aristotle is buried a rather clear version of Ciceronian rhetorical dialectic,’’ Logik, 143. 30. Thommen, Geschichte, 342–4. 31. On Hospinian’s importance for the teaching of dialectic in Basel, see Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘The Educational Roots of Reformed Scholasticism: Dialectic and Scriptural Exegesis in the Sixteenth Century,’’ Dutch Review of Church History 84 (2004): 299–317. 32. Thommen, Geschichte, 344–5. Thommen gives the date as 1591; Rother argues that the statutes date from 1589, ‘‘Geschichte,’’ 155. Samuel Koch and Jacob Brandmu¨ller, the professors who taught at the Pedagogium, were also pastors, and they derived most of their income from these posts. There was, therefore, no problem with pensioning off unneeded professors when the Pedagogium was eliminated. 33. Andreas Go¨ßner sees a similar development in improved preparation with the development of the F€ urstenschulen in Saxony, but he emphasizes the heterogeneity in educational preparation among students at the university of Wittenberg because so many of them came from outside of Saxony, Die Studenten an der Universit€ at Wittenberg: Studien zur Kulturgeschichte des studentischen Alltags und zum Stipendienwesen in der zweiten H€ alfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Arbeiten zur Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte 9 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003), 32–40. 34. Significantly, the later theology professor and antistes Johannes Wollebius presided over the 1608 disputation. The remaining seventeen printed disputations on metaphysics from the seventeenth century all date from 1645 to 1680; Rother, ‘‘Geschichte,’’ 188–9 n. 91. 35. The printed study plan of the Gymnasium in BStA Kirchen Archiv A 3, no. 3: ‘‘Logica, cuius praecepta maxime necessaria ad Organi Aristotelei methodum

notes to pages 121– 124

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accomodata, breviter et perspecue docentur, exemplisque familiarissimis, Oratorum, Poetarum, Theologorum, et aliorum illustrantur.’’ Joseph S. Freedman has pointed out that Ramism was taught primarily at the level of the secondary school rather than at the university, ‘‘The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus.’’ 36. Walter Ong, ‘‘Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger and Shakespeare,’’ in Classical Influences on European Culture, AD 1500–1700., ed. R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 91–126, and ‘‘Christianus Urstisius and Ramus’s New Mathematics,’’ Bibliotheque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 36 (1974): 603–10; Carlos Gilly, ‘‘Zwischen Erfahrung und Spekulation: Theodor Zwinger und die religio¨se und kulturelle Krise seiner Zeit,’’ BZ 77 (1977): 57–138; 79 (1979): 25–224; Wolfgang Rother, ‘‘Ramus and Ramism in Switzerland,’’ in The Influence of Peter Ramus: Studies in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Philosophy and the Sciences, ed. Mordechai Feingold et al., Schwabe-Philosophica 1 (Basel: Schwabe, 2001), 9–37, and ‘‘Geschichte.’’ 37. There are very few pastors who matriculated at a university before 1540 whose birthdays are known. I have calculated ages according to birth dates (from Karl Gauss, Basilea Reformata: Die Gemeinden der Kirche Basel Stadt und Land und Ihre Pfarrer seit der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart [Basel: Historische und antiquarische Gesellschaft, 1930]) and matriculation dates (from BM 2 and 3), but these statistics are necessarily imprecise. Particularly for the older pastors, only the birth years (and not the birth dates) are known. Matriculations were recorded according to the term of each rector, who was elected in May, and generally the matriculations are undated. It is possible to make a rough estimate of when a student matriculated by looking at his relative position in the chronological list of students. If a student received a degree (whether B.A. or M.A.), the date the degree was granted is recorded. The result is not exact, but gives a general approximation of how long it took students to proceed from matriculation through their bachelor’s degrees. The statistics in table 5.2 for time to B.A. are therefore accurate to the year, with the decimal number indicating whether the time to degree should be rounded up or down. Since the precise dates of awarding the B.A. and M.A. degrees are known, the figure giving the time to M.A. degree is accurate to the first decimal place. 38. For the period of 1540–59, we know the birth dates of only about half of the future pastors; about 66 percent for the decade 1560–69; and over 90 percent for the remaining decades. 39. Samples of matriculation ages from Wittenberg in the mid–sixteenth century and from Oxford in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both suggest a matriculation age of seventeen. According to John M. Fletcher, the enrollment of younger students was a means of bringing them under the oversight of the university officials or of honoring them (or their parents); Owen and Miriam Gingerich, ‘‘Matriculation Ages in Sixteenth-Century Wittenberg,’’ History of Universities 6 (1986–87): 135–7, and John M. Fletcher, ‘‘Commentary,’’ History of Universities 6 (1986–87): 135–41. 40. Johannes Buxtorf II, the son of the Hebrew professor, reportedly could read and speak Latin, Greek, and Hebrew by the age of four and matriculated when he was twelve years old; Burnett, From Christian Hebraism, 21. 41. Thommen, Geschichte, 264. 42. For instance, the Zurich stipendiate Josias Simler reported to Bullinger that he was attending lectures on rhetoric, arithmetic, dialectic, and ethics and Borrhaus/ Cellarius’s lectures on Exodus, 5 April 1546, ZZB Ms F 40, 443: ‘‘Hori matutinis unicam tantum lectionem audimus, D. videlicet Ioannem Hospinianum Rhetorica

342

notes to pages 124– 129

Ciceronis de inventione profitentem; a meridie vero Vitum Ardiseum praelegentem arithmeticam audimus et Hospinianum legentem orationem Ciceronis pro Milone, adhec Cellarium in Exodo et Hugwaldum Ethica praelegentem Aristotelis. Dialecticam audiremus; sed eam ferme finiit Marcus Hoperus; cum incepturus est Cesarium audiemus.’’ 43. One of these ten future pastors, Severinus Erzberger, matriculated in 1533 and thus is not included in table 5.2. Four of these pastoral candidates received the Erasmus stipend, which required its recipients to be matriculated in the theology faculty; see chapter 4. 44. Sixteen pastors matriculated in theology before receiving their master’s degrees; only one of them, Johann Friedrich Schwarz, is not listed as having received a master’s degree. Schwarz served as university Pedell for a number of years before beginning the study of theology. He may have completed the requirements for the master’s degree but chosen not to take upon himself the cost of obtaining it. Sixty matriculated after receiving their master’s degrees. I have not counted the two students who matriculated in the theology faculty of Geneva rather than in Basel. Despite the higher number of matriculations, very few pastors obtained a degree in theology. This may have been due to the requirement that students lecture in theology for several years before they could receive their doctorate in that subject. 45. Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universit€ aten: Vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart mit besonderer R€ ucksicht auf den klassischen Unterricht, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: Veit, 1919–21), 1:326–86; Arno Seifert, ‘‘Das ho¨here Schulwesen: Universita¨ten und Gymnasien,’’ in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte 1: 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert: Von der Renaissance und der Reformation bis zum Ende der Glaubensk€ ampfe, ed. Notker Hammerstein (Munich: Beck, 1996), 292–312.

chapter 6 1. For analyses of Borrhaus’s theology, Arno Seifert, ‘‘Reformation und Chiliasmus: Die Rolle des Martin Cellarius-Borrhaus,’’ ARG 77 (1986): 226–64; Irena Backus, ‘‘ ‘Corpus—Anima—Spiritus’: Spiritual Renewal in the Theology of Hubmaier and Borrhaus,’’ in Anabaptistes et dissidents au XVIe siecle: Akten des internationalen Kolloquiums f€ ur T€ aufergeschichte des 16. Jahrhunderts, gehalten in Verbindung mit der XI. Mennonitischen Weltkonferenz in Straßburg, Juli 1984, ed. Jean-Georges Rott and Simon L. Verheus (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1987), 121–30; on Karlstadt, Martin Anton Schmidt, ‘‘Karlstadt als Theologe und Prediger in Basel,’’ Theologische Zeitschrift 35 (1979): 155–68. 2. Borrhaus published a commentary on the Pentateuch, Martini Borrhai in Mosem, divinum legislatorem . . . Commentari (Basel: Oporinus, 1555), the historical books, In sacram Iosuae, Iudicum, Ruthae, Samuelis, et Regum Historiam . . . Commentarius (Basel: Oporinus, 1557), Isaiah and Revelation, In Iesaiae prophetae oracula . . . in Apocalypsim Ioannis . . . explicatio (Basel: Oporinus, 1561), and Job, along with a revised edition of his 1539 commentary on Ecclesiastes, In Sancti Viri Iobi Historiam . . . Commentarii . . . Ecclesiastes . . . annotationes (Basel: Perna, 1564). The Pentateuch lectures dated from the later 1540s; in a letter dated 11 June 1546, the Zurich student Josiah Simler reported to Bullinger that Borrhaus was lecturing on the third chapter of Exodus, ZZB Ms F 62, 479: ‘‘Theologicam itaque lectionem D. Cellarii audimus; is vero nunc Exodum praelegit; audivimus autem a tertio capite ipso; cum nanque Basileam pervenissemus, id incepit’’; see also his letter of 5 April 1546, ZZB Ms F 40, 443.

notes to pages 129– 131

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3. Martini Borrhai in Mosem, b1r–b3v; In sacram Josuae, 297–9; In sacram Iesaiae, a2r–a6v. 4. Borrhaus, In sacram Iosuae, a4r: ‘‘Hanc autem ex sapientum mysteriorum Christi dispensatorum auscultatione, ex assidua sacrorum librorum lectione, ex frequenti locorum Sacrae Scripturae collatione, et ex indesinenti atque perpetua ad Deum patrem in filio cum poenitentia coniuncta precatione, nemo dubitarit comparari.’’ 5. For instance, Andreas Hyperius, De recte formando Theologiae studio, libri IV (Basel: Oporinus, 1556), 33–58. Heinrich Bullinger also prescribed a grounding in the liberal arts in his study plan of 1528, but he did not discuss the specific usefulness of these disciplines for theologians, Studiorum Ratio—Studienanleitung, ed. Peter Stotz (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1987), 1:32–49. 6. Borrhaus, In sacram Iosuae, a4v–a5r. 7. Borrhaus, In sacram Iosuae, a5r–a6r. 8. In the Pentateuch commentary, free will, election, and predestination are among the topics in the extended discussion of several issues in Gen. 15 (Martini Borrhai in Mosem, pp. 155–248) and in Exod. 4 (pp. 436–51); In sacram Iosuae (I Kings 10, pp. 709–11), In Iesaiae (Isaiah 44, pp. 380–98); In sancti viri Jobi (Job 1, pp. 7–17), and in Ecclesiastes (printed with In sacram viri Jobi but paginated separately, pp. 185–190). Discussions of the old and new man in Martini Borrhai in Mosem (Exod. 21, pp. 519–23; Lev. 12, 647–8), In Iesaiae (Isaiah 4, pp. 47–51), In sancti viri Jobi (Job 14. pp. 151–4; Job 19, 195–8), and in Ecclesiastes (pp. 128–39). 9. The dualism is apparent in loci on the sacraments of the Old and New Testaments in Martini Borrhai in Mosem (Deut. 16, pp. 991–1000), on the two kinds of worship (true vs. feigned), In sacram Iosuae (I Kings 8, pp. 674–7), on evangelical vs. Mosaic law, In Iesaiae (Is. 2, pp. 20–2), and on legal wisdom vs. the wisdom of faith in the second (1564) edition of Ecclesiastes (pp. 22–30). 10. Martini Borrhai in Mosem, 999–1000 (Deut. 16). 11. In sacram Iosuae, 168. 12. ZStA E II 346, 341–53. Borrhaus’s last word on the subject came in his In Iesaiae commentary, 73: ‘‘Thronus in quo Christus iudex et rex sedet, non est creata aliqua tempore et loco aut finibus suis circumscripta sedes, qualem corpora humana in sedendo tenent: sed in solio Christi amplitudo et maiestas notatur, qua is omnia in coelo et in terra sapienter administrat, et in sedendi uerbo amplitudinis et maiestatis iudiciariae Messiae functio exprimitur. Solent enim iudices pro tribunali sedentes, maiestatem suam in ferendis sententijs declarare. Vt igitur maiestas iudicis Christi per hanc uniuersitatem longe lateque extenditur, cui omnis a patre in coelo et in terra potestas data sit: sit gubernationis et administrationis solium, in quo Christus iudex sedet, in omnia pertinet, nullis mundi elementis conclusum, nullo materialo coelo comprehensum: sed tam longe lateque patet, qui Dei patris, ad quam sedet, dextra patet, quae omnia in hac rerum natura ambitu potentiae suae concludit et completitur, coelum et terram, et quae coelo et terra continentur.’’ In the copy of the Isaiah commentary Borrhaus gave to him, Simon Sulzer marked this passage and noted in the margin ‘‘session ad dext.’’ BUB (F N P II 37). 13. Information on Sulzer’s education from Gottlieb Linder, Simon Sulzer und sein Antheil an der Reformation im Land Baden, sowie an den Unions-bestrebungen (Heidelberg: Winter, 1890). 11–7; Berchtold Haller’s description of Sulzer’s education and teaching responsibilities in a letter to Bullinger, 23 December 1533, HBBW 3:270–2, no. 307, and Sulzer’s own description to Bullinger, 11 Jun 1534, HBBW 4:208–10, no. 393. Student notes of Sulzer’s lectures on Aristotle’s de interpretatione and analytica priora, dated 1538, are preserved in BUB Ms F VI 27.

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notes to pages 131– 133

14. Ulrich Merian, a brother of the wives of Sulzer and Koch, was a senator and member of ‘‘the XIII,’’ the inner circle of Basel’s government, Samuel Schu¨pbachGuggenbu¨hl, Schl€ ussel zur Macht: Verflechtungen und informelles Verhalten im Kleinen Rat zu Basel, 1570–1600, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 173 (Basel: Schwabe, 2002), 2:165. Information on Koch’s education in BM 2:29, no. 15. It is likely that Koch was one of the earliest of the city’s stipendiates. There is no list of stipendiates before 1547, but his name is included as one of the residents of the Dominican convent, where the stipendiates lived in the early 1540s; BUB Ms AN II 17, 191. 15. For instance, Koch was sent together with Sulzer to Strasbourg in 1563 to help settle the confict between Johannes Marbach and Girolamo Zanchi in 1563, and he sided with Sulzer in the conflict known as the Basel Paroxysm in 1571; Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Simon Sulzer and the Consequences of the 1563 Strasbourg Consensus in Switzerland,’’ ARG 83 (1992): 154–79, and ‘‘Generational Conflict in the Late Reformation: The Basel Paroxysm,’’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32 (2001): 219–44. Koch also corresponded with Marbach in Sulzer’s absence, as well as maintaining his own correspondence with the Strasbourg superintendent; Koch to Marbach, 27 August 1566, in J. Fecht, ed., Historiae Ecclesiasticae Seculi A.N.C. XVI. Plurimorum et Celeberrimorum ex illo aevo Theologorum epistolis ad Joannem, Erasmum et Phillippum Marbachios (Durlach, 1684), 229–30. 16. Student notes of Sulzer’s lectures on Ephesians and Philippians given in Bern between 1541 and 1543 are preserved in the Bern Burgerbibliothek, MS 536; student notes of his Basel lectures on Isaiah from 1564 to 1565, and on Acts and Hosea from 1574, are preserved in BUB MS A III 43. 17. Sulzer’s loci commentary, BUB Ms A VII 54, is also undated, and it covers only the material through the third commandment. The manuscript is unfoliated but is subdivided into sections. The final version of Melanchthon’s Loci, on which the lectures were loosely based, was printed several times in Basel over the course of the 1540s and 1550s; Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Melanchthon’s Reception in Basel,’’ in Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Influence beyond Wittenberg, ed. Karin Maag (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999), 69–85. 18. BUB Ms A VII 54: The headings for the section on the ministry: ‘‘Quae sunt ministerij partes? Quid in ministris requiritur? Quod sit officiorum auditorum?’’ The heading for ‘‘De Festis,’’ the last quire in the manuscript: ‘‘Quando habuit sunt et celebrata?’’ ‘‘De paschate,’’ ‘‘Pentecoste,’’ ‘‘Tabernaculorum Festum,’’ ‘‘Iubilaeus,’’ ‘‘De templis.’’ 19. On the use of loci in theological education, James M. Kittelson, ‘‘The Significance of Humanist Educational Methods for the Reformation,’’ Luther Jahrbuch 66 (1999): 237–62. 20. BUB Ms A III 43. Out of forty-seven ‘‘propositions’’ or topics, seven deal with the triune nature of God, and another six deal with one or both of Christ’s two natures. Six more propositions concern ecclesiology. Although both Lutherans and Reformed accused their counterparts of falling into various Christological heresies, Sulzer’s theses do not go into enough detail to be used in such a polemical way. 21. BUB Ms A III 43, 149r–v; the Go¨ppingen confession in Beza Corr 2:244–8; Salvatore Corda, ‘‘Bullinger e la confessione eucaristica di Go¨ppingen (1557),’’ in Heinrich Bullinger 1504–1575: Gesammelte Aufs€ atze zum 400 Todestag, ed. Ulrich Ga¨bler and Erland Herkenrath (Zu¨rich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), 109–22. 22. Ramus to Gwalther, 22 July 1569, ZZB Ms S 120:82: ‘‘Basiliensem confessionem ab amicis mihi redditam studiose legi et cognovi in coenae . . . attamen

notes to pages 133– 134

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cum quotidianis praelectionibus nescio quas voces ambiguas a Sulzero exaudirem, hominem semotis arbitris rogavi, ut si quid a nobis de dominica coena dissentiet nihil me coelatum vellet. Tum respondit omnes a fulcro patrum stare: magnum (inquam) id est: at didici iam pridem hominum testimoniis non nimium confidere, et nunc nuper edoctus sum de deo nihil nisi de divino verbi credere: quare patres ista (si placat) exhibeto. Iam Bucerum in evangelia exhibuit, quem ab eo digressus accuratius perlegissem, comparatis inter se compluribus locis animadverti, verum bonum et pacis amantem verba Sulcero dedisse rem ac veritatem retinuisse.’’ 23. BUB MsKiAr 22a, 397r–408r. 24. On Melanchthon’s Christology, Theodor Mahlmann, Das neue Dogma der lutherischen Christologie: Problem und Geschichte seiner Begr€ undung (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1969), 9–61; on Bucer’s understanding of heaven, see the excerpt of his lecture on Acts 1, in Jean Rott, ‘‘Bucer zwischen den Fronten, auch nach seinem Tod: Ein ihn betreffender Brief von Matthias Bitter [sic] an Johann Pappus [1582/84],’’ in Calvin: Erbe und Auftrag. Festschrift f€ ur Wilhelm Neuser zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. Willem van’t Spijker (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), 244–54. 25. Erzberger was the pastor who had begun the conflict, BUB MS Falk 819, p. 84: ‘‘In dem fallt der Synodus In, welcher gehalten worden Junij .6. an einer Mittwochen, do dann (wie ich grundtlich berichtet denn man mir nitt darzu verku¨ndigt) Sulcer In erklerung vnserer Confession (wie solchs dem Obersten Pfarherrn zuostodt) sich zimlich grob herfu¨rgethon als er vffs Nachtmal kommen In bestetigung der Lyblichen vnd doch nitt lyblichen niessung, der Vbiquitet, In verkehrung des Articels von der Himmelfart christi. Das mengklich der Bru¨dern ein groß misfallen dran ghept, wiewols auch ein gutter theil nitt verstanden.’’ On the background to this conflict, Burnett, ‘‘Generational Conflict.’’ 26. BUB MsKiAr 217, 2–11. On the conflict in 1578 that provoked Sulzer to present his confession to the Senate, Hieronymus, ‘‘Gewissen und Staatskirchentum.’’ The confession is preserved in several copies, including MsKiAr 217 and MsKiAr 218 in the BUB and BStA Kirchen Archiv G 4, no. 1. There is also a copy in the Bern Burgerbibliothek, Ms A 68. In the undated dedicatory letter to Sebastian, Caspar, and Ludwig Krug prefacing MsKiAr 217, Sulzer says that he presented the confession to the Senate in early August; he also refers to the death of their father, Burgermeister Caspar Krug, which occurred in January 1579. 27. MsKiAr 217, 55: ‘‘So nun aber das wort (mu¨ndtlich) entwann braucht wurdt, soll man gantz vnd gar nit verstohn, ein solches empfahen, essen oder trincken des leibs vnd bluts Christi, wie es aber geschicht an den zeichen des Brodts vnd weins die man natu¨rlich, sichtbarlich, rau¨mlich vnd empfindtlich mit dem Mundt empfahett, sonder das mit vnd in dem, so das Brot vnd der Wein des Herren wie art noch empfangen werden, also der ware Leyb vnd Blut Christi hiervon vnabgso¨ndert ußgetheilt vnd empfangen werden, mit den sichtbaren zeichen, doch nit nach natu¨rlicher, reu¨mlicher weiß vnd eigenschafft, sonder mit einer solchen weiß, die er der herr wol weist vnd vermag, die freilich himelisch, vnd mit keiner menschlichen klugheit mag ußgerechnet werden.’’ 28. For a description of the heterodox humanist circle in Basel, Uwe Plath, Calvin und Basel in den Jahren 1552–1556, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 133 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974), 28–34. 29. On Sulzer’s stroke; Franc¸ois Hotman to Rudolf Gwalther, 27 September 1580, ZStA E II 358, 79–80; two years later, Sulzer wrote to Johann Pappus that he was still unable to preach because he could not speak clearly, 1 May 1582, TB 30:139. Only Rudolf Gwalther remained implacable in his hatred of Sulzer, telling Theodore Beza

346

notes to pages 134– 137

that Sulzer could still cause a good deal of harm, even though he had one foot in the grave, 23 February 1581, Beza Corr 22:44–9, no. 1474. 30. See Grynaeus’s ‘‘Exomologesis,’’ printed as an appendix to his edition of Johanni Oecolampadi Dialogus, quo Patrum sententiam de Coena Domini bona fide explanat (Basel: Waldkirch, 1590), 274. In 1564, Grynaeus defended the doctrine of ubiquity in a disputation over which Andreae presided, Disputatio in maiestate hominis Christi deque vera et substantiali corporis et sanguinis eius in Eucharistia, praesentia . . . prid. nonas Feb. (Tu¨bingen, 1564). 31. ‘‘Exomologesis,’’ 273. Grynaeus said that he had held Lutheran views ‘‘ab anno 19. vsque ad 28,’’ hence between 1559 and 1568. His notes concerning his discussion of Christology and predestination with Andreae in early 1571 and his draft of a letter to Andreae from early 1573, also on Christological issues, are preserved in BUB MsKiAr 34, 75v–77r. Grynaeus married Lavinia de Canonicis in 1569. Erastus was married to her older sister; Lavinia and her mother both lived with them. 32. Brandmu¨ller received a doctorate in theology in June 1584; BM 2:71. Wurstisen had matriculated in the theology faculty twenty years earlier. After a brief career as a pastor, he was appointed as mathematics professor; BM 2:109. For more information on both men, see chapter 8. Hel was appointed to the chair of oratory in 1580, the same year he matriculated in the theology faculty. He served as a pastor for three years before becoming rector of the newly reorganized gymnasium in 1589; BM 2:170. 33. See the manuscript lecture notes of Grynaeus’s lectures on Isaiah, given from January to August 1566, in BUB Ms Frey-Gryn I 32; lectures on Romans and on Hebrews, given from August 1566 to August 1567, in BUB MsKiAr 32, and disputations in BUB MsKiAr 124, from 1573 to 1574, which included a series of disputations on the Augsburg Confession. Once in Basel, Grynaeus published some of the disputations on the Apostles’ Creed held at Roeteln: De secunda et tertia symboli apostolici parte . . . (Basel, 1577), and De quarta parte symboli apostolici . . . (Basel: Osten, 1577), both included in BUB, KiAr H III 2. 34. ‘‘Exomologesis,’’ p. 279. Grynaeus never published the Genesis lectures, but he regularly included the dates on which he gave specific lectures in the margins of his commentaries and other theological works, and the printed student disputations almost always include the date on which the disputation was held, so that it is very easy to follow Grynaeus’s teaching schedule. 35. Epitomes Sacrorum Biblion, pars prima, complectens veteris testamenti tum librorum tum capitum argumenta . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1577), a2r–b4r. Despite the title, Grynaeus never published a second part to the work. 36. Epitomes Sacrorum Biblion, a3r–a4v. 37. ‘‘Exomologesis,’’ p. 273: ‘‘Consulto, sed praepostero consilio, ruri agens, abstinebam a lectione Scriptorum, de spirituali manducatione carnis Christi: et sine iudicio grassabar per scripta Lutheri, quibus plus tribuebam quam toto antiquitati Ecclesiastica, quae quidem Apostolorum tempora subsequuta est. Imo aequiore animo tulissem, si quis Petrum Apostolum lapsum dixisset, quam si quis Lutherum alicubi circa rem Eucharisticam errauisse, affirmasset.’’ 38. Epitomes Sacrorum Biblion, b2r. 39. Epitomes Sacrorum Biblion, introduction, pp. 1–18; ‘‘Epitome sacrorum Bibliorum,’’ pp. 19–136; ‘‘Anacephalaeosis Sacrorum Bibliorum,’’ 137–476. 40. Epitomes Sacrorum Biblion, pp. 3–6. Grynaeus was referring to the disputation De epistola Dei ad genus humanum seu de scripturis canonicis theses . . . 24 May (BUB KiAr H III 33, no. 1). The respondent was Jacob Forer, a theology student from Aarau

notes to pages 137– 139

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(BM 2:222, no. 40). This disputation was the first of many disputations over which Grynaeus presided to be published separately. Grynaeus gave his lectures on hermeneutics on 16–18 July 1576. 41. Epitomes Sacrorum Biblion, 7–18; p. 18 table. 42. The lecture series on Ps. 19, 110 and 133, all given between July 1577 and June 1578, were published as Enarratio brevis, Psalmi CXXXIII. De Concordia Fidelium; CX. Iesu Christo Immanuele: XIX De Studio Theologico, Tradita in Academia Basiliensi (Geneva: Vignon, 1579); the lectures on Romans were published as a part of Chronologia brevis Evangelicae Historiae: Logicique artificii in Epistola Apostoli Pauli ad Romanos, declaratio . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1580). Lectures on Haggai were given from October 1579 to August 1580: Haggaeus Propheta. In quem accessit luculentissimus Commentarius ex publicis . . . praelectionibus collectus (Geneva: Vignon, 1581), on Jonah from September 1580 to July 1581: Ionae Prophetae Liber, cum enarratione, recens tradita in Academia Basiliensi (Basel: Oporinus, 1581), on Habakkuk from August to December 1581: Hypomnemata in Habacuci Prophetae librum . . . (Basel: Oporinus, 1582), on Malachi from August to November 1582: Hypomnemata in Malachiam prophetam, tradita in Basiliensi Academia: Quibus adjunctae sunt theses analyticae, de epistola Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas, de quibus in Scholis theologorum disputatum fuit (Basel: Osten, 1583), on Daniel from April 1583 to February 1584: J. J. Grynaei Explanatio Danielis prophetae quinque primorum capitum . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1587), and on Obadiah from February through April 1584. He lectured on Pss. 73 and 84 in May and June of that year, In Obadiam Prophetam, et in Psalmos LXXIII et LXXXIIII Commentaria: Una cum Oratione de uno et aeterno Dei Testamento (Basel: Osten, 1584). His New Testament commentaries were Exegesis Epistolae Beati Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos, quae exemplar sanorum sermonum continet: Tradita in Academia Basiliensi . . . una cum epistola, de optimo genere defensionis Euangelij (Basel: S. Henricpetri, 1591), and Explanatio Epistolae Primae et Secundae Iohannis Apostoli et Evangelistae . . . (Basel: S. Henricpetri, 1591). Despite its title, this is actually a commentary on 1 John, given from September 1590 to May 1591; 2 John is covered in only three lectures (out of sixtynine) given at the end. The Ephesians lectures were given between October 1593 and July 1594. They were never published but are preserved in manuscript in BUB MsKiAr 35. 43. See the appendix for the example of Grynaeus’s treatment of Daniel 3:23–28. 44. For example, he went through the Book of Haggai at the rate of one verse per lecture from the first lecture on August 21 through September. He began to cover two verses a day through October. In each of the four lectures he gave during November, he covered three or four verses, and the lectures given in mid-December each covered six verses. 45. For instance, the five disputations in De vera sapientia, quae in Dei et hominis cognitione posita est, axiomatum decades quinque . . . disputabitur mensibus Jan., Feb. et Mart., 1577 (Basel, 1577) covered the divine nature, Creation and the Fall, human salvation and the means by which it is achieved, and eternal blessedness. Ten students participated in the disputations on two hundred theses published as a Synopsis Historiae hominis: Seu, de prima hominis origine, eiusdemque corruptione, reconciliatione cum Deo, et aeterna salute . . . (Basel, Oporinus, 1579); to these were appended six disputations, collectively titled Theses analyticae symboli apostolici . . . All together, Grynaeus published five short collections of disputations over which he presided at Basel between 1576 and 1580. 46. Johann Jacob Grynaeus, Disputationes theologicae, quae annis aliquot proxime praeteritis habitae sunt in Basiliensi academia (Geneva: Vignon, 1584).

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notes to pages 139– 141

47. Inscriptions on the individual disputations demonstrate that students gave copies to their friends and patrons; see, for example, Heinrich Jeckelmann’s dedication of a copy of his August 1587 disputation at Heidelberg (Doctrina Catholica Orthodoxa de Sanctorum spirituum veneratione . . . 26 Aug., 1587) to his uncle, Felix Platter, BUB KiAr H III 34, no. 7, and Heinrich Justus’s inscription to his friend Ludwig Iselin on the disputations from the fall of 1581 by Michael Sonleutner and Herman Petri (De prophetarum et apostolorum . . . theses . . . Oct/Nov, 1581), BUB F P IX 17, no. 3. The copy of the same disputation preserved in BUB VB M 63 no. 10 is covered with closewritten notes, which indicates that these separately printed disputations still had some pedagogical use. 48. Grynaeus was concerned about publicizing the form and content of theology instruction at Basel even during his earliest years in Basel. He sent Theodore Beza and Lambert Daneau copies of the earliest printed individual disputations, by Jacob Forer, De epistola Dei ad genus humanum seu de scripturis canonicis theses . . . , and Jacob Fabritius, De restitutionis nostrae caussis et dispensatione theses XL . . . , both published in 1576 (included in the collection of theology disputations, BUB KiAr H III 33, nos. 1 and 3) and reprinted in Grynaeus, Disputationes theologicae, 49–54 and 58–65; cf. Danaeus to Grynaeus, 7 January 1577, Paul de Fe´lice, Lambert Daneau (de Beaugencysur-Loire), pasteur et professeur en th
eologie, 1530–1595: Sa vie, ses oeuvrages, ses lettres in
edites (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1971), 318–20, no. 21, and Beza to Grynaeus, 8 April 1577, Beza Corr 18:75–9, no. 1250. 49. Ernst Staehelin, Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, Studien zur Geschichte der Wissenschaften in Basel 1 (Basel: Helbing et Lichtenhahn, 1955), 9–30. 50. Amandi Polani a Polansdorf Partitiones Theologicae juxta naturalis methodi Leges conformatae duobus libris . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1590), preface, n.p. 51. Syntagma logicum Aristotelico-Ramaeum, ad usum inprimis Theologicum accomodatum (Basel: Waldkirch, 1605). On the relationship between Polanus’s logic and his theology, Heiner Faulenbach, Die Struktur der Theologie des Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf (Zurich: EVZ, 1967), 18–45. 52. De Ratione Legendi cum Fructu autores, inprimis sacros, et dignoscendi in illis proposita, themata et argumenta Tractatus . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1603); Amandi Polani a Polansdorf de Concionum sacrarum Methodo institutio, in gratiam tyronum ministerij Ecclesiastici delineata (Basel: Waldkirch, 1604); In Danielem Prophetam visionum amplitudine . . . Commentarius (Basel: Waldkirch, 1599); Analysis Libri Hoseae Prophetae . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1601); In Librum Prophetiarum Ezechielis Commentarii in quibus logica analysi et theologica . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1608); Analysis Libelli Prophetae Malachiae, aliquot praelectionibus Genevae proposita (Basel: Waldkirch, 1596); Praelectiones de nativitate, passione et morte d. n. Jesu Christi in inclyta Academia Basiliensi habitae, in quibus difficile vaticinium Danielis . . . explicatur (Basel: Waldkirch, 1605); Exegesis Analytica illustrium aliquot vaticiniorum veteris Testamenti de incarnatione, passione, morte et resurrectione Domini Nostri Jesu Christi . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1608). 53. Isaac Feguernekinus, Enchiridii Locorum Communium theologicorum . . . 5th ed. (Basel: 1604); Grynaeus’s prefatory letter to Stephan Batory, dated 1 March 1589 (a2r–v). 54. Symphonia Catholica seu consensus catholicus et orthodoxus dogmatum hodiernae Ecclesiae ex praescripto verbi Dei reformatae . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1607); Syntagma Theologiae Christianae . . . iuxta leges ordinis Methodici conformatum (Hanau: Wechel, 1610). 55. See also Robert Letham, ‘‘Amandus Polanus: A Neglected Theologian?’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 21 (1990): 463–76.

notes to pages 141– 143

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56. Praelectiones de nativitate, 74–84. 57. These lectures were published as part of Polanus’s De Concionum sacrarum Methodo Institutio, to be discussed in chapter 7. 58. Praelectiones de nativitate, pp. 84–91. 59. For instance, the fruits of Christ’s passion described in the last lecture include the confirmation that Christ is truly our king, that he is the sole head of the church, that his death freed us from Satan’s tyranny, that the passion should arouse us to thanksgiving, and that Christ’s victory is also a source of consolation, Praelectiones de nativitate, 124–8. 60. In some cases, Polanus is quite precise in citing the source of his citation, giving the edition of the work used and the page on which the quotation is found. It is likely that Polanus read these citations during his lecture, because each of the lectures is about the same length, although the number and length of citations varies considerably among them. Despite its irenic-sounding title, the Symphonia Catholica is polemical in orientation, and the citations from which it is compiled are assembled with the sole purpose of demonstrating the truth and the orthodoxy of Reformed theology, in opposition to Catholics, Lutherans, anti-Trinitarians, and anyone else who disagreed with it. 61. De Ratione Legendi cum Fructu autores, 1–78; the discussion of adjuncts, 55–7. 62. See the appendix for Polanus’s commentary on Daniel 3:24–25. 63. At the turn of the century, the Academic Senate refused a request of one of its stipendiates, Nicolas Agricola (Bu¨rre), that he be allowed to receive a doctorate in theology, on the grounds that the theology faculty was well established and the university had no need for another theologian; Agricola’s response to the Academic Senate, BStA Universita¨ts Archiv VII 3, no. 7. There may have been more underlying the Senate’s refusal, for in 1606 Agricola presented his grievances against the university to a diet of the Swiss Confederation, causing the university’s theologians to defend their decision not to grant a doctorate on the basis of Agricola’s unsatisfactory conduct and life, BStA Universita¨ts Archiv VIII 1, nos. 3 and 4. Agricola ended up as a pastor in Basel’s rural territory. 64. Wolfgang Meyer listed the senators, pastors, professors, and students, as well as many others, who died over the course of 1610 in the appendix to his Spiegel der Geistlichen . . . Artzney, 415–42. 65. Meyer’s disputation was held on 27 April 1611; Gross’s disputation a week later on 4 May, and Beck’s a week after that on 11 May. All three were awarded their doctorates on 21 May. Johann Georg Gross, the later theology professor and pastor of St. Peter, must be distinguished from his younger brother Johannes Gross, who became pastor of St. Leonhard. 66. PINAW APOKATASTASEOS, id est instauratio scholae theologicae . . . (Basel: Genath, [1612]), BUB KiAr H III 2, no. 114, fo. ):(, 3r–v: ‘‘D. Ioh. Iacobus Grynaeus . . . progredietur in enarratione Epistola ad Galatas, et prout dabit Dominus, doctrinam de iustificatione per fidem Iesu Christi, illustrare conabitur. D. Sebastianus Beckius . . . enarrationem libri Geneseos, ad diem 23. Junii, panegyrico sermone praemisso, ordietur. Idem vero etiam diebus, Sabbathi hora a tertia cuius libet septimanae, Evangelia Dominicalia analytice et succincte extraordinaria opera explicabit, suo tempore iisdem horis Catechetica tractaturus. Et quia Iehova exercituum suscitavit spiritum duorum clarissimorum S.S. Theologiae Doctorum, D. Ioh. Georgii Grossii . . . et D. Wolfgangi Mayeri . . . operam, tum docendo, tum disserendo praestare parati sint, horis certis . . . haec sanctissimarum exercitationum, quas instituent, series erit: Ambo Locos Communes Controversiarum Theolog. partitis operis, collatoque

350

notes to pages 143– 146

studio, hora x. matutina cuius libet septimanae, tractandos suscipient: Ille quidem, diebus Martis et Mercurij, Locos ex consideratione Prophetici muneris Christi emergentes, hoc est, Quaestiones de S. Scripturis, contra Traditiones humanas: Hic vero, Veneris et Sabbathi diebus, Locos, quos Regij muneris consideratio exhibet, id est, controversias de Militante et Triumphante Ecclesia, deque membris utriusque. Quibus ex Spiritus Sancti armamentario discussis, Ille ad Locos consideratione Sacerdotalis Christi muneris emanantes, hoc est, ad Quaestiones de Christo Mediatore, et de Sacramentis cum in genere, tum in specie: Hic vero, ad controversias de beneficiis Redemptionis Salutisque nostrae, quae nomine Iesu denotantur, h.e. ad Quaestiones de Praedestinatione, de Peccato, de Lege, de Libero Arbitrio, de Fide, de Bonis Operibus, de Iustificatione, etc. juvante Deo, progredietur.’’ 67. The earliest published biography of Beck, in Johann Werner Herzog, Athenae Rauricae sive Catalogus Professorum Academiae Basiliensis . . . (Basel: 1778), 38, gives the names of Beck’s parents as Valentin Beck and Martha Iselin, but Schu¨pback-Guggenbu¨hl identifies him as the son of the iron merchant and senator Sebastian Beck and his wife Ursula Burckhardt, Schl€ ussel zur Macht: Verflechtungen und informelles Verhalten im Kleinen Rat zu Basel, 1570–1600, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 173 (Basel: Schwabe, 2002), 2:111. 68. Wibrandus Rosenblatt married Bucer after Capito’s death. 69. According to BM 2:482, no. 42, Beck served as a pastor in Baden from 1603 to 1608, and Samuel Schu¨pback-Guggenbu¨hl identifies his parish as Altlussheim, Schl€ ussel zur Macht, 2:111, but it seems highly unlikely that Beck would have received a position in a church that required its pastors to sign the Formula of Concord. Basel’s pastors had been forbidden to sign the Formula in 1577, and no one who had signed it could hold a position in Basel’s church. Moreover, Beck participated in a disputation held in December 1606, Thesium analyticarum, quibus epistola Pauli ad Colossenses explicantur . . . pars ultima . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1606), BUB Ki Ar H III 37, no. 9, which would scarcely have been possible if he were a pastor in Baden at the time. Herzog, Athenae Rauricae, says nothing about Beck having served as a pastor. 70. The Compendium Christianae Theologiae was published twice in Basel, in 1626 and 1632, and was reprinted six times in Amsterdam between 1633 and 1655 and another six times in England between 1642 and 1661. It was also translated into both English and Dutch. A Geneva edition was published in 1666, and a final English edition appeared in 1760. There is also a modern edition, Ernst Bizer, ed., Johannis Wollebii Christianae Theologiae Compendium (Neukirchen: Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins Neukirchen, 1935). 71. Theatrum Biblicum. Ex Scriptis Theologorum veterum atque recentium, maximam vero partem D. Amandi Polani p.m. Concinnatum . . . (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1614), a4r. 72. Compendium Theologiae sacrae, tripartitum, vereque Methodicum . . . accessit Expositio tum Catechismi, tum Confessionis Basileensis (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1620), printed as part of the Compendium Quatuor Facultatum: I. Philosophiae, II. Medicinae III. Jurisprudentiae, IV. Theologiae S. (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1620). 73. Compendium Theologiae sacrae, 31: ‘‘Objectum, circa quod Theologia versatur, est Deus, et quicquid est Dei, quatenus illud ordinatur et refertur ad Deum. Theologia namque significat sermonem de Deo considerata nominis etymologia. Caeterum duobus modis consideratur Deus, tanquam objectum Theologiae, nempe partim ut cognoscendum, partim ut colendus.’’ 74. Compare Compendium Theologiae sacrae, pp. 32–7, with Polanus’s discussion of the divine attributes in bk. 2 of his Syntagma.

notes to pages 146– 147

351

75. Compendium Theologiae sacrae, 80–1: ‘‘Officium Theologi scholastici est Theoricum; Officium Theologi Ecclesiastici, Theoricum simul et Practicum. Theoricum scholastici Theologi Officium, etsi suam quoque certam habeat praxim, magis tamen est Theoricum, quam Ecclesiastici Theologi Officium. . . . Theoricum simul et Practicum Theologi Ecclesiastici (seu Pastoris) Officium est, occupari non tantum circa scientiam, sed etiam circa conscientias hominum: atque adeo non modo circa doctrinam veritatis, sed etiam circa disciplinam pietatis.’’ 76. Compendium Theologiae sacrae, 82: ‘‘Catechisatio est simplex quaedam, ingenio rudiorum accommodata institutio, qua non tantum pueris, sed etiam adultis nonnullis imperitis, nominatim autem iis, qui ab Ethnicismo vel Judaismo ad Christianismum transeunt, praecipua inculcantur Christianae religionis capita, nempe de Deo, de Creatione, de Imagine Dei, de Lapsu seu peccato et poenis illius, de promissione Messiae, Seminis illius benedicti: de Federe Dei gratuito, ejusdemque sigillis, ipsis videlicet Sacramentis, Baptismo et Coena Dominica: de Vera in Christum Fide: de Vita inculpata: de pia, tum ad eu’ yanasi´ as, tum ad Judicium ultimum praeparatione: denique de via aeterna.’’ 77. Compendium Theologiae sacrae, 82–9. Gross was here rejecting the use of the Apocrypha. The exclusion of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament from the canon of Scripture was also a topic of several disputations beginning in the 1590s. 78. Compendium Theologiae sacrae, 89–103. 79. I have identified 597 printed disputations held in Basel during this period. Apart from the printed and manuscript disputations described in chapter 2, there is only one other printed disputation dating from before 1575: the doctoral disputation of Ulrich Koch (Coccius), De justificatione hominis coram deo axiomata ad disputandum in academia Basiliensis . . . 15 Feb., 1570, BUB VB M 63, no. 1. Although theological disputations continued to be printed after 1625, there are too few of them to make any analysis of their contents or emphases reliable. Between 1626 and 1635, for instance, there are only thirty-five disputations, and between 1629 and 1632 only two disputations were printed each year. 80. The university’s statutes specified that public disputations were be held every other week, although they were not held during the vacation periods. In addition, candidates for degrees in theology held special disputations. The total number of public disputations each year must then have been somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. Since the proportion of disputations in each category is meant to be indicative rather than absolute, it is not vital that all disputations be included. I reported roughly similar proportions for each category in an earlier article, ‘‘Preparing the Pastors, Theological Education and Pastoral Training in Basel,’’ in History Has Many Voices, ed. Lee Palmer Wandel, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 63 (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2003), 131–51, which was based only on the smaller number of disputations that were printed individually. The fact that the proportions do not change substantially with the larger number of disputations supports the assumption that the proportions accurately represent all disputations. 81. Individual disputations are collected in several volumes in the BUB; some of the disputations are preserved in more than one volume. The series of six volumes Ki Ar H III 1–6 are arranged according to the individuals who presided over the disputations, while Ki Ar H III 14 contains disputations held under Grynaeus. The six volumes Ki Ar H III 33–38 are arranged by date, as are the seven volumes VB M 63–69. The two volumes F P IX 17–18 are disputations over which Grynaeus presided; F P IX 19, 1 is Grynaeus’s published collection of disputations, Synopsis historiae hominis: Seu, de prima hominis origine, eiusdemque corruptione, reconciliatione cum Deo, et aeterna

352

notes to pages 147– 148

salute . . . (Basel: Oporinus, 1579), and F P IX 19, 2 is another published disputation collection, Character Christianorum seu de fide, spei & charitatis doctrina, theses (Basel: Oporinus, 1578). Grynaeus published three further disputation collections after his return to Basel, Theologica Theoremata et Problemata . . . Pars Prima [Altera/Tertia] (Basel: Henricpetri 1588–90), and included several more disputations in his Explanatio Epistolae Primae et Secundae Iohannis. Polanus also published three collections of disputations with the title Sylloges Thesium theologicarum . . . (Basel, Waldkirch, 1597–1607); each of these included many previously printed individual disputations. Three more disputations were published in Theses Theologicae de Unico S.S. Theologiae principio, Canone Scripturarum divinarum, et Iudice veri sensus Scripturae & controversiarum Ecclesiasticarum (Basel: Waldkirch, 1599). A number of other individual disputations are also collected in BUB [aleph] E IX 10 and [aleph] E VI 13. 82. Sulzer presided over the doctoral disputation of Otho Gualthperius in 1580. The student presiders were Michael Beuther, Balthasar Crosneviecius, Johann Georg Gross, and Johannes Wollebius. Grynaeus presided over eleven disputations between 1596 and 1610, and seven more disputations were held under the supervision of advanced students in theology. 83. Gross published 122 of these disputations, in three groups, in Amandus Polanus, Collegium Anti-Bellarminianum, Tribus Disputationum privatarum Periodis absolutum, et nunc primum in lucem editum . . . (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1613). About half of the disputations have dates; eighteen of them do not give the names of the disputation’s participants. The year in which the undated disputations were held can, in some cases, be approximated both by the placement of the disputation in the book and by the names of the disputants. For several of the disputations, however, especially those in pt. 2, it is not possible to determine the date more accurately than to within a threeor four-year period. Staehelin believed that these disputations were held in 1600–1601, because the first disputation was held in 1600, Amandus Polanus, 105–6. Some of the participants involved in these disputations did not matriculate before 1603 or 1604. I have therefore distributed these disputations roughly evenly between the years 1601, 1602, 1604, and 1605. 84. Collegium Anti-Bellarminianum, pp. 6, 15, 117–28. 85. It is difficult to determine the relative contribution of professor and student to the authorship of the disputations, but it is not necessary to make such a distinction. More important, the theologian presiding over the disputation was seen as responsible for its contents; see the comments of Kenneth G. Appold on the authorship of Wittenberg disputations, Orthodoxie als Konsensbildung: Das theologische Disputationswesen an der Universit€ at Wittenberg zwischen 1570 und 1710, Beitra¨ge zur historische Theologie 127 (Tu¨bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 80–4. 86. Paul Crocius, De Iustitia Fidei, seu de iustificatione hominis coram deo, theses theologicae et inaugurales . . . 20 Aug. (Basel: Oporinus, 1582), BUB KiAr H III 14, no. 13, A2r: ‘‘II. Huius doctrinae quaestiones praecipuae sunt: 1. Quid sit Iustitia in genere, et unde dicta. 2. Quotuplex. 3. Quae caussae. 4. Quae effecta. 5. Quae pugnantia.’’ 87. Paul Werner, Quaestio illustris: Anne renati de sva ipsorvm et de aliorum Piorum aeterna electione, certo pronunciare, et per fidem, in Domino, de eadem gloriari debeant? . . . 17 Aug. (Basel: Oporinus, 1587), BUB KiAr H III 14, no. 34, B2r–B3v. 88. Josiah Jeger, Disputatio II, de ijs controuersiis, quae motae sunt potissimum de Ordine qui in Ecclesia militante obseruari debet, habebitur . . . 19 Junij (Basel: Oporinus, 1589), BUB KiAr H III 14, no. 53, A1r–A2v. 89. Johann Heinrich Zeller, Theses theologicae de fide iustificante . . . 20 November (Basel: Waldkirch, 1600), BUB KiAr H III 3, no. 33, A2r–A6v.

notes to pages 148– 158

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90. Cyril Oesius, Analysis Logica Catechismi Basileensis Thesibus Theologicis perspicue illustrata . . . 11 Feb. (Basel: Waldkirch: 1602), BUB KiAr H III 3, no. 40. 91. The disputation is printed in Grynaeus’s Explanatio Epistolae Primae et Secundae Iohannis, 294–300. 92. Grynaeus’s disputations between 1586 and 1612: doctrinal Protestant, 48 (32.3 percent); Reformed Protestant, 46 (30.9 percent); polemical, 2 (1.3 percent); antiCatholic, 24 (16.1 percent); pastoral, 15 (10.1 percent); and exegetical, 14 (9.4 percent). These proportions are close to those for the decade 1586–95, when Grynaeus supervised the majority of the disputations. 93. This is particularly true of the disputations contained in Collegium AntiBellarminianum; for instance, Bellarmine falsely accused Calvin of teaching that man was created without supernatural gifts (p. 53); he said that the Reformed denied the necessity of good works (p. 101). 94. The Collegium Anti-Bellarminianum is arranged in three sets, or ‘‘periods,’’ that present a doctrinal system. This arrangement was the work, in part, of Gross, the editor, for there are indications that some of the disputations were not held in the order in which they were printed. The majority of the dated disputations do follow a systematic pattern, however. While Gross may have ‘‘improved’’ on the organization, the original pattern was established by Polanus. 95. Franc¸ois Hotman complained to Rudolf Gwalther that one of the stipendiates sent by the landgraf of Hesse had participated in a disputation endorsing ubiquity, 25 December 1580; Franc¸ois Hotman, Francisci et Joannis Hotomanorum patris ac filii, et clarrum virorum ad eos Epistolae . . . (Amsterdam: Georg Gallet, 1700), 138–40, no. 99; see his criticism of Koch’s oration at the doctoral promotion of Johannes Marbach’s two sons in a letter to Wilhelm Stucky, 4 September, 201–2, no. 155. The letter gives no year and was placed by the editor in 1587 but more likely was written in 1579, for the Marbach brothers were promoted in May of that year; Sulzer’s trip to Heidelberg, also mentioned in the letter, took place the following fall. 96. Cited in Bizer, ed., Johannis Wollebii Christianae Theologiae Compendium, III–IV.

chapter 7 1. For an overview of classical Latin rhetoric, particularly Cicero and Quintilian, see George Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 90–102. 2. On instructional method in general, see Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universit€ aten: Vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart mit besonderer R€ ucksicht auf den klassischen Unterricht. 3rd ed. (Leipzig: Veit, 1919–21), 1: 344–5; on rhetoric instruction specifically, Joseph S. Freedman, ‘‘Cicero in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Rhetoric Instruction,’’ Rhetorica 4 (1986): 227–54; Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 122–160; Dilwyn Knox, ‘‘Order, Reason and Oratory: Rhetoric in Protestant Latin Schools,’’ in Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. Peter Mack (Basingstoke, England: St. Martin’s, 1994), 63–80; Brian Vickers, ‘‘Some Reflections on the Rhetoric Textbook,’’ in Mack, Renaissance Rhetoric, 46–92. The distinctions among precepts, examples, and imitation stemmed from the Rhetorica ad Herennium.

354

notes to pages 159– 161

3. Historians of rhetoric have distinguished between ‘‘primary rhetoric,’’ the art of oral persuasion used in civic life, and ‘‘secondary rhetoric,’’ the application of rhetorical techniques to texts; Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, 3–5. 4. John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979), 36–76; 165–94. 5. Reuchlin’s little book was first published in 1503; it was reprinted in 1508 and again in Basel, together with the earliest Protestant homiletics texts, in 1540; see later. 6. John W. O’Malley, ‘‘Erasmus and the History of Sacred Rhetoric: The Ecclesiastes of 1535,’’ Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 5 (1985): 1–29; Martin Schian, ‘‘Die Homiletik des Andreas Hyperius: Ihre wissenschaftliche Bedeutung und ihr praktischer Wert,’’ pt. 2, Zeitschrift f€ ur praktische Theologie 19 (1897): 26–66, 120–49. 7. Ratio brevis et docta, piaque, sacrarum tractandarum Concionum, vulgo Modus Praedicandi adpellata, a Quodam docto et pio Concinnatore, Philippi Melanchtonis Familiari congesta . . . (Ulm: Johannes Varnier, 1535). The anonymous treatise was probably written by Veit Dietrich; P. Drews and F. Cohrs, eds., Supplementa Melanchthoniana, 5/2, Homiletische Schriften (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1968), XXXI–XXXVI. 8. De Arte Concionandi Formulae ut breves, ita doctae & piae (Basel: Lasius, 1540). Aepinus’s De sacris concionibus Formandis Compendiaria was first published in Petrus Artopoeus, Evangelicae conciones dominicarum totius anni, per Dialectica & Rhetorica artificia breviter tractatae . . . (Wittenberg: Rhau, 1537). On these early sixteenth-century homiletics texts, John W. O’Malley, ‘‘Content and Rhetorical Forms in SixteenthCentury Treatises on Preaching,’’ in Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 238–52. 9. Uwe Schnell, Die homiletische Theorie Philipp Melanchthons, Arbeiten zur Geschichte und Theologie des Luthertums 20 (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1968), 36–52. On the development of homiletics in the years after the Reformation, see O’Malley, ‘‘Erasmus’’; John Monfasani, ‘‘Humanism and Rhetoric,’’ in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy, ed. A. Rabil (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), esp. 205–8. The steps of definition, division, and identification of causes were taught at the end of bk. 1 of Melanchthon’s dialectic text; CR 13:563–78. They were applied to preaching in all three of the homiletics texts published in Basel mentioned earlier. 10. Heinrich Bullinger, Studiorum Ratio—Studienanleitung, ed. Peter Stotz (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1987); Hieronymus Weller, Ratio formandi studij theologici. Item: De modo & ratione concionandi, first published in 1562; David Chytraeus, De studio theologiae recte inchoando (Wittenberg: Johannes Crato, 1566), 13v–24r, and especially the entire second book of Andreas Hyperius, De recte formando Theologiae studio, libri IV (Basel: Oporinus, 1556). Richard A. Muller discusses some of these study plans, After Calvinism: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 105–10; for a comparison of the earliest Lutheran study plans, including Melanchthon’s Brevis Discendae Theologiae ratio, Marcel Nieden, ‘‘Wittenberger Anweisungen zum Theologie-Studium,’’ in Die Theologische Fakult€ at Wittenberg 1502 bis 1602: Beitr€ age zur 500. Wiederkehr des Gr€ undungsjahres der Leucorea, ed. Irene Dingel and Gu¨nther Wartenberg, Leucorea-Studien zur Geschichte der Reformation und der Lutherischen Orthodoxie (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), 133–53.

notes to pages 161– 163

355

11. On the background to Melanchthon’s use of loci, Paul Joachimsen, ‘‘Loci Communes: Eine Untersuchung zur Geistesgeschichte des Humanismus und der Reformation,’’ Luther Jahrbuch 8 (1926): 27–97; on the loci method in Lutheran theology, Robert Kolb, ‘‘Teaching the Text: The Commonplace Method in SixteenthCentury Lutheran Biblical Commentary,’’ Bibliotheque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 49 (1987): 571–85; and James M. Kittelson, ‘‘The Significance of Humanist Educational Methods for the Reformation,’’ Luther Jahrbuch 66 (1999): 237–62. Hyperius discussed several ways of assembling a book of loci in his De recte formando Theologiae studio, bk. 3, chaps. 1–5. 12. De Methodis Libri Duo, quorum prior quidem omnium methodorum universalium & particularium, quarum usus est in Philosophia brevem ac dilucidam declarationem: Posterior vero Ecclesiasten sive methodum theologicam interpretandi, concionandique continet (Wittenberg: 1559), I2r–I3v. 13. Andreas Hyperius, De formandis concionibus sacris seu de interpretatione Scripturarum populari Libri II (Marburg, 1553), bk. 1, chap. 1, on the difference between scholarly and popular exegesis, chap. 4 on the distinction between preachers and orators; bk. 2 describes each of Hyperius’s five genera in detail. German translation in E. Chr. Achelis and Eugen Sachsse, eds., Die Homiletik und die Katechetik des Andreas Hyperius (Berlin, 1901). See also Peter Kawerau, ‘‘Die Homiletik des Andreas Hyperius,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur Kirchengeschichte 71 (1960): 66–81; Schian, ‘‘Die Homiletik des Andreas Hyperius.’’ For a broader discussion of Hyperius’s distinction between scholarly and popular treatment of theology, Donald Sinnema, ‘‘Distinction between Scholastic and Popular: Andreas Hyperius and Reformed Scholasticism,’’ in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, ed. Carl R. Trueman and R. Scott Clark (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 1999), 127–43. 14. Conrad Clauser, Certa Declamandi et concionandi Methodus, ex probatiss. Graecis & Latinis autoribus, tam profanis quam sacris desumpta (Basel: Oporinus, 1555), 13–7. On Clauser, see Peter Frei, Conradus Clauserus Tigurinus (ca. 1515–1567), 160. Neujahrsblatt der Gelehrten Gesellschaft in Zu¨rich (Zurich: Kommissionsverlag Beer, 1997). 15. Lucas Osiander, De Ratione Concionandi (Wittenberg: Welack, 1584), 22–3, referring to Calvin’s interpretation of Gal. 3:16: ‘‘Hactenus Caluinus. Vide, obsecro, hunc Pauli Interpretem, quam sit, non dico ineptus, sed quam impius. Paulus expressissime (in vocabulo seminis) vrget singularem numerum, excluso plurali: idque facit contra Iudaeorum falsam promissionis illius interpretationem. Caluinus contra negat Paulum niti numero singulari. Hoccine est interpretari scripturam? Quid est, obsecro, sacrae Scripturae manifestam vim facere, si hoc non est?’’ Osiander also criticized Calvin’s interpretation of Gen. 3:15 and John 10:28–30, pp. 17–22. 16. See, for instance, Wilhelm Zepper, Ars Habendi et Audiendi Conciones Sacras (Siegen: Corvinus, 1598), 43–53; Bartholomaeus Keckermann, Rhetoricae Ecclesiasticae, in Operum omnium quae estant Tomus Secundus . . . (Geneva: Aubertus, 1614), cols. 44–50. 17. For a general characterization of Lutheran homiletics, see Martin Schian, ‘‘Die lutherische Homiletik in der zweiten Ha¨lfte des sechsehnten Jahrhunderts,’’ Theologische Studien und Kritiken 72 (1899): 62–94. 18. Zepper, Ars Habendi et Audiendi Conciones, 95–7. 19. A Lutheran example: Aegidius Hunnius, Methodus Concionandi . . . (Wittenburg: Muller, 1595), 8v–18v; for the Reformed, Bartholomaeus Keckermann, Rhetorica Ecclesiastica, cols. 33–7; Guillaume Le Buc, Ecclesiastes, seu de formandis sacris concionibus . . . (Geneva: Le Preux, 1608), 11–6.

356

notes to pages 163– 166

20. On Ramist rhetoric, see Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 270–92. 21. Wilbur Samuel Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 206–8. 22. William Perkins, Prophetica sive de Sacra et unica Concinandi ratione tractatus nervosiss. in commodum ministrorum, omniumque Theologiae studiosorum . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1602). Perkins began his book with defining the two duties of the prophet or minister of the word as preaching and praying for the people. His brief discussion of public prayer comes after his discussion of preaching. 23. On Keckermann’s method, Howard Hotson, Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588–1638: Between Renaissance, Reformation, and Universal Reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 31–2. 24. Among the homileticists and sermon authors that Keckermann cites are Erasmus, Gregory the Great, the Catholics Luis de Granada (Ludovicus Granatensis), Jacob Peresius, and Thomas Stapleton, and his fellow Reformed theologians Wilhelm Zepper, Abraham Bucholzer, whose manuscript on preaching apparently received wide circulation in Heidelberg, and Zacharias Ursinus and Georg Sohn, whose brief discussions of preaching were printed together with the Rhetorica Ecclesiastica in the second volume of Keckermann’s Opera Omnia, published in Geneva in 1614. 25. Le Buc, Ecclesiastes, 9–11 (on the proposition and its place within the exordium), 11–6 (on the tractatio, including exegesis), 16–20 (on general and special rules of application). Le Buc’s five types of application correspond to Hyperius’s five sermon genera: teaching correct doctrine, refuting false doctrine, exhorting to pious life, correction of morals, and consolation. Le Buc’s homiletics text was first published in Lausanne in 1602. 26. See the account of Christian Wurstisen’s preaching experience as a young pastor; chapter 8. 27. Platter’s curriculum plan from 1546 required students in the top class to study Melanchthon’s text, Theophil Burckhardt-Biedermann, Geschichte des Gymnasiums zu Basel: Zur dritten S€ acularfeier im Auftrag der Schulbeh€ orde (Basel: E. Birkhaeuser, 1889), 282. 28. The 1571 College statutes, BUB Ms C VIa 70, 150–1. On 14 June 1594, several recent recipients of a master’s degree were admonished to dress appropriately when they gave their sermons in the Franciscan church, KRP I. Eight years later, the stipendiates were reminded that they ‘‘should preach one after the other every one or two weeks, according to the order prescribed in the catalogue’’ (‘‘Concionandum ordine ex praescripto Catalogi, octavo, aut 14 quoque die uni ex eis’’) 3 September 1602, KRP II, 76; see the Senate’s edict that the students should follow the established order, 4 December 1602, KRP II, 80. The Kirchenrat also discussed whether Wolfgang Meyer should be allowed to preach for his father at both St. Alban and the cathedral instead of only at the Franciscan church, 4 February 1603, KRP II, 90. The 1611 curriculum in PINAW APOKATASTASEOS, id est, Instauratio Scholae Theologicae, in academia Basiliensi . . . BUB KiAr H III 2, no. 114. 29. See chapter 8. 30. Doctrina de Concionandi Ratione, et caussis eloquentiae: Seu potius Ratio Discendi, Docendique in Scholis & Ecclesiis: Publice praelecta in Academia Hafniensi, in Dania, a viro clarissimo & doctissimo D. Jacobo Matthiae, foelicis memoriae. Nunc Editus opera & studio Andreae Kragii Ripensis & Haeredum (Basel: Henricpetri, 1589). For instance,

notes to pages 166– 169

357

following Ramus, Matthiae/Krag described dialectic as having two parts: invention, consisting of ten topics, and disposition; rhetoric was reduced to elocutio and pronunciato, 51–2. On Madsen and Krag, Leif Grane, ‘‘Studia humanitatis und Theologie an den Universita¨ten Wittenberg und Kopenhagen im 16. Jahrhundert: ¨ berlegungen,’’ in Der Humanismus und die oberen Fakult€ komparative U aten, ed. Gundolf Keil, Bernd Moeller, and Winfried Trusen (Weinheim: VCH, 1987), 65–114, and ‘‘Spa¨thumanismus in Da¨nemark: Stro¨mungen neben dem Melanchthonischen Unterrichtssystem im letzten Teil des 16. Jahrhunderts,’’ in Die Renaissance im Blick der Nationen Europas, ed. Georg Kauffmann, Wolfenbu¨tteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung 9 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991), 279–92. 31. Preface to William Perkins, Prophetica sive de Sacra et unica Concinandi ratione tractatus nervosiss. in commodum ministrorum, omniumque Theologiae studiosorum . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1602). The edition is not explicitly attributed to Meyer, but the preface is signed W. M., and it contains poems addressed to Wolfgang Meyer by fellow Baslers Johann Heinrich Krug and Johannes Grasser. 32. Amandi Polani a Polansdorf de Concionum sacrarum Methodo institutio, unpaginated preface to Otto von Gru¨nrad; see also chap. 1, where he writes that although others more practiced at preaching should write about how to preach, he wants to help beginners, 1–2. There are similar statements, for instance, in the prefaces to Keckermann’s Rhetorica Ecclesiastica, cols. 3–5, and Lucas Osiander’s De Ratione Concionandi, A2r–A3v. Both Zepper and Le Buc made clear that their homiletics texts summarized what they had taught for years at their respective institutions, Heidelberg and Lausanne; Zepper, Ars Habendi et Audiendi Conciones Sacras, 12–4, Le Buc, Ecclesiastes, 3–5. 33. Polanus, De Concionum sacrarum Methodo institutio, in gratiam tyronum ministerij Ecclesiastici delineata (Basel: Waldkirch, 1604), chap. 2 (pp. 4–19), describes the parts of the sermon and discusses the exordium, including giving the formulas used by Grynaeus in Basel and other Reformed preachers elsewhere to begin the service. Chap. 14 (pp. 340–52) describes the dismissal used on various days or occasions in Basel. 34. Polanus, De Concionum sacrarum Methodo Institutio, 24–6; 51–4; 75–8, citation at 76. 35. Polanus, De Concionum sacrarum Methodo Institutio, 26–50, 54–76, 78–94. 36. Polanus, De Concionum sacrarum Methodo Institutio, chap. 11 (294–7) and chap. 13 (338–40). 37. The lectures on Gen. 3:15 were printed in his Praelectiones de nativitate, 74–128; for a description of these lectures, see chapter 6. His lecture on Dan. 2:34–45, given in December 1604, used rhetorical questions, Praelectiones de nativitate, 12–73. 38. De Concionum sacrarum Methodo Institutio, 168–231. 39. The only other texts to receive this distinction were the brief early homiletic of Clauser, Matthiae’s Doctrina de Concionandi Ratione, and Gross’s De Methodo Concionandi, which I will discuss later. Aegidius Hunnius’s Methodus Concionandi was published in Wittenberg in 1595 by two different printers who may have shared the workload, and so it may have been printed only once. 40. This is the method followed, for instance, by Le Buc, Ecclesiastes, and by Abraham Scultetus, Axiomata Concionandi Practica (Heidelberg: Voegelin, 1610), as well as by Lutherans such as Polycarp Leyser, who edited Jacob Andreae’s Methodus Concionandi (Wittenberg: Gronenberg, 1595), and Hunnius, Methodus Concionandi (Wittenberg: Muller, 1595).

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41. Johann Georg Gross, De Methodo Concionandi: Brevis, ad studiosam Juventutem, Commonefactio (Basel: Genath, 1629). Gross accomplished in forty-eight pages in 16mo what Polanus presented in 364 pages in octavo. The sermon collection was Gross’s Thesaurus Concionum sacrarum omnigenarum (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1616).

chapter 8 1. BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 98–102r; copy in BUB MsKiAr 23a, no. 117: ‘‘Namlich das sie sich in den Bu¨chern mit fleissigem studieren, damit sie dem Volck desto baß vorsten mo¨gen, uoben. Item, das sie des wort Gottes lauter vnnd heiter, on vermischet menschlicher Satzungen, allein nach rechtem waaren verstand heiliger Biblischer Schrifft, mit Christenlicher Zucht vnnd eifer predigen, vnd auch die Laster, wann sie deß vrsach haben, mit dem Wort Gottes in gemein ernstlich straffe. Aber in solchen dingen ihre anfechtungen (wie dann das die Reformation gleicher gstalt außweiset) auch neidische schmach vnd Scheltwort, so nichts erbesseren, aber dadurch Erbar personen verlumbdet oder verargwonet werden mo¨chten, vnderlassen. Item, wie jnen vormalen vndersagt, das sie die sonderen Laster, die der Oberkeit verborgen, nit auff der Cantzlen außschreien: Sonder die selben zuovor vnseren Herren den Ha¨upteren anzeigen lassen sollen . . . ; So befinden doch vnser G. Herren, das widerspiel. Dann wie sie zun zeiten studieren, das ho¨ret man auß jnen Predigen wol, in welchem sie dann jnen selbs vngleich seind. . . . Zum zeiten wirt der Text verlesen vnnd fahret man aber neben außhin vnnd wird geprediget auß gwonheit. Da zeucht man neuwen zeitungen oder andere dergleichen sachen darunder: man schelcket frombd außlendische Oberkeiten, vnnd die so nicht Glaubens genoßen seind, zeucht man mit hitzigen worten an, biß man die stund vertreibt. Also das man gespuren muoß, das man wenig auff die predig gestudiert hatt. Mo¨cht die schuld sein, vnnd daher fliessen, daß sich etliche der weltlichen dingen (als neuwer Zeitungen, außlendischer sachen, vnnd zeitlicher geschefften die der Oberkeit zuogeho¨ren) zuo vil beladen vnnd annemmen, vnnd dadurch die studia vnterlassen.’’ This edict was incorporated into an edict issued in 1581. Samuel Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl analyzes the latter edict within the context of the 1581 synod but is not aware that sections of it stemmed from two decades earlier, Schl€ ussel zur Macht: Verflechtungen und informelles Verhalten im Kleinen Rat zu Basel, 1570–1600, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 173 (Basel: Schwabe, 2002), 1:328–9. 2. On Wurstisen’s education and appointment to office, see chapter 9. 3. Oration in BUB, Ms A l II 2, 268r–v; Wurstisen’s topic, 267v: ‘‘Rectone ac commodo docendi ordine, post Dialecticam Rhetorica tradat?’’ He concluded that rhetoric instruction should precede dialectic instruction—as, indeed, it did in Basel. 4. BUB Ms A VII 66. 5. R. Luginbu¨hl, ed., ‘‘Diarium des Christian Wurtisen, 1557–1581,’’ BZ 1 (1902): 53–145, at 74. Wurstisen received his M.A. in February but did not matriculate in the theology faculty until the fall of 1562; 76. 6. Luginbu¨hl, ‘‘Diarium,’’ 74–5, 83. The earliest manuscript sermon dates from 11 July 1563 and was delivered in Pratteln; his series of sermons preached in Hu¨ningen begin on 5 September and continue through 8 July 1564; these are all contained in BUB Ms A VII 65. By the end of August 1564, he was preaching in St. Clara, where the weekday morning sermon was held in Kleinbasel (the parish of St. Theodor); this and several other weekday sermons are contained in BUB Ms H V 17. 7. Wurstisen’s sermons on Colossians, preached from the fall of 1564 to mid1565, are preserved in BUB Ms H V 17; his sermons on the Psalms, from mid-1565 and

notes to pages 173– 176

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into 1566, in BUB Ms A VII 65, pts. 2–3. The wedding and funeral sermons in BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1. 8. Preached 12 September 1563, BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1 (the sermons are not paginated): ‘‘Also daß wir hie zwei ding wol zu fassen hand, daß ein so do dienet zu vnserem trost, daß ander zu vnnsrer warnung vnnd besserung. Zum ersten, tro¨stet vnnß daß, so wir vnser H. Christum vmb Barmhertzikeit betten, daß er selbs wol weiße was vnser ellennd vnnd anligen ist, der vnns solche barmhertzikeitt bewisen khon, die do krefftig ist, vnnd vnß mag zhilff kon, wie von im die gschrifft bezu¨gt. . . . Zum anderen, dass wir ouch gwarnet sin so¨llen, daß wir vnnß in vnsers Nechsten anligen ouch erbarmen vnnd annemmen sollen.’’ 9. BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1: ‘‘Diß ist nun nit vergebens gschriben, sunnder vnnß zur Leer vnnd vnderwisung, dass Namlich wir in allem vnnserem anligen vnnd beschwerden louffen sollen zu dem herren Christo, in vmb sin gnad vnnd barmhertzikeit anru¨ffen, vnd vor im ston in waarem vnnd vestem glouben vnnd vertru¨wen, dan denn so wil er gern herby sin vnnd vnnß noch sin go¨tlichen willen zu hilff kon. Vnnd daß zum ersten dorumb daß eß sin ernstig gebott ist, daß mir zuo im alls dem rechten Mittler vnnd helffer fliehinnd, vnnd sunst zuo niemandt anders, zuo kheinen heilige nitt, oder derglychen. . . . Zum anderen, daß wir sin ouch treffenlich wol bedo¨rffen, denn wer ist (ging ein jeder in sich selbs) der nitt inn sin Louff hie vff erdrich entpfinde seinigs ellends, vnnd vil widerwertikeitt, vsserlich vnnd innerlich, besonder die do ein recht Christlich leben fu¨ren wollen.’’ 10. See the introduction to the sermon preached 14 May 1564, BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1. 11. BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1; Wurstisen’s first wedding sermon, preached 27 June 1564, was on the example of Zechariah and Elizabeth in Luke 1; he preached his first funeral sermons on Rev. 14:13. 12. Wurstisen’s terms were ‘‘treffenlich, nutzlich, no¨twendig, scho¨n.’’ 13. Sermon preached 19 September 1563, BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1: ‘‘So sollen Ir wissen, daß der Herr Christus hie nitt ist einfeltig wider die sorg do einer luogt wie er sich ernehre vnnd kleide, sunnder wider ein solche sorgfeltikeit, die mehr ein unglaub, vnnd mißtrew ist, do man Gott dem geber alles guoten nitt vertru¨wt, und man sich deßhalb gantz gar doruff gibt, daß man hie vff erdrich vil zuosamen lege.’’ 14. The sermon’s closing summary, BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1: ‘‘Euer lieb wo¨ll vff diss maal daß haben wie wir gho¨rt hannd, wie gantz vnnd gar der Herr wo¨lle daß wir vnns deß diensts deß Mammons entziechen vnnd vnnß gantz vnnd gar zu sin dienst ergeben, daß wir sine gebotten vnnd willen nocko¨mmind, im alleinig dienind vnnd anhangind, so wirt er vnnß zuletst nitt nur alß knecht verlonen, sunnder alß sine lieben kinder ewiklich groß machen vnnd werden ho¨ren die stimm vnsers herren Math. 25, ‘Sy du truwer vnnd guter knecht, du bist u¨ber wenig tru¨w gsin, ich will dich u¨ber vil setzen, gang in die freud dines herrs.’ Darzuo helff vnnß der Almechtig Gott, durch seinen Sun Jesum Christum, Amen.’’ 15. Wurstisen noted in the margin of a few of his sermons that he had baptized a baby on that day. He had only a few opportunities to administer the Lord’s Supper: that sacrament was celebrated in Hu¨ningen only three times a year (Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost), and the sermon was based on the appointed narrative text for the holiday. At St. Theodor, the sermon for the monthly communion services was always preached by the senior pastor. 16. Sermon on Luke 17, preached 12 September 1563, BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1: ‘‘Wir wu¨ssen wol in was grossen Irthumben vnnsere Eltern gsteckt sinnd, vnnd wie die reine gottes leer durch pa¨bstische satzungen befleckt sy worden, vnnd wie gnedig vnnß

360

notes to pages 176– 177

der Her gsin sige daß er vnns daß rein liecht sins H. Evangelij zu disen Letsten Zitten hatt vffgon vnd erschienen lossen.’’ See also the sermon on Rev. 14, preached 16 February 1564: ‘‘Vff das wir sehen, wie man vnnß im Pabsthumb so vbel gleert vnnd dLu¨tt verfu¨rt hab, Das si gseit hannd das die Seelen erst weis wan in ein fegfu¨r ko¨mmind, do si erst volkommlich gfa¨get werden, vnnd deßhalb hatt man fu¨r si angsehen, Ma¨sse die Sibennden, dryßgisen etc., wie sich daß die Alten wol bedencken mo¨ginnd. . . . Der heilig Geist licht vnnß hie vil ein anders, vnnd thut unns nienan khein meldung von dem fegfeur, vff das wir sehen wie es mentschen dicht gsin sige, so vffgsetzt on alles wort Gottes worden ist.’’ 17. Sermon on Luke 14, preached in October 1563, BUB Ms A VII 65, pt. 1: ‘‘Zuletst, ist daß ouch ein schwerer Mißbruch, wen man an solliche tagen, nu¨tze werck ligen laßt, vnnd vnnu¨tze vnd bo¨se werck man thut, alß do man an dem tag der dem herren zu Ehren fu¨rnemlich solt dienen, man sich voll sufft, man spillt, vnnd sunst lichtferige vnnd Gottlose werck anfacht, dannen hat man offt nie mehr unzuchts vernimpt, dan am Sontag, desglich so man anders an der hand nimpt, jagen, voglen, fischen, oder derglichen, vnnd daß hieby nu¨t gott dem Heren vnd sein wort nachfragt vnnd daß versumpt, dem man zum meisten nachgan solt.’’ 18. Political machinations within the parish of St. Theodor prevented his election to the post of assistant pastor, although he had served as vicar for the previous two years; Wurstisen, ‘‘Verzeichnung so dann von wa¨gen mines ampts in der kilchen zu Minderen Basel, Anno 1566, mit mir ist verhandlet worden,’’ BUB Ms A l II 2, reprinted as Beilage II in Luginbu¨hl, ‘‘Diarium,’’ 127–38. He became the professor of mathematics at the university and taught theology briefly in 1585–86 before becoming Stadtschreiber for the city, a post he held until his death in 1588. He also developed an interest in Basel history and is best known as the author of the Basler Chronik. 19. Johannes Brandmu¨ller, Conciones funebres centum ex vetere, et octoginta ex novo Testamento (Basel: Perna, 1572), and Conciones Nuptiales, XL. ex vetere Testamento, et XX ex Novo . . . quibus subjuncta sunt adhuc XL. Themata, cum Indice rerum ac verborum memorabilium (Basel: Perna, 1576). 20. Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘ ‘To Oblige My Brethren’: The Reformed Funeral Sermons of Johann Brandmu¨ller,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005): 37–54. 21. I have taken the following examples from the edition of the Conciones funebres CLXXX, nunc postremo diligenter recognitae, multisque in locis illustrtae . . . (Stockholm: Gutterwitz, 1584); see the unpaginated preface. 22. Conciones funebres, 71–5, sermon 18 on 2 Kings 20:1–7: ‘‘1. Trifariam considerari potest haec historia. Primum, ut dicamus ea, quae ad personam Ezechia regis Iudae pertinent. . . . 2. Secundo considerari debet illa ipsa, quo ad nos. Hinc enim discimus, quomodo nos gerere debeamus ante mortem: et quid agere, ut addantur virae nostrae non solum quindecim anni in hoc seculo, sed mille, hoc est, infiniti, et eterna felicitas. . . . Tertio consideranda est, quo ad Christum, cuius figuram Ezechias praetulit.’’ 23. Conciones funebres, sermon 4 on Gen. 23:1–2, pp. 14–5: ‘‘Ex luctu quem Abrahamus, qui pater est omnium credentium (Rom. 4) habuit ob uxorem mortum, discimus naturalem affectionem Deo etiam placere in suis sanctis: modo regulam fidei non obliviscantur. . . . Quem modum atque legem obseruasse Abrahamum indicant vel haec uerba: Deinde omisso defuncto suo, uel, cum surrexisset a conspectu mortui sui, id est, cadaueris uxoris suae demortuae, eamque satis superque planxisset, relicto corpore, Hethaeos his uerbis conuenit, etc. Videmus insuper hoc loco, ut spiritus sanctus non solum docuerit, in utroque testamento, per praecepta et exempla, quo pacto coniugium sit contrahendum et quomodo in eo uiuendum, sed etiam qua

notes to pages 177– 179

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ratione sit concludendum, ac finiendum, id est, quomodo superstes coniunx altero mortuo se gerere debeat.’’ 24. Conciones funebres, sermon 6 on Gen. 27:1–4, pp. 21–2: ‘‘1. Miseriam praesentis uitae cernere licet in hisce uerbis. Isaac enim senescit, uiribus deficit, morti appropinquat, diem mortis suae ignorat, id est, uitam aerumnosam, breuem, et incertam ducit. Si ergo iustus in terra resipit, quanto magis impius et peccator? . . . 2. Discant hic patresfamilias prudentiam exemplo Isaaci, qui (sicut et pater eius, Gen. 25) ne discordia inter posteros oriretur ab obitu suo, dum vixit, res suae composuit. Hoc faciendum Ezechias Dominus quoque dixit, Esai. 38. 3. Discant etiam liberi morem gerere parentum voluntati ante mortem: imo omnes benefacere debemus nobis mutuo dum uiuimus, ut est in Siricida scriptum, cap. 14. Nam uniuersi nos ignoramus tempus nostrae mortis, ut et Isaac de se fatetur, ac se quotidie mortem expectare dicit.’’ 25. Conciones funebres, sermon 128 on John 6:39, pp. 529–31: ‘‘Atqui Christianos resurrectionis admonere erubesco. Qui enim docendus est esse resurrectionem, et sibi non omnino persuadet . . . is profecto non est Christianus. . . . Qui sunt igitur qui resurrectioni non credunt? Qui sceleste, inquinatam uitam et impuram uiuunt, ut Propheta inquit: Inquinatae sunt uiae eius in omni tempore, auferuntur iudicia tua a facie eius. Non potest, non potest, inquam, homo pure uiuere, qui non credit resurrectionem: ut qui nullius sibi conscij sunt criminis, eam non modo profitentur, sed et uolunt et credunt, ut remunerationem accipiant.’’ 26. Conciones funebres, sermon 63 on Eccles. 9:12, p. 254: ‘‘Quid igitur sibi uolunt, qui ad chiromantas, astrologos, physiognomuntas, genethliacos, uentriloquos, et magos currunt, ut sciant aeui modum. Clamat Ecclesiastes: Nescit homo finem suum: et nos ab his uolumus scire finem nostrum, qui ipsi finem nesciunt?’’ Brandmu¨ller also rejected the belief that the souls of the wicked wander on earth after their death in sermon 67 on Wisd. of Sol. 3:1. 27. Conciones funebres, sermon 14 on 1 Sam. 4:19–22 and 1 Tim. 2:13–15 on death in childbirth, sermon 38 on Ps. 82:6 on the responsibilities of the magistrate; sermon 165 on James 1:9–12 on the duty of the wealthy to remain humble. 28. Conciones nuptiales, sermon 6 on Gen. 16:1–11 on polygamy; sermon 18 on Deut. 23:27 condemning adultery and fornication; sermon 30 on Tobias 1, recommending that one wait until age thirty to marry and describing what one should look for in a wife. 29. Compare Brandmu¨ller, Conciones Nuptiales, sermon 1 on Gen. 2:18–25, pp. 10–21, with Borrhaus, Martini Borrhai in Mosem, divinum legislatorem . . . Commentarij (Basel: Oporinus, 1555), cols. 51–5; sermon 2 on Gen. 3:16–19, pp. 22–8, with Borrhaus, Martini Borrhai in Mosem, cols. 71–5; his funeral sermon 172, Rev. 2:8–11, with Borrhaus’s in Apocalypsim Ioannis, in In Iesaiae prophetae oracula . . . in Apocalypsim Ioannis . . . explicatio (Basel: Oporinus, 1561), cols. 653–5. 30. Grasser was a year older than Wurstisen. Like Wurstisen, he received first his B.A. and then his M.A. degree in Basel. He served as either vicar or pastor in Reinach, one of the Reformed villages nominally subject to the bishop of Basel, and was elected as assistant pastor of St. Theodor after Wurstisen’s failure to obtain that post. For yet another example of topical preaching, see the manuscript sermon schemata of the theology student and then pastor Jacob Schmidlin, written between 1571 and 1573, BUB Ms O II 16, no. 1. 31. Jonas Grasser, Zwo Christenliche und trostliche Predigen/auß dem xxi. Capitel Luce . . . Item/kurtzer bericht/von der letzten und aller herlichesten zukunfft des Herren Christi . . . (Basel: Samuel Ko¨nig, 1573); see Grasser’s introduction, 14–5, giving the themes and chief points of each sermon.

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32. Grynaeus’s preaching schedule can be determined from his many published sermons and sermon outlines, as well as his unpublished sermon notes, for he almost always noted the date on which the sermon was preached in the margin. 33. In the unpaginated preface to Jacob Andreae’s Methodus Concionandi . . . (Wittenberg: Gronenberg, 1595), the editor Polycarp Leyser stated that Andreae had dictated these lectures almost thirty years earlier in Tu¨bingen. In the preface to his own homiletics text, Lucas Osiander also referred to what he had learned from Andreae’s lectures many years previously, De Ratione Concionandi, A2r–A3v. On the back of the testimony for his doctorate in theology, dated 14 January 1565, Grynaeus noted that Osiander was promoted together with him, BUB MsKiAr 43, no. 5. 34. Zwo Christenliche Predigen: Die Erste/wie man in der Gemein Gottes das Euangelium von Christo Jesu verk€ undigen vnd annemmen soll. Die Ander/von Regierung der gleubigen Menschen/vnd Einf€ uring in das himmlische Vatterland . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1586). In his preface to Werner Gebhard, A2r, Grynaeus stated that he had been asked to publish the sermons. He had preached them in the cathedral on 31 January and 1 February 1586. 35. Zwo Christenliche Predigen: Die Erste wie man in der Gemein Gottes . . . A2r–v. Manuscript outlines of some of Grynaeus’s sermons from 1586 are preserved in BUB MsKiAr 33. Lukas Bacmeister recommended that young preachers write out their sermons, whether in schemata form or as a complete text, De modo concionandi. Simplex informatio eorum, qui ad munus docendi publice in Ecclesia aliquando accedent . . . (Rostock: Jacob Lucius, 1570), 35v–36r. 36. Short form of sermon preached on 6 June 1587, printed as sermon 14 on Joel in Christliche Predigen vber die zwen Sch€ onen Psalmen Davids: Gott sey vns gnedig . . . Kirtze Verzeichnuß der f€ urnemesten Puncten/der Predigen vber den Propheten Joel . . . . (Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1588), 174–7; the long form as the first sermon in Drey Christenliche Predigen/Die erste: Von der wahren Bekehrung zu Gott . . . (Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1587), 1–29. 37. Sermon preached 2 July 1590; short form in Erklerung des Gebettes Jesu Christi . . . (Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1591), 287–8; longer form in Kurtze verzeichnus der f€ urnemesten lehren/dreyer Predigen/welche zu Basel im M€ unster seind gehalten worden . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1591), 22–36. 38. Dreizehen Christenliche Predigen (Basel: Henricpetri, 1587), was dedicated to Helene Surgantin, wife of Oberzunftmeister Lucas Gebhart; Vier Christliche Predigen/zu underscheidnen Tagen in dem M€ unster zu Basel gehalten . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1587) was dedicated to Christina Hagenbachin, wife of Burgermeister Ulrich Schulthess; Zwo Christenliche Predigen/Die erste/von dem grossen Trost was dedicated to Barbara Brandin, Petri’s widow and daughter of Theodor Brand, who had been Burgermeister in the years after the Reformation. Brandin was also Grynaeus’s parishioner; Grynaeus preached (and then published) her funeral sermon in 1591. In addition to being a more indirect way of currying favor with the heads of Basel’s government, the dedications of the sermons with catechetical explanations to these women may have reflected the role mothers played in teaching the catechism to their children. 39. Grynaeus’s Christmas Day sermons were based on the traditional pericope from Luke, but this had more to do with explaining the Christmas story than with adherence to tradition. There are cases where he published two different sermons preached on the same Sunday, neither based on the pericope for the day. Since Grynaeus only preached twice on Sunday (the dawn sermon was given by the archdeacon), it can be assumed that he had abandoned the pericopes for his preaching. 40. The sermons on John 1 lasted from 12 April to 14 June, BUB Ms Ki Ar 33; the eight sermons on Revelation were published in Dreizehen Christenliche Predigen . . . Acht

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Predigen/auß der Offenbarung Johannis/von den sieben Sterne/vnd sieben guldenen Le€ uchtern . . . (Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1587). The sermons on Joel are published in Christliche Predigen vber die zwen Sch€ onen Psalmen Davids . . . Kirtze Verzeichnuß der f€ urnemesten Puncten/der Predigen vber den Propheten Joel . . . (Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1588). 41. The sermons on John 17 and Philippians were published in Erklerung des Gebettes Jesu Christi . . . Joh. 17 . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1591); the sermon sketches on 1 Corinthians and Titus were published in Erklerung des H. Apostels Pauli ersten Sendbrieffs an die Gemeine Gottes zu Corintho . . . (Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1592). The sermons on John 18–21 in Passional: das ist Die Historia vom heiligen Leiden, Sterben, Begrebnuß und Afferstendtnus . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1592). 42. First sermon on 1 Cor., Erklerung des H. Apostels Pauli ersten Sendbrieffs, 1–3. 43. Erklerung des H. Apostels Pauli, 433–34. 44. For example, in a sermon preached on 15 April 1587, he referred to mercenaries recently sent to France from Basel and told his hearers that he would show them from Ps. 20 ‘‘wie fromme Vnderthanen/zur zeit des Kriegs/fu¨r jhr Oberkeit die es gut meinet/vmb erhaltung Siges vnnd Friedens/mit gleubigen Gebett anhalten sollen’’; Grynaeus, Erklerung des Gebettes Jesu Christi, 201. 45. Grynaeus continued his sermon on Ps. 20:1, Erklerung des Gebettes Jesu Christi, 201–2: ‘‘Es wo¨lle aber E. L. im ersten Spruch dieses Psalmen/ein Christliches auffmercken haben/auff diese Haubtlehr. Jederman soll zu Gott im Gebett ru¨ffen/vm erho¨rung vnd erho¨hung/in erkanndtnuß der gegenwertigen gefahr/vnnd der allmechtigkeit Gottes/die wol vns auffrichten vnd erhalten kan. Solches wirdt nun der gestalt vns fu¨rgehalten vnnd eyngebildet.’’ 46. In his very brief sermon on Ps. 20:1, Grynaeus did not divide the Hauptlehre into parts but closed instead with three points of application, Erklerung des Gebettes Jesu Christi, 204–5: ‘‘So ermane nun ich E.L. daß sie fu¨rs erste/Die Oberkeit lasse/in Gottes nammen/von Friedens vnd Kriegsha¨ndlen rhatschlagen vnd fu¨rnemmen/was jhren Gott eyngibet vnd befihlt/nach dieser zeit schweren gelegenheit. . . . Demnach/ sey jederman gewarnet vor der Sicherheit/dz niemandt meyne/es hab diese zeit kein noht mit vns/wir seyen sicher. . . . Letstlich/Tro¨ste sich ein jeder des nammens des Gottes Jacob/welcher zu rechter zeit den seinen auffhilffet/vnnd sie erho¨het. Wie geschrieben stehet: Der Herre ist ein Richter der Welte/er erho¨het vnnd ernidriget. Der Herr ist Sonne vnnd Schilt/er verleihet Gnad vnd Ehr. Wenn wir nicht wissen wz wir thun sollen/ist vbrig daß wir vnsere Augen zu dir auffheben/wie der fromme Ko¨nig Josaphet saget. Der namme des Herren werde gelobet in alle ewigkeit/Amen.’’ 47. So, for instance, in the sermon on the letter to the church of Thyatira, part of a series on Rev. 2–3, preached 22 January 1587, in Dreizehen Christenliche Predigen . . . Acht Predigen/auß der Offenbarung Johannis/von den sieben Sternen/vnd sieben guldenen Le€ uchtern . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1587), 86–97, cf. 94–5. 48. See the sermon on the church of Sardis preached on 24 January 1587, Dreizehen Christenliche Predigen, 97–113, esp. 100. 49. The Senate could, however, interpret Grynaeus’s statements from the pulpit as criticism of their policies; see the incident described at the end of chapter 9. 50. Christliche Predigen u€ber die zwen sch€ onen psalmen Davidis . . . (Basel: Henricpetri, 1588), unpag. preface. 51. So, for instance, the Hauptlehren of the sermons in Vier Christliche Predigen: sermon 1 on 1 John 5:8, preached 23 October 1586, p. 10; sermon 4, on Is. 7:14, preached 20 December 1586, p. 99.

364

notes to pages 182– 185

52. Grynaeus, Erklerung des Gebettes, sermon 2 on Phil 1:2, preached 27 April 1590, p. 232; sermon 3, Phil. 1:3–5, preached 28 April, p. 232; sermon 4, Phil. 1:6, preached 29 April, p. 235. 53. Erklerung des H. Apostels Pauli ersten Sendbrieffs, the Hauptlehre for sermon on 1 Cor. 1:8–9, p. 18: ‘‘Allein Gott der Vatter erhaltet die Außerwehlten im Glauben zur Seligkeit. Wie thut er das? Also daß er sie vnstrefflich bevestiget/also daß nichts verdammlichs an denen geacht wird/die in Christo seind/Rom. 8; see also the sermon on 1 Cor. 1:26–27, p. 49–51. 54. Erklerung des H. Apostels Pauli ersten Sendbrieffs, sermon on 1 Cor. 1:14–16, p. 32; Ein Christlich Predig/Vom H. Nachtmahl . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, [1607]), 6; Zwo Christenliche Predigen, sermon 1, pp. 6–24. 55. Grynaeus, Zwo Christenliche Predigen, sermon 1 on Matt. 26:26–27, preached 31 July 1586, pp. 8–9; Vier christliche Predigen, sermon 2 on John 6:35, preached 20 November 1586, pp. 28 and 30. On the catechetical appendices to these sermons, see chapter 4. 56. On the daily Scripture readings, 2 June 1586, BStA Kirchen Akten D 1, no. 2; KRP I, 8 April 1586, 10 May and 27 May 1588. Description of what was being preached, KRP I, 18 August 1598, which also highlights Gugger’s unwillingness to participate in the discussion. 57. First mention of problems, KRP I, 10 May 1588; 1590 censure of the city clergy, BStA Kirchen Akten C 2, ff. 35r–40v, copy in KRP I, 168–79; Protokolle, Kleiner Rat 2, 2 May 1590, 94v; KRP I, 5 May 1590. 58. KRP I, 2 December 1597: ‘‘Certum est, illius conciones admodum esse frigidas et incenditas, quum minimum habeant salis Christi.’’ There is no way to determine the accuracy of Grynaeus’s charge of extortion. The antistes acknowledged the services Gugger had performed during Sulzer’s illness but used the charge of extortion to negate their worth. On the cathedral statues, see chapter 9. 59. Gugger’s popularity was also attested to during the censure of the clergy during the 1590 synod, KRP I, pp. 171–2. 60. Johann Jacob Gugger, Christlicher Heerpredigten. . . . Darinnen die f€ urnemmste Historien . . . auff allerley f€ ahl/beyds in Friedens und Kriegsleufften/auffs allerfleissigst erkl€ art/gestelt und gehalten worden sind (Mu¨mpelgard: Foillet, 1590–91), 2r. The sermons were published in three parts: the first two in 1590 and the last in 1591. Significantly, they were printed not in Basel but in Montbe´liard, which was subject to staunchly Lutheran Wu¨rttemberg. 61. Pt. 1 consists of sermons on portions of the Pentateuch: four sermons on Gen. 14, two sermons on Exod. 17, ten sermons on Num. 21–24, one sermon on Num. 31, and a final sermon on Deut. 34:4. Gugger also reprinted a sermon by the Lutheran preacher Heinrich Salmuth on the magistrate’s right to wage war. Pt. 2 is on Joshua, and pt. 3 on Judges. 62. The introduction to the second in a series of four sermons on Gen. 14 is typical, Gugger, Christlicher Heerpredigten, pt. 1, 11: ‘‘Aus was vrsachen die Orientischen Ko¨nig auß jhrem Landt mit grossem grimm vnd gewalt in das Sodomer Landt gefallen/das ist nechst angezeigt worden/als nemlich auß lauterem mutwillen vnd rachgir. Nun will ich auch anzeigen/erstlich: uß was vrsachen die Sodomiter sein geschlagen vnnd beraubt worden. Demnach wie Loth sampt den seinen vnnd dem seinen sey hinweg gefu¨rt worden gegen Orient/Vnd werden auß disen zweyen stucken ho¨ren/was die Hauptursachen seyen der Landßuerderbu¨ngen: Vnnd warumb Gott zun zeiten die seinen mit den Gottlosen ettwas lasse leiden/vnd in gemeine vnfehl wicklen.’’ 63. Gugger, Christlicher Heerpredigten, 3r.

notes to pages 185– 188

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64. Gugger, Christlicher Heerpredigten, pt. 1, 131–2. 65. Christlicher Heerpredigten, pt. 3, 34–47 (sermons 5–6 on Judges 3:15–31). 66. Christlicher Heerpredigten, pt. 1, 19–30; esp. 27–8. 67. Christlicher Heerpredigten, pt. 1, 44–55. 68. Jacob Christoph Ryter, a contemporary of Grynaeus and the pastor of Liestal until his death in 1610, also employed a topical style of preaching in his wedding sermons based on the Book of Tobias, BUB Ms A III 43. The lack of sermons from the third generation of pastors, those born ca. 1550–79, was to some extent due to the longevity in positions of leadership of Grynaeus’s generation. Only one of the fifteen city pastors born during this period, Johannes Tryphius, rose to the level of senior pastor. He is also the only pastor from this period whose sermons were published. Tryphius used Ramist dichotomies to sketch out an intallation sermon that he delivered in 1590, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 101, 274r, but his printed sermon delivered at the oath-taking of Basel’s magistrate in 1616 is a topical sermon, ‘‘Von Bestellung eines loblichen Regiments,’’ in Zwo Christliche und nutzliche Predigten. Vom Standt der Christenlichen Oberkeit/im M€ unster zu Basel von den Pfarrherren bey S. Leonhart vnd S. Peter gehalten (Basel: Schro¨ter, 1616). Tryphius is not explicitly named in this sermon, but he was the pastor of St. Leonhard in 1616. 69. Polanus presided over thirteen of the seventeen printed disputations between 1599 and 1611 in which Gross participated and over fourteen of the seventeen printed disputations between 1608 and 1619 in which Wollebius participated. 70. The last dated sermon in the book was given in June 1616; the preface is dated 12 August. The length of the schemata is not related to either the Scripture text or the type of sermon. One of the shorter sermon schemata, on Hab. 2:2–3, which is one column long, is followed by one of the longer schemata, a six-column sermon on Hab. 2:4, Johann Georg Gross, Thesaurus Concionum sacrarum omnigenarum (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1616), cols. 2251–7. 71. On Gross’s catechetical sermons and the catechetical preaching at St. Elizabeth, see chapter 10. The three cycles of Sunday Gospel sermons were preached in 1604–6, in 1605–6, both while Gross was at St. Margaret, and mostly during 1608–9, after he had moved to St. Elizabeth. Gross included very few Sunday sermons in his collection from his time at St. Peter; most of them concerned the Lord’s Supper and were presumably preached when the sacrament was administered. A preaching schedule from the eighteenth century specifies that the pastor of St. Elizabeth, the deacon of St. Leonhard, and the Spital pastor shared responsibility for the weekday services in the Franciscan church. I assume this arrangement dated back to the early seventeenth century; BUB MsKiAr 55b, 256. 72. Johannes Wollebius, Concionum Miscellanearum Fasciculus, variis occasionibus inserviens, diuque desideratus: Nunc primum in Usum S. Ministerii Candidatorum in lucem emissus, opera et studio M. Johan. Jacobi Wollebii, Fil. Verbi Divini Ministri (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1648). The earliest dated sermon is from August 1618; all of the other dated sermons are from the 1620s. Some of the occasions on which the sermons were preached would only have been appropriate for the cathedral preacher. The sermon schemata are all between six and ten pages long. 73. The only exception to this general rule is his series of sermon summaries on 1 Cor., where the last 25 of the 150 sermons are in Latin or mix Latin and German, Erklerung des . . . ersten Sendbrieffs . . . zu Corintho. 74. The editor of Wollebius’s sermons makes this explicit both on the title page and in his dedication, Concionum Miscellanearum Fasciculus, a3r: ‘‘Applicui itaque animum, ac mecum constitui, non equidem uiris grauibus, et in concionando

366

notes to pages 188– 189

exercitatis, sed Theologiae potissimum studiosis ac S.S. ministerii Candidatis, gratum quid facere, illorumque petitioni annuere.’’ 75. Following a sermon on Ps. 1:1–2, ‘‘de vera pietate,’’ Wollebius introduced the topic of his sermon on Ps. 1:3, Concionum miscellanearum Fasciculus, 96: ‘‘Vt magni momenti, ita affines et conjunctae valde sunt quaestiones, de Summo hominis Fine, et de Summo ejusdem Bono . . . De summo hominis Fine, dictum nuper, etc. Nunc de Summo ejusdem Bono. . . . Duo igitur istorum occasione nobis erunt pertractanda; I. Qua in re summum hominis Bonum consistat. II. Quam felices sint, qui summo hoc Bono fruuntur.’’ 76. An example of Gross’s use of dichotomies in his sermon on James 5:16, Thesaurus Concionum, cols. 1669–74. Gross introduced his sermon by referring to the text: ‘‘Hisce verbis: ‘Orate alii pro aliis, ut sanemini’; ejusmodi adhortatio continetur, quae hoc tempore consideratione dignissima, imo necessaria est. In ea vero considerandum, 1. Quid it orare. 2. Quinam orare debeant. 3. Pro quibus. 4. Quid illis precandum et optandum sit.’’ Gross answers his first question by dividing prayer into two types, ‘‘Orare autem vel generalem, vel specialem significationem habet.’’ General and special prayer are each defined, and the section lists four conditions ‘‘ut haec invocatio Dei fit legitima, Deoque placeat.’’ The second point begins with the statement that ‘‘orare debent omnes homines, cujuscunque sexus, gentis, conditionis, professionis seu status; imo non tantum adulti, sed etiam infantes, quamprimum possunt institui atque doceri,’’ and then continues, ‘‘duae distinctae sunt quaestiones, quinam debeant orare? Et qui possint, per Dei gratiam.’’ Regarding the third point, Gross asserts that ‘‘orandum est pro omnibus hominibus viventibus in his terris, qui non peccant ad mortem, etiamsi adhuc sint hostes nostri et nondum conversi. 1 Tim 2:1, 2; Matt 5:44–45.’’ He then discusses further the three groups for whom one should not pray: the dead, those who have committed the sin unto death, and those ‘‘qui tantum pro se orat, ut avari.’’ Regarding the final point, Gross states that we should pray for ‘‘sanitatem: sic enim adhortatur nos Apostolus,’’ and continues, ‘‘quemadmodum duplex morbus est: animi et corporis, ita etiam duplex sanitas, scilicet animi et corporis.’’ 77. Thus in sermon 14 on John 12:25–26, on taking up the cross and following Christ, Concionum miscellanearum Fasciculus, 119–28, Wollebius divided the sermon into ‘‘I. Hortatio’’ and ‘‘II. Rationes ejus.’’ The exhortion is a consideration of what it means to follow Christ, discussed under the three steps of faith, piety, and bearing the cross. There are also three rationes for following Christ: ‘‘I. Periculum animae,’’ divided into a consideration ‘‘in quantum animae ac vitae suae periculum sese conjiciant, qui vitam suam Christi abnegatione servare student’’ and ‘‘quae vera servandi vitam ratio?’’ ‘‘II. Exemplum Christi,’’ learned in three ways, from Christ’s teaching, his life, and his passion and death; and finally ‘‘III. Praemium vitae aeternae,’’ which consists of certitudinem and gloriam. 78. See, for instance, the two sermons on Isa. 7:14, Thesaurus Concionum, cols. 936–9, where Gross draws four points from the text (occasio, praeparatio, summa, and partes). In the first sermon, he discusses the first two points, each of which is divided into two points; in the second sermon, he gives a one-sentence summary and devotes the rest of the sermon to discussing its three parts. The first two of these are dismissed as something to talk about in another sermon, and the third point is then divided into two further points. Although at first glance Gross does not seem to be dichotomizing, in fact at every point that he pursues further he is thinking in dichotomies. 79. Thus Gross began a series of four sermons during Holy Week, 1609, by proceeding from a very broad overview of the logical structure to the specific topic of

notes to pages 189– 190

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the sermon, Thesaurus Concionum, col. 1064: ‘‘Statui igitur, quatuor concionibus, quatuor declarere causas passionis et mortis Domini Jesu, nempe Efficientem, Materiam, Formam et Finem: initio nunc facto a consideratione causae efficientis. Causam hanc efficientem passionis et mortis Christi ut recte explicare possim, praemittam hanc divisionem: passio et mors Christi duobus modis consideratur, vel ut beneficium Dei, ac sacrificium pro peccatis nostris, nec non causa salutis nostrae; vel ut occisio iniquissima, respectu nimirum eorum, qui ex odio et malitia authores erant passionis ac mortis Domini. Atque, secundum hunc gemitum ac distinctum modum considerandi, de causa passionis et mortis Domini efficiente, nunc agemus. Passionis et mortis Domini priori modo consideratae (ut beneficium est et sacrificium pro nobis praestitutum) causa efficiens summa ac principalis est Deus. Et quia istud opus et beneficium, est externum opus Dei, sciendum, totam S.S. Trinunitatem, nempe Patrem, Filium, et Spiritum S. ejus authorem esse; solo interim Filio Dei pro nobis passo et mortuo.’’ Ramus criticized the categories first proposed by Aristotle and introduced his own: in addition to the four causes, Ramus included as categories of analysis their effects, subjects, adjuncts, opposites, and comparatives, P. Rami Dialectica audomari Talaei praelectionibus illustrata (Basel: Episcopius, 1572), 37–145; Polanus, De Ratione Legendi cum Fructu autores, inprimis sacros, & dignoscendi in illis proposita, themata & argumenta Tractatus. Cui adjuncta est Analysis Logica & Exegesis Theologica Psalmorum tredecim . . . (Basel: Waldkirch, 1603), 26–75; Howell, Logic and Rhetoric, 156–7. 80. Compare Gross, sermons on Ps. 1–13, col. 2025–55 with Polanus’s exegesis of Ps. 1–13, De Ratione Legendi cum Fructu autores, 83–327; Gross’ sermons on Ps. 14–16, cols. 2055–71 with Polanus, Exegesis Analytica, 163–346. 81. For Gross’s use of questions to develop the sermon, see e.g., the five sermon schemata on Gen. 41, Thesaurus Concionum, cols. 1822–32; these also illustrate various ways of presenting the application. Refutation proceeds confirmation in the sermon on Matt. 5:20–26, cols. 804–9; subject and predicate of a thesis in the sermon on 1 Cor. 11:23–26, cols. 899–903. The six sermons on the first three articles of the creed are in essence sermons on theological loci with their application, cols. 387–406. Sermons on the fourth and ninth articles of the creed divided into meaning and application, cols. 409–13; 443–5. 82. Concionum miscellanearum Fasciculus, sermon 54 on justification (‘‘de fructu resurrectionis Domini’’), 446–51. 83. Concionum miscellanearum Fasciculus, sermon 20 (175–83) is divided into sensus and rationes; sermons 28 (242–50) and 30 (258–64) into sensus and usus; sermon 40 (338–45) into scopus and rationes. Sermon 27 (234–42) begins by rejecting the false beliefs of the Epicureans before explaining what the pious believe, based on God’s word. The distinction between a theme and its argument comes directly from Polanus’s version of Ramus; see his admonition on the use of logic, Logicae Libri Duo . . . (Herborn: Corvinus, 1590), 227. Roughly one-third of Wollebius’s sermons use questions as headings for their parts. 84. All of these aspects are repeated in the communion sermons, especially those preached sequentially from November 1611 into early 1613, Gross, Thesaurus Concionum, cols. 1211–52. For another example of how Gross used repetition to teach theological concepts, see the analysis of his catechetical sermons in chapter 10. Wollebius’s sermon on the Lord’s Supper, Concionum miscellanearum Fasciculus, 403–12. 85. Gross, Thesaurus Concionum, 1219, 1223–4. 86. Wollebius, Concionum miscellanearum Fasciculus, sermons 19–23, pp. 168– 209; see Gross’s sermons on the Lord’s Supper discussed earlier.

368

notes to pages 190– 193

87. For example, Gross’s sermon on the Gospel text for the seventeenth Sunday of Trinity, Luke 14:1–11, Thesaurus Concionum, 690: ‘‘Descriptio hic continetur gestorum quorundam in domo cujusdam Pharisaei. Duo vero potissimum enumerantur: 1. Miraculum scilicet et illius quidem primum occasio, deinde defensio. 2. Objurgatio ambitionis Pharisaicae, cum adhortatione ad modestiam, et dehortatione a superbia, subjectis utrique argumentis ab effectis. Vsus: I. Non cuilibet humanitatem prae se ferenti, fidendum temere. II. Dulcibus semper amara sunt mista. III. Benefaciendum proximo, quovis tempore et loco, requirente necessitate. IV. Christus est omnipotens Deus. V. Quod tibi tuisve fieri vis, alijs ne invideas, vel improbes. VI. Superbis Deus resistit, humilibus vero dat gratiam suam.’’ 88. Gross divided his usus within his sermons for the Lenten Sundays of Oculi and Laetare according to the categories of didascaliis, elenchis, correctionis, paediis, and consolatio, cols. 759–63; Wollebius analyzed Christ’s words to his disciples in Luke 18 under the four intended purposes of instruction, warning, admonition, and consolation, Concionum miscellanearum Fasciculus, 432–9. 89. Johann Jacob Grasser, Die Klaglieder des H. Propheten Jeremie in 27. underschiedlichen Predigten/und Gebetten . . . (Basel: Schro¨ter, 1613). On the younger Grasser, Hellmut Thomke, ‘‘Die Stellung Johann Jacob Grassers im Umkreis der oberrheinischen und schweizerischen Literatur,’’ in Schweizerisch-deutsche Beziehungen im konfessionellen Zeitalter: Beitr€ age zur Kulturgeschichte 1580–1650, ed. Martin Bircher et al., Wolfenbu¨tteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 12 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984), 119–34; Alfred R. Weber, ‘‘Johann Jacob Grasser (1579–1627),’’ BZ 89 (1989): 41–134. 90. Klaglieder, sermon 12, 137. 91. Klaglieder, sermon 12, 141–2. 92. Gross included ninety-one funeral sermons in his collection, Thesaurus Concionum; for the examples cited, see his three sermons on Job 14, cols. 1339–46, and on Eccles. 9:11–2, cols. 1376–7; Wollebius, Christenliche Leich- und Trost-Predigten/ Darinn allerhand außerlesene Text heiliger Schrifft/auß dem Alten vnd Newen Testament/ grundlich erkl€ art/nutzlich appliciert . . . (Basel: Georg Decker, 1657), 267–81, 296–31, 365–80. 93. Johannes Wollebius, Christenliche Leich- und Trost-Predigten, for von Brunn, 62–79; for Hornlocher, 125–38; for Hel, 155–70; for Heydelin and Just, 203–25. 94. Chevalier, Pr^echer sous l’E´dit de Nantes, provides only an indirect parallel, since most of the sermons she studies were published in the second half of the seventeenth century. On the preaching of Lutheran Orthodoxy, Hans-Christoph Rublack, ‘‘Augsburger Predigt im Zeitalter der lutherischen Orthodoxie,’’ in Die Augsburger Kirchenordnung von 1537 und ihr Umfeld, ed. R. Schwarz (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1988), 123–58, and ‘‘Lutherische Predigt und gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeiten; Sabine Holtz, Theologie und Alltag: Lehre und Leben in den Predigten der T€ ubinger Theologen 1550–1750, Spa¨tmittelalter und Reformation, neue Reihe, 3 (Tu¨bingen: Mohr, 1993), 314–9. 95. Compare Grynaeus’s two sermons on the Lord’s Supper, which not only teach the Reformed doctrine but also emphasize throughout each sermon the consolation the believer receives through its reception, Zwo Christenliche Predigen, Die erste/von dem grossen Trost, with Wollebius’s two sermons on the sacrament, which are devoted almost entirely to the proper understanding of the words of institution and the refutation of false interpretations. Only at the end does he briefly discuss ‘‘the proper use’’ of the sacrament, and even here he cannot avoid dichotomizing his discussion and emphasizing the doctrinal aspects. Referring to Christ’s command to celebrate the

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sacrament ‘‘in remembrance of me,’’ Wollebius divides its use into three types of ‘‘remembrance’’: remembrance of our own penitence (Rewged€ achtnuß), which is taught both when sinners thirst for the sacrament and when the words and actions of the Supper remind us of our sin; remembrance of consolation (Trostged€ achtnuß), because the sacrament reminds us that we were received into the covenant at baptism; and remembrance of thanksgiving (Danckged€ achtnuß), shown to both God and neighbor. The result is to reduce the experiential aspect of the sacrament to an afterthought; Grundtlicher und heilsamer Bericht/Von eigentlichem Verstand der Worten/und heilsamen Gebrauch der Sacramenten des H. Nachtmals . . . (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1619). 96. See Ong’s remarks about the spacial nature of Ramism and its relation to printing, Ramus, 307–18. 97. The Ramist sermon schemata in BUB Ms Frey-Gryn. IV 2 and dated between 1620 and 1623 are attributed to Sebastian Beck, but Beck was a theology professor and not a pastor. Marginal notes indicate that the sermons were held at St. Leonhard, where Johannes Gross was the pastor; the schema for a sermon preached 10 February 1622 on Matt. 16:3 and Jer. 10:2–3 referring to the recent appearance of three suns in the sky corresponds to a printed sermon by Johannes Gross, Christliche Predigt/Von dreyen Sonnen/welche des 5. Hornung des 1622 Jahrs/f€ urnemlich zu Basel umb Mittag/in einem Regenbogen gesehen worden . . . (Basel: Genath, [1622]). 98. Jacob Brandmu¨ller, Analysis Methodica Typica Evangeliorum Dominicalium et Festalium cum observationibux . . . (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1620). Jacob was the son of Johannes Brandmu¨ller and shared pastoral responsibilities with Johann Jacob Grasser. The younger Brandmu¨ller also died in the epidemic of 1629.

chapter 9 1. KRP I, 3–13, dated 15 February 1598. 2. There is at least a one-year gap between the awarding of the degree and first parish post for nine of the fourteen students with bachelor’s degrees. In most of these cases, there is evidence that these future pastors continued their studies: some of them continued to receive a stipend, and a few had run-ins with university officials. 3. At the synod of May 1531, for instance, the pastor of Therwil complained that the villagers obeyed neither the bishop’s nor the city’s edicts; ABR 5:376, no. 445c; see also ABR 5:374, no. 445b, and the presentation of the pastors of these villages at the synod of August 1535, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 161v. 4. On Baden, Ernst Wilhelm Zeeden, Kleine Reformationsgeschichte von BadenDurlach und Kurpfalz (Karlsruhe: Badenia Verlag, 1956), 38–40; the Senate’s decree, BStA Universita¨ts Archiv B 1, 1, 57r. 5. Karl Gauss, ‘‘Die Gegenreformation im baslerisch-bischo¨flichen Laufen,’’ Basler Jahrbuch (1918): 31–76; (1919): 91–155. 6. The names of individuals nominated for pastoral posts are recorded in KRP I and II. 7. The younger Buxtorf eventually succeeded his father as professor of Hebrew. Zwinger, the grandson of the Theodor Zwinger mentioned in chapter 3, was elected antistes after Wollebius’s death. His father, like his grandfather, was a professor of medicine. 8. List of collators, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 2, 997–1057. 9. The diary is edited in R. Luginbu¨hl, ‘‘Diarium des Christian Wurstisen 1557–1581,’’ BZ 1 (1901): 53–145.

370

notes to pages 202– 203

10. The Kirchendienerordnung of May 1562 specified that parishes were to be left vacant for six months after the incumbent’s death, with the revenues going to the widow and children. Pastoral services were to be provided by neighboring pastors, who were not compensated for the additional work; BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 56, 345–8. 11. Wurstisen recounts in his diary another incident that reveals how pastoral candidates could influence their appointments: Johannes Hospinian II, son of the logic professor, was confirmed to a post in Waldenburg in August 1564, but he refused to accept the position both because of his lameness (Waldenburg is in a very hilly location) and because his father had not known of the confirmation. The younger Hospinian was suggested as deacon for St. Peter, and the final result was a compromise position in Muttenz, a village close to Basel, Luginbu¨hl, ‘‘Diarium,’’ 95. 12. During the 1550s, thirty-three posts became free in the Basel church, and during the 1560s that number rose to thirty-six. At its greatest extent, Basel’s church never had more than forty posts. 13. See for example the deliberations in KRP I for filling the parish of Benwil, 10 February and 10 March 1587, the parish of Benken, 22 March 1588, the parishes of Tenniken and Mu¨nchenstein, 13 September and 17 October 1589. There is only one case where the Senate chose someone not nominated by the Kirchenrat. On 19 November 1591, Heinrich Ott was given the parish of Wintersingen. Ott’s name had come up in the Kirchenrat meetings, but he was not one of the three final candidates for the post submitted to the Senate. Ott’s appointment was probably due to the influence of the Farnsburg Obervogt and Senator Bernhard Brand; see note 21. 14. Lists of those qualified to elect the new pastor in BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 30, 100–2, for electing the pastor of St. Martin, 29 August 1589; and no. 99, 256–7, for electing the pastor of St. Peter, 19 August 1595; see also the accounts of the election process for two successive pastors of St. Peter in 1611 and 1630, MsKiAr 23b, nos. 40–1, 112–4. 15. In an effort to limit the influence of powerful families on the selection of city pastors, the election was replaced by the drawing of lots at the end of the seventeenth century. In the decades immediately following the Reformation, the city of Liestal was given the right to choose its own pastor from three candidates nominated. In 1564, Johann Rudolf Wildysen was elected ‘‘by the Senate and entire citizenry’’ of Liestal after he and two others had given their trial sermons. After Wildysen’s death in 1569, however, his successor, Jakob Christoph Ryter, was appointed by a committee of two senators, the university rector, and Sulzer, who was dean of the theology faculty, with the consent of the Deputaten; see the the two pastors’ respective accounts of their appointments, BLStA NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, Liestal 1 (1542–1634), 65, 214. 16. Grynaeus to Senate, 6 January 1597; BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 113, 306–7. Grynaeus’s suggestions were followed, and the pastor of Bretzwil moved to Muttenz. See also Grynaeus’s nomination of three candidates for Lausen, in which he also recommended one of the three; BLStA, Altes Archiv II. Abteilung: Aktenarchiv, L 4 Lausen: Kirche und Schule (new 77). 17. BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 18, 60, 20 March 1588. 18. C. Lu¨tzelmann to Grynaeus, 25 May 1611, BUB Ms G II 7, 281–2. Lu¨tzelmann was himself a sad case. In 1593, a fire that began in one of his outbuildings destroyed many of the houses in the parish of Gelterkinden where he served. The parishioners blamed him for the fire, which led to his transfer to the poorer parish of Buus. Although told he would eventually be appointed to a better paying post, he remained in Buus for eighteen years, until his appointment to Rothenfluh. On his nomination and election, see KRP II, 18 and 23 October, 1611.

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19. BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 61, 169–70. The student Johann Molitor was appointed to the vacant parish of Riehen. One of his fellow petitioners, the Hu¨ningen pastor Ulrich Textor, received the position of assistant pastor at St. Leonhard the following year. Peter Scho¨ck, the third petitioner, was pastor of St. Jacob at the time. He had gotten into trouble with the authorities for drunkenness the previous spring, and this probably cost him his pastoral career; he became a teacher in the city’s Latin school in 1592. 20. BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 32, 114, dated 1600. Cyril Oes was the son of the pastor Georg Oes and the stepson of the pastor Israel Ritter. He did not receive the post of common deacon, but he was elected assistant pastor of St. Peter in 1602. 21. BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 59, 167, dated 14 October 1591. The Farnsburg preacher served as common deacon for the rural territory. The Obervogt lived in the Farnsburg castle and thus knew the preacher well. 22. BStA Kirchen Akten F 1, nos. 7 and 8. Schultheiss was from Mu¨nchenstein, a village just outside of Basel. His cousin, Johann Heinrich Kna¨blin, was the pastor of Riehen. 23. On 11 September 1607, Johann Parcus interceded with Grynaeus for his son Hieronymus, who had just finished his M.A. degree; BUB Ms G II 9, 837–8. The young man did not receive a post until 1612. The pastor in Liestal, Jakob Cristoph Ryter, wrote to Grynaeus on behalf of his two sons Georg and Martin on 11 July 1603; BUB Ms G II 10, 137–8. Martin was appointed to the combined post of Liestal schoolmaster and Lausen pastor, but Georg never received a parish post and became instead a schoolteacher in Basel’s rural territory, BM 2:365. 24. Letters of Jacob Meyer to Grynaeus, 27 December 1602, 19 January 1603, and 3 August 1604, BUB Ms G II 8, 332–9. The father told Grynaeus that his son avoided wearing clerical dress so that it would be clear that although he was a vicar, he had not received a permanent post. Wolfgang did not suffer unduly for this delay in appointment. As discussed in chapter 6, he received his doctorate in theology in 1611 and taught theology at the university while continuing to serve as pastor. 25. BLStA, Altes Archiv II. Abteilung: Aktenarchiv, L 29 Tenniken, A. Kirche und Schule (new 264). The parish of Ru¨mlingen had no more success in persuading the Senate to appoint Marcus Cellarius, a student who preached there after the death of their pastor in 1618. Cellarius was one of the three candidates nominated to the post, but another candidate was selected for Ru¨mlingen, and Cellarius was given a post in Pratteln instead; BL StA L 62, Ru¨mlingen: D. Kirche (new 423), no. 2; cf. BStA Kirchen Archiv D 2, 16 and 18 October 1618. 26. BStA Erziehungs Akten X 1.1 Universita¨t, no. 12; undated and in Grynaeus’s hand. Zurich instituted a formal examination for pastoral candidates in 1603; Karin Maag, ‘‘Called to Be a Pastor: Issues of Vocation in the Early Modern Period,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 35 (2004): 65–78. 27. The description of the ceremony in BUB MsKiAr 23a, no. 64, 153. It is undated but has a marginal note by the pastor Thomas Gierfalk stating that he followed this procedure at Sulzer’s installation. Since Gierfalk was archdeacon of the cathedral, the installation must be that of Sulzer as cathedral pastor in 1553. The 1562 Kirchendienerordnung repeated the proviso that the installation was to be performed jointly by a senator and a city pastor, BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 56. A similar procedure is described at the end of the century by Deputat Andreas Ryff, Samuel Schu¨pbachGuggenbu¨hl, Schl€ ussel zur Macht. verflechtungen und informelles Verhalten im Kleinen Rat zu Basel, 1570–1600, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 173 (Basel: Schwabe, 2002) 2:233–4.

372

notes to pages 205– 208

28. Lugenbu¨hl, ‘‘Diarium,’’ 88. Likewise, the student Jacob Schmidlin was ordained by Sulzer in Roeteln on 24 March 1570, but he did not receive a pastoral position until he was made assistant pastor of St. Peter in 1572; see Schmidlin’s note at the end of several loose pages of sermon notes in BUB Ms O II 16, no. 1. 29. Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Controlling the Clergy: The Oversight of Basel’s Rural Pastors in the Sixteenth Century,’’ Zwingliana 25 (1998): 129–42. 30. Printed Ratserkenntnis of December 1597, BStA Kirchen Akten B 1; copy in BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 124, 336–41. In its final form, the process of installation in Basel at the end of the sixteenth century contained the same elements, but in a different order, as the procedure prescribed for Zurich in 1532. In that city, pastoral candidates were first examined in doctrine and conduct, and approved candidates were appointed by the Senate and installed in their posts by a representative of the Senate and the dean, after which the new pastor swore an oath of obedience to the synod; Pamela Biel, Doorkeepers at the House of Righteousness: Heinrich Bullinger and the Zurich Clergy, 1535– 1575, Zu¨rcher Beitra¨ge zur Reformationsgeschichte 15 (Bern: Lang, 1991), 23–7. Biel mistranslates the Dekan (dean) of the original as ‘‘deacon.’’ 31. Thus seven pastors were confirmed and presented to their parishes in May 1597, although most of them had been nominated on 11 July and elected on 28 July 1595; KRP I, 360–2. They were introduced into the rural chapter and swore the oath of obedience at the general chapter meeting in October 1595, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 102; 279r, see Deputat Andreas von Speyr’s letter to the Senate during the visitation of April 1594, in which he justified the cost of the visitation by pointing out that five pastors had been inaugurated, thus avoiding the extra expense that would have been incurred if the inaugurations were done separately, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. 32. General chapter in Liestal, 25 March 1590 (KRP I, 162); 23 August 1593 (BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, no. 4, 4r). 33. KRP II, p. 186 (August 1608) mentions that the right of appointment belonged to the cathedral pastor but Grynaeus wanted to consult with the Kirchenrat about his nomination. Grynaeus had already made appointments to both positions in June 1607 (KRP II, 153). 34. Arisdorf had thirteen different pastors between 1550 and 1629, Mu¨nchenstein fifteen, and Lausen nineteen. Other rural parishes had between four to nine pastors over this eighty-year period, with six being the average number. Lausen’s inferior status is demonstrated by the fact that its incumbents were always first-time appointees, and a few of them were later appointed to either Arisdorf or Mu¨nchenstein. The pastor of Arisdorf complained about his low pay during the visitation of 1557; BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 87r; a generation later, the pastors of Mu¨nchenstein and Pratteln both complained to the Kirchenrat about their poverty, KRP I, 22 April 1586. 35. KRP II, 133, 21 May 1604. Prior to this time, residents of these villages had attended St. Elizabeth in the city, itself a filial church within the cathedral parish. 36. Jacob Meyer II was common deacon from 1611 and Hu¨ningen pastor from 1614 until he was elected pastor of St. Elisabeth, 14 August 1618 (KRP II). Johannes Wollebius and Theodor Zwinger both began their ecclesiastical careers as common deacons and ended them as leaders of the city church. Johann Buxtorf II also served as common deacon before leaving the ministry to succeed his father as professor of Hebrew. As early as 1559, the pastors had attempted to have the Hu¨ningen pastor, Lucas Just, serve as the common deacon, but the Senate turned down their request; BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 84r, 95v (see later). 37. Nineteen out of thirty-seven urban pastors between 1550 and 1629 held only one post. Only two assistant pastors became head pastors of those parishes; another

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two assistant pastors were elected as head pastors of one of the other city parishes. More typical was the 1627 election for the head pastor of St. Theodor. The two assistant pastors were nominated for the position, but the parishioners were reminded that one was seriously ill (in fact, he died within the month) and the other had hearing problems, and so three additional city pastors were nominated: an experienced assistant pastor from St. Peter, the pastor of St. Alban, and the archdeacon of the cathedral. The archdeacon was elected to the post; BStA Kirchen Archiv D 2, 6 March 1627. 38. Fifty-four out of 109 rural pastors between 1550 and 1629 had only one post. Of these, thirty-four had careers of less than ten years, while three served their parishes for forty years or more. 39. Forty of the fifty-five pastors holding two or more posts served an entry-level parish; another six had been pastors in the episcopal villages or in Baden. 40. It is extremely difficult to calculate a uniform pay scale for the rural parishes, since the pastor was supported by a mixture of payments in cash and in kind. 41. The chapters were organized to match the administrative districts of the rural territory. The Farnsburg chapter and district were coterminous, and the smaller districts of Ramstein and Homburg were included with that of Waldenburg in the Waldenburg chapter. The Liestal district included both that city and the villages surrounding it. The district of Mu¨nchenstein was usually included in the Liestal chapter, but occasionally it could be combined with the district of Riehen. These last two districts were those closest to the city of Basel. 42. On 8 February 1542, Johann Gast explained to Conrad Hubert that the pastors could not elect a superintendent to oversee church affairs because the Senate had abolished the office at Karlstadt’s instigation; ZZB Ms S 51: 31: ‘‘Scribis, ut superintendentem eligamus, quo maior inter nos sit concordia, idem vos fecisse, etsi essetis concordissimi. Scias eam quartum annum esse elapsum, quod Senatus suggestione Carolstadii superattendentem abrogavit, idque officio quatuor pastoribus commisisse, ut quilibet semel im anno hoc officio fungeretur. Turbator ille ut omnia in ecclesia noster turbavit, ita et senatum instituit, ut ne hiscere hac de re audeant nunc temporis bone nisi velut rotam infamiae subire’’; see chapter 3. 43. There is only a list of grievances from the 1541 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; only the dates and names of the visitors are listed for the other three visitations, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 2, no. 8b. The pastor sent on all four visitations was Marcus Bertschi, pastor of St. Leonhard, not Myconius. 44. Karl Gauss, Geschichte des Kammergutes der reformierten Landpfarrer des ehemaligen Gesamtkantons Basel (Liestal: Lu¨din, 1914), 13–23. Bruwiler had been an early supporter of the Reformation but had returned to the Catholic church at the time of the Peasant’s War. In 1529, he conformed rather than give up his post in Liestal. According to an account by the pastor Jakob Christoph Ryter from 1592, who said he heard it from Leonhard Stru¨bin, the archdean appointed in 1562, many of the rural pastors resisted the appointment of an archdean. Gauss raises questions about the reliability of this source, which he quotes but does not further identify; it is preserved in BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 57, 349–50. The pastors first proposed the appointment of three rural deans at the 1535 synod, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 158v–159r. 45. By the 1550s, the Zurich church was also having problems with aging ministers, Bruce Gordon, Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Z€ urich, 1532–1580, Zu¨rcher Beitra¨ge zur Reformationsgeschichte 16 (Bern: Lang, 1992), 152. 46. The commission’s summary of the previous three years’ worth of complaints, and their response to each of them, BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 66–85.

374

notes to pages 210– 215

47. On the Joris affair, see Paul Burckhardt, ‘‘David Joris und seine Gemeinde in Basel,’’ BZ 48 (1949): 5–106. The role of the Joris affair in influencing the attitude of the Senate is clear from the pastor Johannes Jung’s lengthy description for Bullinger of the Senate’s October meeting with the pastors, 22 November 1560, ZStA E II 371a, 812. 48. Edict: BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 79r–v: ‘‘Vnnd hieneben so ist dem Herren Predicanten, mit wenig worten zuantworten, da hat man bitzher inn den Gotshusern allso husgehalltenn, das man dasselbig gegen Gott vnnd aller Erbarkeit zuverantworten woll getruwe, vnd sye man dasselbig ferer zuthund, bereit vnnd gutwillig, darby man es auch vff ditzmals plibenn lasse . . . Mann hette bitzher, wo es die noturfft ervordert, hilff zuthund nie vnnderlassen, wie dan sollichs von unnsern herren gespurt vnnd gesechenn worden, vnnd weyße mann anderst nit, dann das die Herren Predicanten, mit iren Competentzen vnnd Pfrunden gnugsamblich versehen.’’ 49. BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 78r–v: ‘‘Mann wollte ouch Eerliche Spyl, die offentlich vff dem zunfften, allein vmb kurtzweyl geschechen, nit abstellenn, aber die Winckell, vnd die Spyl, so uber die Zyt, durch die Nacht, vff dem zunfften oder Gesellschafften vmb gwinns willen geschechen, den Unzuchter herren zustroffenn, vnnd Irer Ordnung nachzufaren, bevolchenn’’; 80v: ‘‘Mann sollte allein die Schamperen Lieder, vnd das Singenn vmb das Creutzlin, abstellenn . . . vnnd wo die Reigentenntz mit zucht vnnd Eeren gehalltenn, vnd keine Schampere Lieder gesungenn wurdenn, die selbenn solle man nit abstellenn.’’ 50. BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 98–102r; copy in BUB MsKiAr 23a, no. 117; see chapter 8, n. 1. 51. According to Karl Gauss, the ordinance was drafted by Leonhard Stru¨bin, the first archdean of the revived chapter; Geschichte des Kammergutes, 24–5. The introduction makes clear that the final ordinance was written by the Deputaten and the city’s senior pastors and approved by the Senate. There are copies of an early draft of the ordinance and the final ordinance in BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 3, ‘‘Die alten oder ersten Statuten nach der Reformation Gemeiner Bru¨edern und Kilchendienern des Capitels in Sißgo¨w.’’ 52. This period was extended to a year in the revised ordinance confirmed in 1582, described later. 53. Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘Generational Conflict in the Late Reformation: The Basel Paroxysm,’’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32 (2001): 219–44. 54. Similar motives underlay the refusal of Strasbourg’s Senate to accept the Formula when first presented with it, Lorna Jane Abray, The People’s Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy, and Commons in Strasbourg, 1500–1598 (Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 145–7. 55. ‘‘Ordnung und statuten Gemeiner Bru¨ederen und Kilchendiener . . . 1582’’; BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 3. 56. ‘‘Ordnung und statuten,’’ BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 3: ‘‘Vnd aber sie Herren Ober Amptleu¨ts, wie auch ein jeder Bruder alles das, so in einem Capittel gehandlet wird, bey ihnen selbs behalten, vnd keins wegs vff den Gaßen oder Wu¨rtshau¨sern vßschreyen vnd tadlen.’’ 57. KRP I, 12 August and continuing through 10 September 1591. 58. In the preface to the reader, Grynaeus stated that God had given him ‘‘faithful coworkers’’ after his earlier colleagues had died, KRP I, p. 10. 59. On the relationship between Grynaeus and Gugger, see chapter 8. 60. BStA Kirchen Akten F 1, no. 12, 22 September 1586.

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61. BUB MsKiAr 23b, no. 9, 45–7, 5 August 1587: ‘‘Alß durch anordnung des allmechtigen Gottes der Ehrwirdig, hochgelehret H. Jo. Jacobus Gryneus, der heiligen Schrifft Doctor, zum vorstehnder und Seelsorger diser Kirch im Mu¨nster durch ein ordenliche Wahl erwehlt, bestetigt vnd beru¨efft worden, das ist eines ersamen Rahts erkhantnus, will vnd meinung, das bemelter Herr Doctor Gryneus das befelch eines Obristen Hirten, Vorstehers vnd aufsehers der Kirchen zu Statt vnd Land Basel auf sich nemmen, haben vnd tragen, auch von allen seinen mitbru¨dern darfu¨r erkhent vnd geachtet werden sollt, Also vnd dergestalt, das er fug vnd macht habe, so oft die notturft fordert, die ubrigen seine Mitbru¨der alhie zusamen zuberu¨effen, Ire versamblungen zeregieren, vnd die Kirchen geschefft, so einem Antecessorj sacrj ministerij befolhen, der gebeu¨r nach zuversorgen vnd zeverrichten.’’ 62. Grynaeus began KRP I immediately after returning to Basel; the first meeting is dated 22 March 1586. 63. For instance, the draft of the censure of the rural clergy from April 1590 is preserved in the chapter records, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 8; a clean copy sent to Grynaeus in BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, no. 5; Grynaeus copied the report into the KRP I, 155–66. Protocols from the Farnsburg chapter meetings begin in 1592 (BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1) and from the Liestal chapter in 1593 (BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 13, 1); those from the Waldenburg chapter begin in 1599 (BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 14, 1). Before the election of the new Waldenburg dean at the general convent of March 1598, Grynaeus reminded the pastors that the new dean was to keep a register containing the names of the pastors and the defects and grievances concerning both pastors and congregations, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 4, 41v. 64. Deputat Andreas Ryff’s statement to the pastors, in the official protocol of the General Convent, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 4, 21r: ‘‘Sei nit gnug daß einer oder der ander sag, Ich bin der Confession und sich harnach wolt vernemen lassen, er kho¨ne ditz oder jens nit also verston, sonder da einer oder meher mißversta¨nd hetten, sollen sich die selben ercleren, und freu¨ndtlich berichten lassen, damit der liebe friden erhalten werden mo¨ge.’’ 65. Official synod protocol; BUB MsKiAr 22c, 22v–27r; the abridged final report, BStA Kirchen Akten C 2, 52r–55r. On the changes to the catechism and Grynaeus’s justification for them, see chapter 4; cf. BUB MsKiAr 22c, 25v: ‘‘Dr. Amandus hatt dem H. Leutpriester [Ryter] grundtlich dargethan, das die vorige erclerung des Articuls, ‘er ist abgestigen zu hellen,’ habe notwendig sollen verbessert werden, dan sie dise drei Irthumb habe: (1) das unsers herren Jesu Christi seel, nach dem sie vom Leib gescheiden, in die helle sey abgefahren: dessen doch die h. Schrift nienen gedenckt, ja das wider sie ist, wie oben vermeldet. (2) Das Christi seel in der hellen triumphieret, so doch das zu der himmel fahrt vnd sitzen zu der Rechten Gottes geho¨ret. (3) das der H. Va¨tter seelen, zu vor nit im himmel, sonder zu der hellen gewesen, so doch Salomon am end seines predigens austrucklich sagt, der Geist komme zu dem der in geben hat, das ist zu Gott. Es ward auch der Leutpriester dahin gebracht, das dise drey articul nicht war weren, wiewol er ungern solches bekandt.’’ 66. Account of the debate, BUB BStA Kirchen Akten C 2, 58v–59r; MsKiAr 22c, 34r–37r; Grynaeus’s justification, 34r: ‘‘Davon wo¨ll er niemand zuo beunru¨ewigen vermelden, es sey vor vyl Jaren zuo Basel ein Leerer, Christoff Weißgerber genant, zu St. Martin gewesen, der hab die Abteylung der zehen Gebotten recht anzeigt im truck das, das letst Gebott, wie dan recht were von den gelu¨sten. Sey auch von teutschen schulen also gebraucht worden. Man soll aber wu¨ssen, das er dise jetzmals getruckte abteylung nit erst dise zwelff Jahr also angeordnet, Sonder zuvor funden habe, vnd haben es die Straßburger selbs auch also, im andern buch Mose am 20 Cappitel

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stande, du solt dich nit lassen gelusten deines nechsten hauß noch seines weibs noch seines knechten usw . . . Wans nun zwei Gebott weren, wie sich etlich ubel bereden, wu¨sse man nit welches das neundt vnd welches das zehende Gebott sey.’’ 67. BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 1, 2, 61r: ‘‘Sequitur altera dies, in qua summo mane clarissimus Dominus D. Joan. Jacobus Grynaeus habuit contionem de verbis caenae ex Apostolo Paulo 1 Cor. 11 et praeclara et orthodoxe sacramentum Eucharistiae explicans eximiam habuit ad fratres et communionem Lucisvallensem et seriam exhortationem multis nervosis argumentis omnes ad concordiam, fraternam dilectionem, pacem et veritatis amorem excitans, et habita Eucharistiae communione (quod antea post reformationem numquam factum est) inter fratres et caeteros auditores.’’ Ryter inserted a lengthy defense of his traditional numbering of the Commandments in his notes, 54v–61r; in a marginal notation to the official protocol, Grynaeus criticized Ryter’s public opposition to the interpretation of his superiors at the synod and noted that he would be summoned to the city for further instruction, MsKiAr 23a, 35v: ‘‘Es soll dem guten mann, der sich irret, bewisen werden das sein vnbedachtes von so vil jaren gevbter abtheilung, von Hieronymo, Augustino vnd Ambrosio, ander zu geschwigen, als nit warhaftig, widerleget werde. Es ist zu erbarmen das der gute mann also frevenlich sagen do¨rffen, vor so vil ehren Leuten, das doch gar nicht ist. Doch hoffen wir, wan er in die stat kompt, werde er von augenschein also einnemmen, dz er der warheit volgen werde.’’ 68. See, for instance, the instructions of the Senate to Grynaeus before the general convent held in August 1593; BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; the Deputaten Andreas von Spyr and Melchior Hornlocher attended the convent as well. 69. This characterization is based on a review of the minutes of the Senate, BStA Protokolle, Kleiner Rat 1 (1587–89), 2 (September 1589–June 1591), and 13 (July 1611–13). 70. Warning about private admonition of senators from the response to the pastors, 30 December 1590, BStA Kirchen Akten B 1. The war with Mulhouse was discussed by the Kirchenrat on 6 June 1587; Ritter was deposed the next day. His case was discussed by the Kirchenrat, who intervened with the Senate on his behalf. He was finally restored to office in early August, after the Senate ordered the pastors to refrain from criticism in their sermons; KRP I, through the summer of 1587. 71. See discussions in KRP I from late July and August 1597. The Senate’s final decision was actually a partial compromise: the figure of the beggar was removed from the statue of St. Martin, and St. Martin himself was transformed into a king. This was done to meet the pastors’ demands that the images ‘‘politicum schema prae se ferant, non idolatricum’’; Ernst Staehelin, Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, Studien zur Geschichte der Wissenschaften in Basel 1 (Basel: Helbing et Lichtenhahn, 1955), 33–4. 72. The complaint made to the Senate, 30 September 1590, BStA Protokolle, Kleiner Rat 2, 146v; sermon notes, KRP I, paper inserted between pp. 198 and 199. Grynaeus’s sermon was part of a deliberate campaign by the pastors against vice; see their discussion in the Kirchenrat, 18 September 1590. Grynaeus discussed his grievances with the Deputaten on 5 October 1590, KRP I; among other things he charged that some senators were not regularly attending the daily Ratspredigten and that adultery and usury were going unpunished. See also the list of grievances in Grynaeus’s hand, ‘‘Klagarticul von sachen die offentlich am Tag seind, vnd billich sollen verbessert werden,’’ 6 October 1590, BStA Kirchen Akten B 1: ‘‘Das bißher vnser notwendiges vnd billiches begeren sey, das von der Oberkeit wegen, jemandts auch sich unser zu etwas zeiten, der gestalt anneme, zu unsern freitags Convent kemme,

notes to pages 218

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vnd fragte, was in Religions vnd Kirchensachen beschwehrliches sich zu trage? Wie es zu verbessern? Dan wan wir schon schriftlich oder mundlich, vnser kirchen zustand vnd not etwa vermelden, werdts wol angenommen, Aber hernach vil darunder verzogen, vnd verweilet vergessen vnd vnderlassen. In massen dan auch etlich Articul im Synodo anzogen, noch unvollendet bleiben.’’ 73. The discussion of grievances from 14 October 1590 through 28 December, BStA Protokolle, Kleiner Rat 2, 157r and through 173v. The final response was presented on 30 December 1590, Kirchen Akten B 1, ‘‘Antwort vff etliche der Herren Predicanten beger Arttickel’’; copy in KRP I, 206–8: ‘‘Es ist einem ersamen Rath der Statt Basel u.g.h., dem allmechtigen seye Lob, unverborgen, dz einen Jeden, vu¨rnemlich aber eines Christlichen Oberkheit gepeure, seinen schuldigen gehorsam vnd liebe Gott und dem nechsten zuerzeigen, die go¨ttliche ehr, vnd unseres seelen heil, mit dem gepo¨rt, Anho¨rung Gottliches Worts und verbesserung unsers lebens zubedenckhen. Dannenher nicht allein Ire verfahren loblicher gedechtnuß, sonder auch sie dessentwegen stattliche ordnungen vnd ernstliche Mandaten aufgerichtet vnd offentlich verkhu¨nden lassen. Das aber solche Ordnungen wie es auß denn Clag articuln, so die Herren Predicanten Inen kurtz verruckhther Zeit von sachen so verbessert sollen werden, zuhanden gestellt, zuverkennen, bey vilen Inn vergess gestellt, dadurch allerley stra¨fliche laster, ergerliche unordnungen ingerissen, das ist Inen von hertzen Leid, vnd wu¨nschen wo mo¨glich, das gemellte va¨tterliche warnung, danckbarliches angenomen vnd ein Jeder darnach sein leben vnd wandell gebessert hatte, wo¨llen auch vermittelst Go¨ttlicher gnaden Jns ku¨nfftig ahn Iren ernst nichts erwinden lassen, damit die u¨bertra¨ter mit gepu¨rlich Peenen unnachlo¨sslich gestrafft werden. . . . Was die Bannordnung betrifft, wann die selbe vermo¨g der Reformation, ernstlich gehalten werde. Achten unser gnedig herren, unverno¨then, etliche auß Iren mittel (die mit vil anders geschefften beladen) zudeputieren, welche den geistlichen freitags Conventen beywohneten. Dann wa es sach were, dz einer oder entweders bey dem H. Nachtmal nicht erschine, oder ettwas anders begangen hette, dan Herren predicanten widerspenstig sich erzeigte: khu¨ndte man wie vorgemeldtet, ein solches den herrn Deputaten, die es wythers gelangen lassen sollen, anzeigen.’’ 74. Max Geiger has interpreted the reissuance of edicts regulating church attendance, catechization, and other areas of conduct as an indication of the magistrate’s increasing control over the church, but he overlooked the fact that these edicts were generally issued at the urging of the pastors, Die Basler Kirche und Theologie im Zeitalter der Hochorthodoxie (Zollikon-Zu¨rich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1952), 42–5. 75. Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl’s characterization of the relationship between the clergy and the magistrate as one of conflict is exaggerated. The first incident he cites, the ‘‘giftige Ausfa¨lle’’ against the magistrate, Schl€ ussel zur Macht, 1:322–27, is based on a misdated account in Peter Ochs, Gechichte der Stadt und Landschaft Basel (Basel: Schweighaus, 1821), 6:307–8. There was no synod in 1587, the date Ochs gives; the conflict he described occurred during the synod of 5 June 1537, and the Grynaeus referred to in the source was not Johann Jacob but his great-uncle Simon, as is clear from a comparison of Ochs’s account with the records of the 1537 synod, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 172–81; see my extended description of this synod in chapter 3. The second incident, a ‘‘conspiracy’’ of the clergy against the antistes in 1597, rests on a misreading of the sources. Grynaeus was not excluded from preparations for the synod; rather, the preparations were entrusted (‘‘heimbgestellt’’) to him; Jacob Grimm et al., Deutsches W€ orterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1854), 10:882, s.v. ‘‘Heimstellung.’’ The grievances Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl refers to from the Senate protocol were not aimed against Grynaeus but were the articles regularly submitted after every synod by the

378

notes to pages 218– 223

clergy; Schl€ ussel zur Macht, 1:335–6, cf. KRP I, 365–9. As Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl himself recognizes, Grynaeus had close ties with many in Basel’s Senate, and the latter backed his authority on other occasions; Schl€ ussel zur Macht, 1:342–8. 76. For a similar view of relations between ministers and magistrate, James M. Kittelson, ‘‘Strasbourg, the Landesherrlichekirchenregiment, and the Relative Autonomy of Lutheran Churches in Sixteenth-Century Germany,’’ Locus 2 (1990): 131–43.

chapter 10 1. Johannes Wollebius, Concionum Miscellanearum Fasciculus, variis occasionibus inserviens, diuque desideratus: Nunc primum in Usum S. Ministerii Candidatorum in lucem emissus, opera et studio M. Johan. Jacobi Wollebii, Fil. Verbi Divini Ministri ed. Johann Jacob Wollebius (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1648), dated 30 August 1618, pp. 18–25: ‘‘Reperies, qui sibi nimium tribuentes, ajunt: Ich wolt auch ko¨nnen predigen, non est difficile concionari, qui tamen, cum ipsis infantes S. Baptismate tingendi veniunt, neque Ministrum verbi, neque compatres, recte alloqui possunt. Quid facerent, si vel Oratio Dominica, vel Psalmus aliquis integer, recitandus esset coram Coetu S.’’ 2. Berndt Hamm, ‘‘Reformation als normative Zentrierung von Religion und Gesellschaft,’’ Jahrbuch f u€r Biblische Theologie 7 (1992): 241–79, ‘‘Von der spa¨tmittelalterlichen reformatio zur Reformation: der Prozeß normativer Zentrierung von Religion und Gesellschaft in Deutschland,’’ ARG 84 (1993): 7–82, and ‘‘Normative Centering in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Observations on Religiosity, Theology and Iconology,’’ Journal of Early Modern History 33 (1999): 307–54. 3. Thus the pastor of Gelterkinden preached every other week in Ormalingen, 1594 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. Services rotated between Buus and Maisprach, but festivals were always celebrated in Buus; pastor Conrad Lu¨tzelmann to Grynaeus, 18 February 1605, BUB Ms G II 7, 287. At the 1625 synod, the new pastor of Buus complained that residents of one village did not come to church when the service was held in the other village; BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. The pastor of Dietken, who alternated Sunday services between that village and Eptingen, complained that the inhabitants of Eptingen were not attending church in Dietken, 1590 general chapter, KRP I, 155–66; cf. complaints from Lausen about the compulsory weekly church attendance; the parishioners thought every fourteen days should be sufficient, 1593 general chapter, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, no. 4. 4. See, for instance, the complaint of Mathias Rettenmund, pastor for the villages of Ru¨mlingen, Butken, and Ka¨nerkingen, visitation of 16 May 1582, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. 5. Visitation in Liestal, 13 May 1587, BtA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 5; visitation of 22 April 1594 in Liestal, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. In 1587 the Tuesday sermon was preached in Munzach; by 1594 it was preached in Frenkendorf, possibly in response to the villagers’ request; cf. visitations of 1601 and 1619, BtA Kirchen Akten E 1. 6. Visitation of May 1587, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 7; see the comments of both the present and former village pastors (Maternus Heider and Ulrich Meyer), 1598 general chapter, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 4, 44r–45r. 7. Jakob Christoph Ryter to Johann Jacob Grynaeus, 29 April, 1589, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 27d, 82–4. The Lausen pastor/Liestal schoolmaster had functioned as deacon in Liestal since the Reformation. 8. Estimating the rural population in the early modern period is notoriously difficult, but see Hektor Ammann, ‘‘Die Bevo¨lkerung von Stadt und Landschaft Basel

notes to pages 223– 225

379

am Ausgang des Mittelalters,’’ BZ 49 (1950): 25–52, and Franz Gschwind, Bev€ olkerungsentwicklung und Wirtschaftsstruktur der Landschaft Basel im 18. Jahrhundert: Ein historisch-demographischer Ber€ ucksichtigung der langfristigen Bev€ olkerungsentwicklung von Stadt (seit 1000) und Landschaft (von 1500) Basel, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte und Landeskunde des Kantons Baselland 15 (Liestal: Kantonale Drucksachen, 1977), 293–309. 9. At the 1594 visitation, it was noted that the churches of both Dietken and Aristorf were too small; BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. By 1619, the church of Benken was also too small; it was torn down and replaced in 1621; cf. 1619 visitation in Mu¨nchenstein district, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 17, no. 2, with pastor Johann Parcus’s Chronik entries for the year 1621, BLStA PA 89, 4 (Kirchgemeinde Benken-Biel). At the 1587 visitation, it was suggested that the villagers of Titterten and Arboldswil, assigned to the parishes of Waldenburg and Bubendorf, respectively, should be combined to form a new parish, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 5; in 1597, the Kirchenrat discussed separating the combined parish of Reigoldswil and Bretzwil into two parishes, 1 July 1597, KRP I. 10. BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 21 July 1538, 31v; Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 4a; 15 July 1582: Mu¨nchenstein chapter complaints concerning Romanus Weinmann in Pratteln and Jacob Leucht in Benken; see also the visitors’ admonition to the pastors in the Liestal chapter, 13 May 1582, and those of the Gelterkinden chapter, 15 May 1582, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 4. Some of the parishes had their weekday services on Wednesday, while the church at Liestal had sermons preached on Tuesday by its own pastor and on Thursday by the Munzach pastor, who also served as deacon or assistant pastor in Liestal. 11. BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. Antonius Weitz, pastor of Oltingen, described his detailed preaching on Christ’s life in his report to Grynaeus, 28 January 1605, BUB Ms G II/2, 909; other pastors reported preaching on the passion or on the catechism at the visitations of 1587, 1594, and 1601. 12. Cf. Ernst Riegg on the theological ‘‘unreliability’’ that resulted from the emphasis on self-study, Konfliktbereitschaft und Mobilit€ at: Die protestantischen Geistlichen zw€ olf s€ uddeutscher Reichst€ adte zwischen Passauer Vertrag und Restitutionsedikt, Schriften zur su¨dwestdeutschen Landeskunde 43 (Leinfelden: DRW, 2002), 70; 119–22. 13. BLStA, NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, Kirchenbuch La¨ufelfingen 1 (1566–1657); Wintersingen 1 (1563–1630): Johann Spangenberg, Explicationes evangeliorum et Epistolarum, quae Dominicis Diebus More usitato Proponi In Ecclesia Populo Solent: In Tabulas Succinctas et ad memoriam admodum utiles redactae; una cum Tabulis Evangeliorum de Sanctis (Basel: Oporinus, 1555). 14. BUB MsKiAr 55b, unnumbered insert between pp. 158 and 159, dated May 1584 (Oltingen); 179 (Rotenfluh). The Oltingen library also contained books by Pliny and Calepinus—the latter probably one of the several editions of Ambrogio Calepino’s Latin dictionary printed in Basel before 1584. 15. Bullinger: BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 87, 222–3; Bucer: MsKiAr 22c, no. 5, 38r; Jonah sermons: Rotenfluh pastor Isaac Keller to Grynaeus, BUB Ms G II 7, 181. 16. Cf. the complaints of the general chapter in Sissach, March 1590, KRP I, 155–66. The phrase ‘‘u¨ber feld gehen’’ has been interpreted as leaving Basel territory to attend worship in a neighboring Catholic territory, Kaiser, ‘‘Gesellige Rivalita¨t,’’ but it could also mean walking between a peasant’s home village and the village where the parish church was located or traveling to other Reformed areas; see the complaint of the Pratteln pastor Romanus Weinmann at the general convent held 23 August

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1593, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, 10v–11r: ‘‘Clagt, das die vnderthonen an Sontagen nit zue kirchen khommen, sonder hin vnd wider iren geschefften nach u¨berfeldt als gehn Basell & anderwerts einzekhauffen; kirchen verabsaumbt vnd der Sontag entheiliget.’’ 17. The mandate in BUB MsKiAr 22b, 238–43, no. 94; cf. the acts of the general chapter of 2 October 1595 with those of 25 March 1596, both in BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1. 18. The earliest specific complaints about the differential attendance rates for Sunday and Tuesday services from Liestal’s Schultheiss and Bannherren, visitation of 13 May 1582, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; see the complaints at the general chapter held in Liestal, 25 March 1590, concerning Tenniken, Liestal, and Muttenz, KRP I, 155–66; general chapter in Liestal, 23 August 1593, concerning Liestal, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, no. 4. 19. Farnsburg chapter meeting, March 1593, BStA Kirchen Archiv 15, 1. 20. The pastors of Waldenburg and Langenbruck were told in 1619 that their weekday sermons should be shorter and held earlier in the morning, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. First instance of the suspension of weekday sermons during the summer from the Mu¨nchenstein chapter, 15 July 1582, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 4a. The pastors of the Farnsburg chapter were told at their district convent of 28 September 1592 to resume their weekday sermons on the Wednesday after St. Galli (October 16); at the general chapter of 7 March 1594, all rural pastors were told to continue with their weekday sermons until Easter, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1; Kirchen Akten C 2, 43r– 45v. Apparently, the weekday sermons continued through the summer in 1600, which caused many parish officials to request at the visitation of 1601 that they be at least occasionally suspended during the coming summer months; Farnsburg chapter, 9 October 1600, BStA Kirchen Akten 15, 1, and 1601 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. 21. Visitation of 1601, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1, 2r: ‘‘hab er vyl zuho¨rer, das nit gnuog stu¨el inn der kirchen, vnd vneinigkeit geb.’’ Nineteen of the pastors reported that their parishioners were diligent in attending church or had no complaints, and none complained about poor attendance at the Sunday service, although a few mentioned that attendance at the weekday sermon was poor. Similarly, in 1619, thirteen pastors specifically reported that they were satisfied with the church attendance of their parishioners, and three more said attendance was good on Sunday but not during the week. There were no complaints about poor attendance; BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. 22. BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15,1, Farnsburg district convent 26 March 1601, pastor Gabriel Hummel: ‘‘dz man Sommers zeit wegen der arbeit inen nit scherpft vffsehens hett. Wo¨llens sie es den winter auch thun. Sorgt es werde u¨bel deshalben zugehn, were gut dz mittel gefunden, dz dis verbessert wurde, vff dz man nit den stu¨elen vnd bankhen Predigen mu¨ste.’’ 23. ABR 6:259, no. 273; Farnsburg chapter, 11 October 1599, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1, report of Jacob Freuler: ‘‘Vor dem Kilchgang sontags morgen suffen sich etlich voller Brandten weins, schlaffen dannoch vnder der Predig oder sind sonst unlu¨stig Gottes wort zuho¨ren.’’ 24. Wintersingen: Farnsburg chapter, 7 March 1594, BStA Kirchen Akten HH 15, 1; Lausen: general chapter meeting, 23–24 March 1598, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 1, 2, 43v–44r; La¨ufelfingen: 1605 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1, Dietken pastor Gabriel Hummel: ‘‘seit anderthalb Jaren hab er die dominicalia getheilt, der halben text am Sontag vnd halben rechten mitwochen außgelegt. Doch gespu¨r er wan er den text nur halb verleß, das die zuoho¨rer den rest auch begert haben inen zuverlesen.’’ La¨ufelfingen pastor Johann Jacob Gugger II to Grynaeus [1605], BUB Ms G II 5, 297, in response to the question about the Scripture text for his sermons, ‘‘Item Genesis

notes to pages 226– 228

381

von anfang biß zu Endt uß beger der Gmein, welche anzeigt sy mo¨chten woll ho¨ren wie Es von anfang der welt gangen, undt was die Altva¨tter vur ein laben gfu¨rdt.’’ 25. Soon after his return to Basel, Grynaeus proposed that ‘‘instituendas esse lectiones integri contextus Biblici et integro capite periecto, partium eius brevem expositionem adjungendam; ut illiterati audire possint integras historias et conciones Biblicas, et major sit hominum frequentia in Templis,’’ KRP I, 8 April 1586; Grynaeus’s proposal to the Senate giving the reason for this innovation, 2 June 1586, Kirchen Akten D 1, no. 2. It took him two years to introduce this change, however; KRP I, 27 May 1588, 69. Because the Scripture reading included explication, this was probably more a change in the number of verses preached on, as well as in the selection of the Scripture text, rather than a genuine shift away from preaching to simple reading. 26. On the vespers services in St. Peter and St. Leonhard, BStA Kirchen Akten D 1, no. 3, 9 April 1595; BUB MsKiAr 55b, 261, 2 April 1613 and 11 May 1619. The Reformation Ordinance established Sunday vespers services only at the cathedral in the main city. By 1584 at the latest, there was also a Sunday afternoon service at St. Theodor in Kleinbasel, BStA Kirchen Akten B 1, ‘‘Bedencken der Herren predicanten in der Statt Basel u¨ber die hushaltung der Kilchen alda,’’ 31 August 1584. 27. KRP II, 7 October 1605; 14 July 1603. 28. The assistant pastor of St. Leonhard preached for the dawn service on Sunday in that church. Reference to the 8 a.m. service in St. Peter, KRP I, 8 April 1586; reference to daily sermons held at 5, 6, 8, and 9 a.m., KRP I, 5 January 1588; the 9 a.m. cathedral sermon, KRP I, 27 October 1592; preaching responsibilities described along ¨ mterbuch, BUB MsKiAr 55b, 231–68; see espewith the list of pastors given in the A cially the distribution of preaching responsibility for the new Sunday vespers sermons at St. Peter and St. Leonhard, 261. A second assistant position was given to St. Theodor in the early seventeenth century. From 1596, the three senior pastors also assumed responsibility for the Sunday vespers catechism sermon in the cathedral; see later. 29. BStA Kirchen Archiv A 1, no. 1, 24 September 1610, copy in Kirchen Akten D 1, no. 5; cf. KRP II, where the date is given as 20 September 1611. The decree itself refers to increased demands placed on the pastors by the epidemic, in visiting the sick and giving funeral sermons, as well as to the change to the Sunday vespers service in the cathedral introduced thirteen years before. The change referred to is the introduction of a catechism sermon in the fall of 1596; hence the date 1610 is more likely to be correct. 30. Part of the justification for requiring the rural pastors to give sermons was that if a vacancy occurred in the city, the pastors and senators would know which of the rural pastors were strong preachers because they had heard them preach in the city; BStA Kirchen Archiv D 2, 4 December 1611; Burgermeister and Rat Basel to Philip Luterburger, Liestal chapter dean, 11 December 1611, Kirchen Archiv HH 5, 1, no. 1. 31. Petition to end the Thursday sermons during the winter months, 11 November 1614, BStA Kirchen Akten D 1, no. 7; the Senate’s response, 2 April 1615, requiring the pastors to resume the Thursday sermons on 27 April; Grynaeus’s rebuke to dean Luterburger for not beginning the sermon series after Easter in 1616; 11 April 1616, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 5, 1, no. 3, and Samuel Koch’s request at a general chapter in June 1635 to be excused from giving a Thursday sermon in Basel because of his poor health, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 29. 32. ABR 3:389–90, no. 473. Christine Burckhardt-Seebass discusses catechization within the context of this early requirement, seen as the forerunner of confirmation,

382

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Konfirmation in Stadt und Landschaft Basel: Volkskundliche Studie zur Geschichte eines kirchlichen Festes, Schriften der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft fu¨r Volkskunde 57 (Basel: Krebs, 1975), 8–26. 33. BStA Kirchen Akten B 1, Der Herrenn Predicantenn annbringenn vonn wegenn deß Jungenn volcks, 10 March 1540. 34. The various complaints and grievances from synods of 1555, 1557, 1558, and 1559 in BStA Kirchen Akten C 3 (Liber Synodorum), 86–96. The precommunion examination was a common practice in Lutheran territories, but it was rejected by Zurich as a form of auricular confession; Heinrich Bullinger to a Vaud pastor, 22 November 1543, Herminjard 9:116–22, no. 1312. 35. Proposals for more frequent catechization, mandatory catechism attendance for children, and reading aloud sections of the Reformation Ordinance in the guilds were crossed out in the final version of the Senate’s response read to the pastors, BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 80r, 82r. For the broader context of the Senate’s rejection of these proposals, see chapter 9. The precommunion examination was opposed by some staunch Zwinglians in the city. The examination was not necessarily a confessional issue, however, since it had been endorsed by the Francophone reformers. Even the Zwinglian pastor Johannes Jung favored the examination as a pedagogical and disciplinary measure; see the anonymous letter to Johann Herter, ZZB Ms S 92:71. Simler dated this letter July 1558, but it was not written before 1560, for it refers to the playing of the organ, which was reintroduced in the cathedral at Christmas, 1559; Johannes Jung to Bullinger, 29 February 1560, ZZB F 62, 334. 36. Grynaeus to Rudolf Gwalther, 26 May 1581, BUB MsKiAr 22a, 550r–51v, no. 108. 37. KRP I, 10 May 1588, 1 June 1588; 1594 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. 38. The emphasis on practice and examination, rather than instruction, is reflected in the fact that Grynaeus consistently used the term exercitio catechismi in KRP I for what was in visitation and synod protocols called Kinderbericht or (more frequently) Kinderlehr. 39. KRP I, 9 June 1588. On 7 June, Grynaeus recommended reading the entire catechism and beginning with the schoolchildren. 40. Visitation of Mu¨nchenstein chapter in 1594, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 87, 222–3. In 1589, the Mu¨nchenstein pastor reported that he questioned the children on the catechism one week, and on the prayers contained in the catechism the next week, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 27c, 79r–81r. 41. Leonard Soerin to Grynaeus, 26 January 1605, BUB MsKiAr 22c, 166r–69r, citation at 167v: ‘‘Da pflege ich allezeit die fu¨nf haubtpuncten Christlicher lehr aus vnseren Catechismo von wort zu wort sampt den fragen daruber vorzulesen, hernach die jugend zuverho¨ren, da ich dann jetzund dise, bald andere frage ohne vnderscheid, damit also keins meine, es seye jetz diß tags exempt, sonder ein jeden sich daran versehe, vnd eins auf das andere merke. Dann ich ein grosse vnordnung vnd mangel hie gefunden, das man sich gesetzt, die jugend in gemein fu¨r den ministrum gefordt, mit einander sambtlich hatt lassen betten, das vatter vnser, glauben, zehn gebott, doch allein gestu¨mlet vnd verku¨rzt vnd nicht weiter. Hab also dahin gedacht, wie ich mo¨chte die haubtstuck Christlicher lehr vnd derselbig fragstuck in die jugend pflantzen. Vnd hab vil versucht, biß sich entlich diß das beste mittel befunden, das ich nach ablesung der hauptpuncten selbs gangen bin zu den stu¨cken da die jugend gesessen, oder namhafft fu¨r mich besonders fu¨r den tisch gefordert, oder auch sonderbahr mit namen da sie gesessen hab, heissen aufstohn vnd erzalen diß oder jenes haubtstuk. Diß hab ich befunden hat ein aufmerkens, fleiß vnd ernst bey der jugend

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383

gebracht, also das die zehen Gebott, die lehr vom tauff vnd nachtmal, ein gutter theil knaben vnd to¨chteren ko¨nnen fu¨r sich vnd einander auch lehren.’’ 42. Waldenburg: 1601 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; admonitions concerning pastors’ treatment of children: KRP I, 29 August 1589, pastor Conrad Lu¨tzelman, ‘‘de pueris placide et amanter catechizandis, itidem fuit admonitus,’’ and again on 27 October 1597, Farnsburger chapter, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1: ‘‘unergerlich in lehr vnd leben, allein wo¨lle er die Jugendt in der Kinderlehr ires unverstandts halben zu unfreundtlich hallten’’; to the Oltingen pastor Tobias Meyer during the 1594 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1: ‘‘mit den Kindern sein vleissig vnd freu¨ndtlich zereden, damit Sie nit erschrekhen vnd desto besser lernen kho¨ndten’’; to Romanus Weinmann in Pratteln: 1601 visitation of Mu¨nchenstein chapter, 27 May, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1: ‘‘In Kinderbericht wo¨lle er die Jungen, wan sie fa¨hlen, Rauch ahnfachren, lang uffhalten & zuspohdt machen, hernocher sie gar drussen verbleiben.’’ 43. KRP I, 21 September 1588. 44. The records of the Genevan Consistory indicate that a fair number of people had learned the Latin form of Lord’s Prayer, creed and Ave Maria from their parents before the Reformation; Robert M. Kingdon, ‘‘The Geneva Consistory in the Time of Calvin,’’ in Calvinism in Europe 1540–1620, ed. A. Pettegree et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 21–34; on the family’s and particularly the father’s responsibility for the religious education of children after the Reformation, Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 108–31. Complaints from Mu¨nchenstein that adults, from whom the children learned, were not attending catechism, 1555 synod, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 394–6; suggestion from Muttenz that the children come to church with their parents, so that the latter could hear their children’s mistakes in repeating the prayers, creed and other parts of the catechism, in order to help them do better at home, 1558 synod, BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 90r–v. At the 1594 visitation, the Tenniken pastor complained that children were not learning to pray correctly, because their parents did not attend the catechism where they could learn the prayers themselves; BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. 45. Wintersingen pastor Heinrich Ott, Farnsburg chapter meeting, 21 April 1597, BStA Kirchen Archiv, HH 15, 1; 1601 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1 for Wintersingen, 1619 visitation reports from Rotenfluh and Kilchberg, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 17, no. 2a. At least some of the resistance was from parents who opposed the monthly catechisms; at both the 1594 visitation and the general chapter meetings of 1593 and 1595, the pastors of Liestal and the surrounding parishes reported that attendance at the quarterly catechisms was good, but it was poor at other times, and that parents resisted the more frequent catechisms as an innovation, 1593 and 1594: BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; 1595 chapter, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 102, 277–88. Cf. the growing emphasis on the father’s responsibility for religious instruction in Geneva, Jeffrey R. Watt, ‘‘Calvinism, Childhood, and Education: The Evidence from the Genevan Consistory,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 33 (2002): 439–56. 46. The 1601 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; pastor Gabriel Hummel: ‘‘[In Kinderbericht] sey schlechte besserung, behalten jeder alte Phrases, im betten, zechen gebotten, glauben, usw., als Herr Gott Vatter unnser, herr Gott gib vns heu¨t, usw. . . . Werden daheimb von den alten so vnderwisen, die lange zechen bott ko¨nnens nit begreiffe.’’ 47. 1572 visitation, report of Crispinus Ko¨nig in Buus, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 1; 1595 general chapter, report of Wintersingen pastor Heinrich Ott, BUB

384

notes to pages 231– 232

MsKiAr 22b, no. 102, 277–88; citation from Tenniken pastor Jakob Hel, Farnsburg chapter meeting, 28 September 1592, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1: ‘‘Klagt . . . grosse hinlessigkeit im kilchgang vnd catechismo, darzu man nun junge kinder, mit denen nicht fruchtbarliche mo¨ge schaffen, schickhe, die erwachsene lasse man loeffen.’’ Hel made a similar complaint ten years later, during the 1601 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1: ‘‘die Jungen gsellen, so zu des Herrn Tisch gange, nit meher zum Kinderbericht kome, sonder nur junge kind die nit betten ko¨nen.’’ In 1619, Hel was still complaining that only the youngest children were sent to catechism, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 17, no. 2a: ‘‘Halte alle Monat kinder lehr . . . aber die Kinder Ler werden von Elteren auch Knechten vnnd Megten, wider meiner G.H. Mandat, gar schlechtlich besuocht, schickhen nur die Ju¨ngsten kinder, vnnd seyen also die Jungen gar u¨bel bettens bericht.’’ The Munzach pastor reported that children and their parents attended catechism more diligently than did the servants, 1601 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. The pastor of Riehen, Johann Molitor, reported to Grynaeus that only the youngest children were sent to catechism instruction: ‘‘Kinderbericht haltt ich Sommers zeitt Monatlich oder auch ettwan mehr, ie noch gla¨genheit der zeitt, do schickt man zwor vil 6, 7 oder 8 Jarige Kinder, deren aber so 10, 11, 12 etc. Ja¨rig bliben vil vssen, unangesehen dz ich die Elteren offt dohin verman, das wir kinder rechnung tragen sollen vnd flisiger zum Kinderler halten, so folgen doch ettlich liederlich gnug’’; the letter is undated but is clearly one of the parish reports mandated in 1605, BUB Ms G II 8, 998. 48. Visitation in 1594, report from Benwil BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; 1601 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1, report from Kilchberg. 49. Complaints about the pastors of Dietken and Tenniken, 1601 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. On the Dietken church, Pastor Gabriel Hummel to Grynaeus, 28 Feb 1605, BUB Ms G II 6, 389. Complaint about poor attendance during winter in Liestal, October 1595 general chapter, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 102, 277–88; Arisdorf pastor Leonhard Soerin to Grynaeus, 26 January 1605, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 53, 166–9. At the 1594 visitation, it was reported that the Waldenburg pastor held catechism regularly in summer but not in winter ‘‘wegen ferne des wegs,’’ BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. Several of the parish reports sent to Grynaeus in 1605 state that catechism sessions were held between Easter and either St. Michael (September 29) or St. Galli (October 16): Gabriel Hummel of Dietken to Grynaeus, 28 February 1605, BUB Ms G II 6, 389; Martin Pfirter of Gelterkinden to Grynaeus, 28 January 1605, BUB Ms G II 9, 1035; Antonius Weitz of Oltingen to Grynaeus, 28 January 1605, BUB Ms G II 12, 909–12. The summer catechism sessions were seen as a substitute for the suspended weekday sermons; Farnsburg chapter meeting, 6 March 1600, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1. Some of the pastors held them more frequently than once a month during the summer, alternating between the villages in their parish. 50. The city’s pastors were told to recite the creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Ten Commandments, emphasizing the Second Commandment concerning idols, after their Sunday sermon, KRP I, 4 April 1586; 1587 visitation, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 5. The pastors of the Waldenburg chapter were told that the Tuesday sermon would be a good time to repeat the words of institution. The rural pastors were reminded to recite the elements of the catechism after the Sunday sermon at the general chapters of 1590 (KRP I, 155–66), 29 March 1593 (BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1), and the Farnsburg chapter meeting of 22 March 1599 (BStA Kirchen Archiv 15, 1). At the 1582 visitation, in contrast, it was noted that none of the pastors in the Waldenburg chapter spoke these parts of the catechism aloud during services, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. The Lord’s Prayer was prayed twice during the communion liturgy, but communion was

notes to pages 232– 234

385

celebrated only three (from 1594, four) times a year in the rural parishes, and so would not be as familiar there as it was in the city, where each church celebrated communion once a month; Ulrich Ga¨bler, ‘‘Das Vaterunser in der Basler Reformation,’’ Theologische Zeitschrift 48 (1992): 118–26. 51. Pratteln and Bubendorf at the 1594 visitation, Liestal at the 1601 visitation, both in BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. The Pratteln example was unusual, for pastors were strongly encouraged to preach on the traditional Gospel text during the Sunday service. At the 1619 visitation, the pastor of Benwil reported that he preached on the Ten Commandments on Sunday and on the Sunday Gospel for his weekday sermon; he was told to reverse the order and preach on the Gospel text on Sundays; BStA Kirchen Archiv A 17, no. 2. Beginning with the 1587 visitation, pastors were regularly asked what they were preaching. 52. KRP I, 27 October 1592; 27 August 1596; 9 September 1597. St. Theodor in Kleinbasel had its own Sunday vespers service, unlike the other two parish churches in the main city. Grynaeus’s table of sermon topics, MsKiAr 22b, no. 107, 296–7. 53. Johann Georg Gross, Thesaurus Concionum sacrarum omnigenarum (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1616), 195–9. 54. Thesaurus Concionum, 39–43 (first series), ‘‘donec Deo visum fuerit et infantibus utile sit’’; cf. 144–8 (second series) and 303–5 (third series). 55. Thesaurus Concionum, 88–90, 195–9, and 422–30. 56. Visitation of 1601, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1, pastor Leonard Soerin of Arisdorf: ‘‘er zeichne vff die, so begern zum nachtmal zegahn, dieweil nun ein kindlin so Hans Frickers nit zum kinderbericht erschinend aber zum nachtmal gohn wo¨llen, so er es gerechtfertiget, vnd befunden das es nit betten ko¨nen, doch schon zuvor zum nachtmal gangen, das sag seine eltern konens auch nit. Es ko¨ne gleichfals nu¨tzit an zechen gebotten, vom tauff, nachtmal wu¨ss es auch gar nu¨t. Seye zubesorgen, da man die alten leu¨tt im dorff examinieren solt, man do¨rff ihren meher finden, die das vatter vnnser nit betten kho¨nen’’; see Soerin’s letter to Grynaeus, 26 January 1605, cited in note 41. 57. Visitation of 1601, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1, for Waldenburg: ‘‘er gespu¨r bey besuchung den kranckhen zun zeiten berichte leu¨th, in sonderheit bey der jugendt, so die langen zehen Gebott vnd andern articul geleernet’’; Langenbruck: ‘‘zimblich fleissig in Kinderler, das sye fein antworten ko¨nen, des er sich an der Jugendt verwundere’’; Bubendorf: ‘‘in Kinderler hab er allemach die langen zehen gebott in sye gebracht, wie auch etlich salmen.’’ 58. The Arisdorf pastor reported at the 1601 visitation that he was keeping a list of those who wanted to receive communion; that list is preserved in the parish register, BLStA NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, Arisdorf 1 (1558–1625), 293–301; 1619 visitation, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 17, no. 2a, where the examination of communicants is mentioned in Liestal, Munzach, Tenniken, Wintersingen, and Muttenz. The Senate’s edict of 6 April 1622, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 98; see chapter 4 on this edict and the 1622 catechism. The pastor of St. Alban began recording the names of those examined before communion in the new volume of the parish register; BStA Kirchen Archiv X 8, 4 (Taufregister 1625–73). 59. BLStA NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, Arisdorf 1 (1558–1625), number of communicants listed by year, 292 ff: ‘‘Dis jahr [1618] hab ich mehrteils junge abgenant, aus ursach weil sie unwissent sich nit zhum kinderbericht schiken. Item weil sie bo¨s und hernach bo¨ser merteils worden. Ut hac nomine admoniti sunt. Mitleiden ist gebraucht worden mit . . .’’ (here the pastor wrote the names of two girls, but one of these names was then crossed out).

386

notes to pages 234– 239

60. BStA Kirchen Akten E 1, Langenbruck: ‘‘Bei Krankenbesuch . . . die alten im gebett vnd den articlen des gloubens auch ir seligkeit durch den glouben inn der gnadt gottes vnd im Christo inzesetzen wu¨ssen’’; Gelterkinden: ‘‘befindt bey vylen so er inn iren kranckheiten besuoche, dz sye nutzlich das wort gottes ho¨ren’’; Bubendorf: ‘‘er gespu¨r in Ersehung der Kranckhen daß sye sich selbs tro¨sten ko¨nen vnd mit frucht zur predig gangen’’; Benken: ‘‘Krankhen seyen Trosthafft vnd wohl in Gott erbauwen’’; Rotenfluh: ‘‘er befinde bey den krancken das sye sich sein tro¨sten ko¨nen und geb ein anzeig das sye inn der predig das wort fassen’’; Bretzwil: ‘‘Kilchgenossen gangen fleissig zur predig, deren frucht erschein bey ein meher dan bey den andern.’’ 61. Heinrich R. Schmidt, Konfessionalisierung im 16. Jahrhundert, Enzyklopa¨die deutscher Geschichte 12 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), 100: ‘‘Keine Sozialdisziplinierung ohne Mitwirkung der Betroffenen’’; and ‘‘Sozialdisziplinierung? Ein Pla¨doyer fu¨r das Ende des Etatismus in der Konfessionalisierungsforschung,’’ Historische Zeitschrift 265 (1997): 639–82. Thomas Robisheaux has shown how this type of social control could be imposed by local elites via the marriage courts, ‘‘Peasants and Pastors: Rural Youth Control and the Reformation in Hohenlohe, 1540–1680,’’ Social History 6 (1981): 281–300. 62. As Heinz Schilling rightly points out, the self-regulation imposed at the local level cannot be divorced from the efforts to impose greater discipline from above, in this case, via the Senate’s edicts requiring church attendance and the Senate’s support of the pastors’ campaign for more frequent catechization; Heinz Schilling, ‘‘Disziplinierung oder ‘Selbstregulierung der Untertanen’? Ein Pla¨doyer fu¨r die Doppelperspektive von Makro- und Mikrohistorie bei der Erforschung der fru¨hmodernen Kirchenzucht,’’ Historische Zeitschrift 264 (1997): 675–91. 63. To cite only Reformed examples, Ursinus’s brief ‘‘methodus formandi concionum,’’ printed as part of Bartholomaeus Keckermann’s Rhetoricae Ecclesiasticae, sive artis formandi et habendi conciones sacras. Libro Duo: methodice adornati per praecepta et explicationes, in Operum omnium quae extant Tomus Secundus, in quo speciatim, methodice et uberrime de ethica, oeconomica, politica disciplina: Necnon de arte rhetorica agitur (Geneva: Aubertus, 1614), 51–2, and Georg Sohn’s ‘‘De interpretatione ecclesiastica,’’ in the same volume, 52; and Guillaume Le Buc (Bucanus), Ecclesiastes (Geneva: Ioannem Le Preux, 1608), 11. Polanus also advised his readers to take account of their audience, De Concionum sacrarum Methodo institutio, in gratiam tyronum ministerij Ecclesiastici delineata (Basel: Waldkirch, 1604), 24. 64. Patrick Collinson expresses similar skepticism that the well-catechized laity of seventeenth-century England found Protestant preaching too difficult; ‘‘Shepherds, Sheepdogs, and Hirelings: The Pastoral Ministry in Post-Reformation England,’’ in The Ministry, Clerical and Lay: Papers Read at the 1988 Summer Meeting and the 1989 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. W. J. Scheils and D. Wood, Studies in Church History 26 (Cambridge, U.K.: Blackwell, 1989), 185–220.

chapter 11 1. Complaints submitted at synod of May 1533, ABR 6:260–1, no. 273. 2. ABR 6:262–4, no. 273. See also the complaints from the synod of September 1531, ABR 5:373–4, no. 445b. 3. Karen Spierling, ‘‘Daring Insolence toward God? The Perpetuation of Catholic baptismal Traditions in Sixteenth-Century Geneva,’’ ARG 93 (2002): 97–125; Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany,

notes to pages 239– 240

387

Christianity and Society in the Modern World (London: Routledge, 1997), 63–4, and ‘‘ ‘Suffer the Little Children to Come unto Me, and Forbid Them Not’: The Social Location of Baptism in Early Modern Germany,’’ in Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late Medieval and Reformation History. Essays Presented to Heiko A. Oberman on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. R. J. Bast and A. C. Gow (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 359–78; William Coster, ‘‘ ‘From Fire and Water’: The Responsibilities of Godparents in Early Modern England,’’ in The Church and Childhood, ed. D. Wood, Studies in Church History 31 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 301–12; Agne`s Fine, Parrains, marraines: La parent
e spirituelle in Europe (Paris: E´ditions Fayard, 1994), 109–20. 4. On the positions of various Swiss reformers on the introduction of midwives’ baptism in Montbe´liard: Bullinger to a pastor in Vaud, 22 November 1543, Herminjard 9:116–22; Viret to Calvin on Sulzer’s suspension of judgment concerning baptism by midwives, 3 November 1543, Herminjard 9:96–100; Calvin to the pastors of Montbe´liard, 8 May 1544, Herminjard 9:223–7. The chronicle of the Meyer zum Pfeil family refers to a 1564 baptism by the midwife of a son who died soon afterward; August Bernoulli, ed., Basler Chroniken 6 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1902), 395. 5. Visitation of 13 May 1582, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 1, 2, inside front cover; visitation of May 1587, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 5. Grynaeus’s statement in Christliche Predigen u€ber die zwen sch€ onen psalmen (Basel: Henricpetri, 1588), 61–5: ‘‘Einem Stattschreiber allein/vnnd nicht einem jeden Weyb oder Mann/gebu¨ret der Statt Secret Insigel auff zu trucken/wo/woran vnnd wann es seyn soll: Also wann die Kindtschafft Gottes soll an einem newgebornen Christenkindlein bezeuget werden/ soll der ordenlich Diener des Evangelij den Sigel vnd das Sacrament des Tauffs aufftrucken/ wie es Christus geordnet hat. Und ist gewißlich wahr/ daß verstendige/ Gottselige Frawen/ selbs des verstands sind/daß sie des hohen herrlichen Wercks/ welches ist tauffen im Nammen der allerheiligsten Dreyfaltigkeit/ sich nimmermehr vnderstehen werden: Wanns aber leichtfertige/freche/fu¨rwitzige Weyblein thun/ oder auch in Glaubenssachen ungeu¨bte freche Ma¨nner/so haben die solchen ga¨hen Tauff gelten lassen/ wenig Ruhms vnd Ehr an solchen jren Gehu¨lffen. Ja sie machen jr eigen Ministerium vera¨chtlich/ dz sie doch mit thugent/ehren vnd fu¨rsichtigem Dienst/ preisen vnnd zieren sollten.’’ Prohibition of midwives’ baptism, KRP I, 28 June 1594. In 1592, the Zurich church declared baptism by midwives not only illegal but invalid; Erika Welti, Taufbr€ auche im Kanton Z€ urich: Eine Studie u€ber ihre Entwicklung bei Angeh€ origen der Landeskirche seit der Reformation (Zurich: Gotthelf Verlag 1967), 45. 6. Thomas Lambert also interprets the preference for Sunday baptisms in Geneva in 1551 as a sign of the acceptance of Calvin’s teachings, ‘‘Preaching, Praying and Policing the Reform in Sixteenth-Century Geneva’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1998), 291–6. The earliest baptismal register in Basel, that of St. Theodor, was begun in 1490, a generation before the Reformation. Registers for St. Martin and St. Leonhard begin in 1529, for St. Alban in 1532, for St. Elizabeth in 1542, and for St. Peter in 1544; see the complaints made at the synod of May 1533 that not all baptisms were being recorded, ABR 6:257, no. 272. The baptisms of all babies in the cathedral parish were recorded in the registers for the three filial churches. The baptismal registers are preserved in BStA Kirchen Archiv Y 10, 1–4 (St. Elizabeth, including St. Margaret from the early seventeenth century); Kirchen Archiv W 12, 1–2 (St. Martin); Kirchen Archiv X 8, 1–4 (St. Alban); Kirchen Archiv AA 16, 1–3 (St. Peter); Kirchen Archiv BB 23, BB 24, 1–3 (St. Leonhard); and Kirchen Archiv CC 11, a–c (St. Theodor—a photocopy of the original now in the British Library).

388

notes to pages 240– 241

7. The earliest date at which all parishes can be included is the mid-1540s, and even then the figures must be considered approximate, for entries in the registers continue to be incomplete. In the parish of St. Leonhard, for instance, forty-five of the ninety-nine baptisms entered in 1556 have no date and could not be included in the table. Several of the baptisms are also not in chronological order. The lack of a date may indicate not merely that the pastor was a poor record keeper but perhaps that the baptisms did not take place in the church but were performed instead by a midwife or the pastor at home and entered later, with or without a date. The changes in Basel’s baptismal practice differentiated that city from Zurich, where apparently during the later sixteenth century the baptisms in the city remained evenly spread throughout the week, although by 1604 over half the baptisms, at least in the parish church of St. Peter, were performed on Sunday. As in Basel’s rural parishes, discussed later, Sunday baptisms became the norm in Zurich’s rural parishes very soon after the Reformation; Welti, Taufbr€ auche, 38–43. 8. Twenty-seven of the forty-two Monday baptisms and twenty-three of the twenty-five Wednesday baptisms took place at St. Peter. Correspondingly, there were only five baptisms on Tuesday and one on Thursday in that parish. 9. Karl Goetz states that before 1700, most baptisms were performed in the choir of the church before only a few witnesses, but he does not give the source of his information, ‘‘Die Verbindung von Kirche und Staat in der alten reformierten Kirche Basel,’’ BZ 40 (1941): 5–22. Whatever the practice may have been at the end of the seventeenth century, it is questionable that private church baptisms were the rule in the city at the beginning of the century. They certainly were not practiced in the rural parishes. In 1605, the Arisdorf pastor Leonhard Soerin reported to Grynaeus that he only baptized babies during a regular church service, unless the infant was weak; 26 January 1605, BUB MsKir 22c, 167r: ‘‘Der tauff wirt von mir mitgetheilt auf anforderung ihrer elteren, in der kirchen vnd sonst nicht, am Sontag oder andern tagen, allezeit bey gemeinen versamblung vnd predigtagen, es sey dann sach das die kinder schwach befunden, von elteren der tauff begert wurde. Da doch allezeit zeu¨gen, gevatteren vnd andere verwandte darbey sollen sein.’’ 10. The records do not identify whether the baptisms took place at the dawn service or the main service on Sundays. The individuals who maintained the parish registers sometimes identified themselves. Georg Oes, deacon of St. Leonhard, made the entries between the time of his appointment in 1573 and his death in 1577. His successor, Paul Strasser I, maintained the register through the end of 1586, when he was, in turn, succeeded by Johann Tryphius (who does not identify himself but whose hand is unmistakable), BStA Kirchen Archiv BB 23 and BB 24, 1. An undated ‘‘Diaconordnung’’ for St. Peter specifies that the deacons were supposed to preach on Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday (at the early rather than the main service); BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 53, 341. At the end of 1625, the deacon of St. Theodor, Jacob Brandmu¨ller, noted that he had baptized 1,649 babies at that church, BStA Kirchen Archiv CC 11, b. Brandmu¨ller became deacon of that church in 1590. 11. At the 1601 visitation, some of the rural pastors reported that they held baptisms before the sermons, with the entire congregation present; BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. On the pedagogical character of the baptismal liturgy, see chapter 2. 12. One of these Kilchberg baptisms has no date assigned. Four rural parishes have registers beginning 1529–39, another four parish registers begin in the 1540s, three more in the 1550s, and four more in the 1560s. Five parishes do not have parish registers from the sixteenth century. All are preserved in BLStA, NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1.

notes to pages 241– 242

389

13. If the godparents functioned as spiritual parents at baptism, the priest functioned as the spiritual midwife; Joseph H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 165–201; 312–32. On the importance of coparentage bonds in late medieval Bern, Simon Teuscher, Bekannte—Klienten—Verwandte: Soziabilit€ at und Politik in der Stadt Bern um 1500, Norm und Struktur: Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und fru¨her Neuzeit (Cologne: Bo¨hlau, 1998), 115–34; see Welti’s discussion of the terminology used for godparents, Taufbr€ auche, 69–71. 14. Included in Grynaeus’s Dreizehen Christenliche Predigen (Basel: Henricpetri, 1587), 165–83. 15. For examples of how baptismal sponsors became part of family networks, Samuel Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl, Schl€ ussel zur Macht: Verflechtungen und informelles Verhalten im Kleinen Rat zu Basel, 1570–1600, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 173 (Basel: Schwabe, 2002), 1:172–81. Cases of Catholic sponsors include the abbess of the convent of Olsberg, who was godmother to a baby baptized on 15 December 1576 in Arisdorf, and the prioress of the same convent, who was godmother to a baby baptized in the same village on 27 February 1586. There were limits to what the pastors considered acceptable, especially in the city. Already in 1564 the pastor of St. Peter refused to allow a priest to serve as godfather; Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl, Schlussel zur Macht, 1:208. 16. Isaac Cellarius to dean Gabriel Hummel, 2 January 1601, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 30a, 115. Hans Uebelhard had died in 1573, but Weitz would have known him while he was a student in Basel during the 1560s. The sponsor, Heini Uebelhard, was a subject of Catholic Solothurn. On priests not accepting Protestant godparents, see the comments of the Langenbruck pastor, Ezechiel Falkeysen, 1601 visitation; requirement that godparents be those who had publicly received the Lord’s Supper, 1625 synod, both in BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. The pastors of both Zurich and Geneva fought to prevent Catholics from standing as godparents, Welti, Taufbr€ auche, 82–85; Karen Spierling, Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva: The Shaping of a Community, 1536–1564, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2005), 120–4. 17. Cases where pastors or their wives served as godparents are frequent in all of the church registers. To give only one example, twenty-six of the thirty-seven children baptized in Wintersingen between 1563 and 1567 had either pastor Thomas Schorendorf or his wife, Elizabeth, as godparent. Valentine Fungnot was godfather to the first child he baptized in his new parish of Arisdorf on 15 September 1559; his successor, Jacob Go¨utschel, was godfather at his first baptism in the parish on 15 May 1569, BLStA NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, Arisdorf 1 and Wintersingen 1. A child was allowed to have three godparents: two men and a woman for boys, and two women and a man for girls; an edict of 25 February 1601 prohibited more than three sponsors, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 35, 118. 18. At the Farnsburg chapter meeting of 23 March 1598, the pastors decided after some discussion that pastors could baptize their own children in cases of emergency; BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1. Bubendorf pastor Heinrich Stru¨bin’s daugher was baptized by her new godfather, the pastor Jakob Freuler of Sissach, 24 June 1606; on 20 February 1612 the Liestal pastor Emanuel Iselin baptized and was godfather to Stru¨bin’s son. The son of the Arisdorf pastor Elias Buchser was baptized on 10 January 1566 by the Liestal pastor, Johann Rudolf Wildisen; the Sissach pastor, Hans von Arx, was one of the godparents. Twenty years later, Philip Luterburger, pastor of Muntzach and brother-in-law of Arisdorf pastor Gregor Brandmu¨ller, baptized his

390

notes to pages 242– 244

new nephew and godson on 11 January 1586; BLStA NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, Bubendorf 1 and Arisdorf 1. 19. Bodo Nischan, ‘‘The ‘Fractio Panis’: A Reformed Communion Practice in Late Reformed Germany,’’ Church History 53 (1984): 17–29; Rudolf Pfister, ‘‘Vom Nachleben katholischer Bra¨uche in der reformierten Kirche der Schweiz,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 55 (1961): 66–7. 20. Goetz, ‘‘Die Verbindung von Kirche und Staat.’’ 21. KRP I, 29 March 1588: ‘‘Quaestio a D. Brandmyllero mota, de distributione Panis in S. Eucharistia, an in manus tradi posset? Eo exemplo quod et Christi institutio et exemplum veteris orthodoxae ecclesiae nobis praelucet. An papistarum more in os inserendus panis: ut hactenus in ecclesia nostra. Non qui neget in manus tradi posse: sed qui nihil facta in ecclesia reformata mutandum, nisi subsit evidens ratio, et prius de eo actum et consilia in publico conventu ministrorum verbi &c.’’ 22. On communion assistants, Waldenburg chapter, 8 September 1608, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 14, 1; KRP II, 28 September 1608; BUB MsKiAr 108a, no. 13b, 379–84. On the position of the person holding the chalice, Waldenburg chapter, the question raised by Balthasar Dietrich, 11 Mar. 1619, BStA Kirchen Archiv 14, 1; 1619 visitation, particularly of the parishes in the Waldenburg chapter on 27 May, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 17, no. 2a; cf. the mandate issued 18 December 1619, requiring those holding the chalice to stand next to the pastor rather than behind the communion table, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 85, 253–4. 23. Johann Georg Gross, Thesaurus Concionum sacrarum omnigenarum (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1616), col. 1220. On Basel’s adoption of the fractio panis, Max Geiger, Die Basler Kirche und Theologie im Zeitalter der Hochorthodoxie (Zollikon-Zu¨rich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1952), 52–4. Ironically, Geneva did not accept the use of normal bread (as opposed to an oblate large enough that it could be broken) until 1621, in response to pressure for conformity in the eucharistic liturgy exerted by both Bern and the French Reformed churches; Christian Grosse, ‘‘La coupe et le pain de la discorde: E´mergence d’une orthodoxie rituelle au de´but du XVIIe sie`cle,’’ in Edifier ou instruire? Les avatars de la liturgie r
eform
ee du XVIe au XVIIIe siecle, ed. Maria Cristina Pitassi (Paris: Campion, 2000), 33–55. 24. On Myconius, see Gast’s report in Paul Burckhardt, ed., Das Tagebuch des Johannes Gast: Ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte (Basel: Schwabe, 1945), 264–6. Myconius’s and Wissenburg’s quarrel is described in chapter 3. On the Rotenfluh pastor, Farnsburg chapter, 9 October 1600, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1; Bretzwil, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1, 1601 visitation, 15v; on the 1598 general convent, see chapter 9. 25. Synod of 6 August 1535, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 160v; General convent of 7 March, 1594, BStA Kirchen Akten C 2, 45r. 26. Numbers of communicants in BLStA NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, Arisdorf 1 (1558–1625) from 1601 on; Bubendorf 1 (1529–1649), from 1584 on; Oltingen 1 (1542–1791) from 1606 on; Ru¨mlingen 1 (1558–1662) from 1619 on; Sissach 1 (1547–1739) from 1603 to 1611 and 1617 on. 27. Farnsburg chapter, 21 April 1597, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1, report of Jacob Freuler: ‘‘Vff den Palmentag gangen der Jungen knaben vnd to¨chtern zu des H. Tisch mehren theils, allein dz sich hernach am Ostertag dester freyer dem fu¨llen vnd praß noch ziechen mo¨gen auch vnd zwihr vnd mutwillen treiben.’’ 28. The Bubendorf pastor, Heinrich Stru¨bin, noted in the parish register that he celebrated the Lord’s Supper on 29 September 1594 at the magistrate’s command because of the plague, BLStA NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, Bubendorf 1 (1529–1649), 201;

notes to pages 244– 246

391

he recorded the same information in his chronicle, Rudolf Wackernagel, ‘‘Stru¨binsche Chronik (1529–1627),’’ Basler Jahrbuch (1893): 136–44, at p. 139. The following year, Grynaeus wrote to the rural pastors telling them to repeat the autumn communion service, 7 September 1595, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 2, no. 7, 216–7. The autumn communion service was to be held on the Sunday following the ‘‘fronfast crucis,’’ the feast of the exaltation of the cross (14 September). Eventually, the communion service became established on the first Sunday in September, loosely associated with St. Verena, and both the reason for and the date of its institution forgotten, as is clear from Eduard Stru¨bin, Jahresbrauch im Zeitenlauf (Liestal: Verlag des Kantons Basel-Landschaft, 1991), 359–61. In the record they kept of the number of communicants, the pastors of Oltingen specifically noted that the high number of recipients on various dates was due to plague. 29. The posts at the Franciscan church and at St. Jacob were both affiliated with hospitals. In each of the major plague epidemics of 1541, 1564, 1610–11, and 1629, several pastors in both urban and rural parishes died of the plague themselves. As we have seen, Christian Wurstisen was appointed as vicar during the 1564 plague (chapter 8); pastoral candidates Johann Friedrich Koch and Nicolaus Brombach were vicars of St. Leonhard and St. Peter, respectively, during the plague of 1610–11. Both were chosen for rural posts in the fall of 1611, and the following year the Kirchenrat rather belatedly decided to give them each additional compensation for their services during the epidemic, BStA Kirchen Archiv D 2, 7 October 1612. On Geneva, Jean-Franc¸ois Bergier et al., eds., Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs de Geneve au Temps de Calvin, Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 1962–), 2:106. 30. On Basel’s liturgy for visiting the sick, see chapter 2. 31. See the comment of the Dietken pastor, Gabriel Hummel, at the general convent of 23 August 1593, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, no. 4: ‘‘Seiner Person halben ermangle es nit, die krankhen zuebesuechen, man beschickhe ine aber selten, vß vrsachen, des sie vermeinen sie sterben desto eher.’’ 32. In response to Myconius’s request for his opinion about sickbed communion, Bullinger said that although he did not reject it completely, it was not the usual practice in Zurich, and he believed that Oecolampadius had intended it only as a temporary measure; Myconius to Bullinger, 19 June 1533, HBBW 3:144–5, no. 237, and Bullinger to Myconius, 17 July 1533, HBBW 3:155, no. 243. Calvin was more willing to accept sickbed communion, although it was not practiced in Geneva; see his letter to the Montbe´liard pastors, 7 October 1543, CO 11:623–6, no. 506. 33. Rejecting a requested pastoral visit was only one of the many charges Heinrich Erzberger defended himself against in early 1571; BUB Ms Falk 819, 12–3: ‘‘Dem Gabriel Fyschkeuffler (warff er mir fir, wiewol er nitt wolt vff mich geredt haben) hette ich abgeschlagen synen do¨chterlin das Nachtmal zgehen, vnd dorby gseit, ob es nitt ko¨nne on ein Byßlin brot vnd tro¨pfflin wyn sterben, doruff gab ich die Antwort, Gabriel ist zuo mir kummen vff dem kylchhoff, ist der sygerist dorby gsin, do er mich vmb den dienst ansprach, frogt ich in wie alt das do¨chterlin wa¨re, vnd ob es vor nye wa¨re zuohingangen, seit er es gienge in das xiiii Jor wa¨re aber noch nie zuo des herren Tisch gangen, do gab ich im den bscheid, firwor es ist vollen jung, dorzu ist es nitt der bruch, glaub ich, das man das Nachtmal jungen theile, doheimen, die in der gmein es nye noch einpfangen, mießten den Pfarrherrn frogen, es bedarff vyl berichtens, das aber In der kranckheit nitt wol syn mag. So soll nyemands dencken, wo es nitt fuog hatt alters halben oder sonst, das vnser Herrgott an die vßerlichen zeichen brot vnd weyn so gar bunden, das man deren nitt mo¨ge selig werden.’’ The question of whether to administer sickbed communion to youths who had not yet publicly received the

392

notes to pages 246– 247

sacrament was also raised in Liestal during the 1587 visitation, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 5, 2. 34. KRP I, 3 November 1587; 29 October 1591. Visitation of 1587 in Liestal, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 4, no. 5. 35. Grynaeus’s prescriptions concerning sickbed visitation included with his sermons preached during the visitation, Christliche Predigen u€ber die zwen sch€ onen psalmen Davidis, 68–71. Johannes Wollebius gave essentially the same advice concerning private communion in an appendix to a sermon on the Lord’s Supper printed three decades later, Grundtlicher und heilsamer Bericht/Von eigentlichem Verstand der Worten/und heilsamen Gebrauch der Sacramenten des H. Nachtmals . . . . in zween Predigten zu Basel in der Pfarrkirchen des M€ unsters gehalten . . . (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1619), 23–4. 36. Admonition to Jacob Mo¨rsberger, the pastor of Buus, with Grynaeus’s note in the margin, general convent 23 April 1593, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, no. 4: ‘‘dieweyl an jetzo sterbens leu¨ff bey ime, das Nachtmahl desto o¨ffter inn der kirchen Vßtheile, die vnderthonen darzue vermahne, vnd nit als nach Pappistischem gebrauch hin vnd wider inn die heu¨ser tragen als wans allein an dem gelegen, das man das Brott des Herren esse vnd wenig an das Leiden vnd den verdienst Christi gedechte, vnd die Sacrament, wie ein Artznei die wu¨rcket fur sich selbs, one nach gedencken dessen, so sie empfahet, solte vnd kondte fruchtbarlich brauchen, jedoch dz ers vf begers niemands versage, oder abschlage mit dem Evangelio, vnd dessen sichtbaren zeu¨gnussen, die wir Sacramenta heissen, zu tro¨sten.’’ Cf. complaints from Waldenburg about those too weak to receive the sacrament, 1594 visitation, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1. 37. Meyer refers to his own illness in the unpaginated preface to ‘‘God’s beloved . . . in the city and countryside of Basel’’; at the end of the dialogue, Meyer notes that he finished it on 1 November 1610, ‘‘in my illness,’’ Spiegel der Geistlichen und allerheilsamsten Cur oder Artzney aller Krancken: Wie ne[m]lich ein jeder Gottsgelehrter Christ seinem krancken angefochtenen oder auch sterbenden nebenmenschen Christenlich zusprechen, mit dem Gebett heilsamlich vorleuchten, und nutzlich außwarten . . . Gespr€ achsweiß gestellet (Basel: Waldkirch, 1611), 400. He named one of the participants in the dialogue Gedeon in memory of his son Jacob-Gedeon. Meyer also lost his mother and a brother to the plague, Spiegel, 433–5. 38. The Benken pastor Johann Parcus was admonished to better performance of his duty to visit the sick, KRP I, 13 January 1587; at the 1625 synod, the Waldenburg pastor was rebuked for refusing to visit the sick and to give funeral sermons, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; see the criticism of not visiting the sick lodged against the aging pastor Romanus Weinmann by his vicar, Johannes Gross; BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 61, 183–4; and the letter of the rural pastors to the Senate defending themselves against the charge that they had failed to provide for visitation of the sick in the parishes of Rotenfluh and Oltingen after their pastors had died, 3 October 1594, BUB MsKiAr 22b, 226–7, no. 88. 39. Meyer, Spiegel, 148–92; discussion of the descent to hell, 167–8. Meyer identified the rejected view, ‘‘daß er in das Vorgeba¨w der Ho¨llen gefaren sey/die Altva¨tter darauß zuerlosen,’’ not as that of Myconius and the earliest Basel catechism but as that of the ‘‘papists.’’ The Scripture citations are identified in the margins of the work and often distinguished either by quotation marks or larger type. 40. In this respect, Meyer’s book shared many of the characteristics of French Reformed books of consolation, described and contrasted with Catholic works by Marianne Carbonnier-Burkard, ‘‘Les Manuels re´forme´s de pre´paration a` la mort,’’ Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 217 (2000): 363–80; see also the discussion of English ars moriendi literature from the late Middle Ages into the eighteenth century and

notes to pages 247– 249

393

contrasting Puritan and Anglican approaches, Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family in England 1480–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 149–82. 41. Geneva’s egalitarianism did not last, and Calvin’s successor, Theodore Beza, was buried in the cathedral cloister; Max Engammare, ‘‘L’inhumation de Calvin et des pasteurs genevois de 1540 a` 1620: Un de´pouillement tre`s prophe´tique et une pompe fune`bre protestante qui se met en place,’’ in Les fun
erailles a la Renaissance, ed. J. Balsamo, Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance 356 (Geneva: Droz, 2002), 271–93. On burial practices in Zurich, Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 274–5; see also the description in Fritz Bu¨sser, Heinrich Bullinger: Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2004), 1:147–8. For the practices of French Huguenots, Bernard Roussel, ‘‘ ‘Ensevelir Honnestement les Corps’: Funeral Corteges and Huguenot Culture,’’ in Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559– 1685, ed. Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 193–208; a comparison of Scotland, the Netherlands, and France, Andrew Spicer, ‘‘ ‘Rest of Their Bones’: Fear of Death and Reformed Burial Practices,’’ in Fear in Early Modern Society, William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 167–83; on Basel in comparison to other Swiss cities, Beat Rudolf Jenny, ‘‘Tod, Begra¨bnis und Grabmal des Erasmus von Rotterdam,’’ BZ 86 (1986): 61–104, esp. Anhang I. Burgermeister Adelberg Meyer was buried in the secularized church of the Steinenkloster convent; both Bonifacius and Basilius Amerbach were buried in their family tomb in the Carthusian church. Burial locations were regulated by an ordinance issued during the plague epidemic of 1541, MsKiAr 23a, no. 95, 81. 42. Meyer, Spiegel, 131–3. Meyer was echoing the 1529 Reformation ordinance, which required that bodies be buried ‘‘mit zucht und eerlich’’; ABR 3:495, no. 473. Lutherans also developed the idea of an honorable burial; Craig M. Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450–1700, Early Modern History: Society and Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 79–114. 43. Noted in the parish register for La¨ufelfingen, BLStA NA 2165 Kirchen E 9.1, 224v: ‘‘die grosse unmenschlickheit der leu¨ten die die abstorbnen nach iren abscheid nit ein firtel stund mo¨gen beherbrig, also das menger so lang etwan in einer Omacht lige, vnd wider mag zu sin selbs khummen vnd erst im grab muß sterben, exempel die sindt etwan vorhanden gsin.’’ 44. Jenny, ‘‘Tod, Begra¨bnis und Grabmal’’; Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘ ‘To Oblige My Brethren’: The Reformed Funeral Sermons of Johann Brandmu¨ller,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005): 37–54. On the length of funeral sermons, KRP I, 27 May 1586; pastors not to refuse requests for such sermons, 31 March 1587; the rebuke of Conrad Lu¨tzelman in Gelterkinden for refusing to preach a sermon for a maid from Bernese territory, KRP I, 29 August 1589. Four years later, however, the city pastors were told they were not to preach funeral sermons for servants and children, KRP I, 14 December 1593. This restriction was probably in response to the increased number of deaths due to the plague then sweeping through both city and countryside. 45. Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 84–126. 46. For a concise survey of recent research, see Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 460–89. The influence of Oecolampadius on both Bucer’s and Calvin’s understanding of church discipline has long been recognized; for a recent restatement, Olaf Kuhr, ‘‘The Significance of Oecolampadius and the Basel Discipline Ordinance for the Institution of Ecclesiastical Discipline in Geneva,’’ Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical

394

notes to pages 249– 252

Theology 16 (1998): 19–33, and ‘‘Die Macht des Bannes und der Buße’’: Kirchenzucht und Erneuerung der Kirche bei Johannes Oekolampad (1482–1531), Basler und Berner Studien zur historischen und systematischen Theologie 68 (Bern: Lang, 1999),’’ 254–79. 47. Included in the pastor’s disciplinary duties were efforts to prevent the spread of Anabaptism and to persuade Anabaptists within his parish to return to the official church. A consideration of this task would be far beyond the scope of this study, but see Hanspeter Jecker, Ketzer—Rebellen—Heilige: Das Basler T€ aufertum von 1580–1700, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte und Landeskunde des Kantons Basel-Landschaft 64 (Liestal: Verlag des Kantons Basel-Landschaft, 1998), 59–405. 48. Ernst Staehelin, Das theologische Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1939), 506–27; Kuhr, ‘‘Die Macht des Bannes,’’ 161–241. 49. ABR 5:60–4, nos. 76 and 77 (for the city and countryside, respectively). 50. Acta Liechstalensia of 1540, BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 40, 291r–v; 1595 reissue, Ordnung berierende den Kilchgang . . . , BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 94, 238–43. The ban brothers in the countryside were originally chosen by the Obervogt (district governor), ABR 5:154–5, no. 167. The pastors’ request for a voice in selecting the Bannherren, BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 43r–44v; the 1542 ordinance specified that the pastors were to nominate two or three candidates to the Senate in the city or the Obervogt in the country, who would then make the final appointment, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 375v–376v. 51. For 10 June 1531: ABR 5:236–7, no. 267; 7 August 1538: BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 34[b], 258r–260r; 19 November 1539, BUB MsKiAr 22a, no. 36, 272r; 23 September 1542, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 375v–376v; publicly known cases of adultery and all other sins remained under the jurisdiction of the ban brothers. For a lengthier discussion of these developments, Walther Ko¨hler, Z€ urcher Ehegericht und Genfer Consistorium, Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte 9 (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1932), 1:274–308; Kuhr, ‘‘Die Macht des Bannes,’’ 243–54. 52. Uwe Plath, Calvin und Basel in den Jahren 1552–1556, Basler Beitra¨ge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 133 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974), 94–111; summarized by J. Wayne Baker, ‘‘Christian Discipline, Church and State, and Toleration: Bullinger, Calvin and Basel, 1530–1555,’’ in Reformiertes Erbe:. Festschrift f€ ur G.W. Locher, ed. H. A. Oberman, Zwingliana 19 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1992), 1:35–48, and Ulrich Ga¨bler, ‘‘Die Kontroverse um das Verha¨ltnis von Kirche und politischer Obrigkeit in der Schweizer Reformation,’’ Theologische Zeitschrift 51 (1995): 212–23. 53. As a result of the 1536 synod, the ban brothers and other officials were admonished to greater diligence in enforcing the ban ordinance and other edicts, BtA Kirchen Akten A 9, 169r; see also synod of 23 July 1538, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 183v–184r; synod of 20 May 1555, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 394r–96v; synod of 23 May 1558, BStA Kirchen Akten C 3, 90r–v. Complaints against the ban brothers of Dietken and reports that parishioners ignored the summons of the ban brothers in the parish of Sissach, Farnsburg chapter, 28 September 1592, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 15, 1; complaints against the ban brothers of Muttenz, general convent, October 1595, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 102, 283v. 54. Praise for ban brothers and enforcement of ban ordinance from the parishes of Ru¨mlingen, La¨ufelfingen, Waldenburg, Langenbruck, visitation of 22–27 April 1594, BStA Kirchen Akten E 1; from Mu¨nchenstein and Pratteln at the same visitation, BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 87, 222–3. Visitation of 1619, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 17, no. 2a. 55. See the minutes of the chapter meetings held on 3 April 1617 and 11 March 1619 in all three districts, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 13, 2 (Liestal); HH 14, 1

notes to pages 252– 253

395

(Waldenburg); and HH 15, 1 (Farnsburg), where pastor Georg Schickler of Kilchberg laid the blame for the increase in these vices squarely on the secular authorities (11 March 1619). 56. Kuhr, ‘‘Die Macht des Bannes,’’ 249–52. Only the minutes of a few sessions from the early 1530s have survived; the protocol of the Bannherren from the cathedral parish in ABR 6:307, no. 32; 315, no. 329; 385–6, no. 375. 57. KRP I, 2 January 1596. The rape case in BLStA, Kirchenbuch Arisdorf 1, p. 253, on 4 December 1618; the sentence of expulsion was commuted at the request of the twelve-year-old boy’s relatives, after his stepfather had ‘‘beaten [him] with a rod until blood flowed’’ (‘‘von seinem Stieffvatter mit ruetten biß uff das blut gestrichen worden’’). The accidental death, which occurred in 1626, is described in BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 20a–b, 388–91. The man was interrogated to determine whether the death had been deliberate, in which case the punishment would have been death, or merely accidental. The outline of Wollebius’s sermon is printed in Wollebius, Concionum Miscellanearum Fasciculus, variis occasionibus inserviens, diuque desideratus: Nunc primum in Usum S. Ministerii Candidatorum in lucem emissus, ed. Johann Jacob Wollebius (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1648), 364–9. The volume also includes the summary of a sermon preached at the public reconciliation ceremony of a woman who had encouraged her daughter to theft, 356–64. On the distinction between secular punitive and ecclesiastical penitential discipline, Heinz Schilling, ‘‘ ‘History of Crime’ or ‘History of Sin’? Some Reflections on the Social History of Early Modern Church Discipline,’’ Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. E. J. Kouri and T. Scott (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 289–310. 58. The terminology was variable, but in general, major excommunication entailed denial of all the privileges of church membership, including not only the Eucharist but the right to participate in any of the other sacraments as well, and was extended after death to the denial of a church burial. Minor excommunication entailed only a prohibition against receiving the Lord’s Supper; Georg May, ‘‘Bann IV: Alte Kirche und Mittelalter,’’ in Theologische Realenzyklop€ adie, ed. Gerhard Krause and Gerhard Mu¨ller (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977–), 5:170–82. On the pastors’ discussion of their authority, Liestal district chapter, 22 March 1599, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 20, 90. The outcome of the discussion is not recorded; see the response to a question of the Waldenburg pastor at the Waldenburg chapter meeting, 22 March 1599, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 21, 93r. 59. KRP I, 28 November 1589, where the Bannherren were called presbyteri, an interesting appellation because their duty was solely disciplinary; all other administrative functions attributed to the elders in churches influenced by Calvin were carried out by the Deputaten. Meeting with the separated wife, KRP I, 9 February 1590. 60. Settling dispute between Anthonius Weitz and his dean Thomas Schorendorf, KRP I, 25 August 1587; admonition to pastor Conrad Lu¨tzelmann for neglect of duty, including devoting more time to fishing than to studying, 29 August 1589; pastor Matthias Rettenmund told ‘‘to be not unmindful of temperance’’ (qui admonendus est ne sit immemor temperantia), 17 May 1588. Discussion of the drunkenness and marital spats of the Lausen pastor, Heinrich Suntgauer, and his wife, 6 November 1590; on the problems with Wildysen, 17 May 1588, 27 March. 1590, 28 June 1594, 13 December 1594, 27 August 1596. One almost hears Grynaeus’s sigh of relief when he noted the death of Wildysen on 14 April 1602, two weeks after that of Wildysen’s wife: ‘‘Sic usum est Domino, et male conciliatos conjuges separare, et ecclesiae consulare’’; KRP II, 73.

396

notes to pages 254– 256

61. Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 249–63; Robert W. Scribner, ‘‘Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe,’’ in Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia and R. W. Scribner, Wolfenbu¨ttler Forschungen 78 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 11–34. 62. Robert W. Scribner, ‘‘Pastoral Care and the Reformation in Germany,’’ in Humanism and Reform: The Church in Europe, England and Scotland 1400–1643, ed. J. Kirk, Studies in Church History Subsidia 8 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 71–97; Gerald Strauss, ‘‘Local Anticlericalism in Reformation Germany,’’ in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, Studies in Late Medieval and Reformation Thought 51 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 625–37; Jay Goodale, ‘‘Pastors, Privation, and the Process of Reformation in Saxony,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 33 (2002): 71–92; Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Fr€ uhneuzeit: Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung fr€ uhmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft. Dargestellt am Beispiel des F€ urstentums Braunschweig-Wolfenb€ uttel, der Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel und der Stadt Braunschweig, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 62 (Gu¨tersloh: Gu¨tersloher Verlagshaus, 1996), 358–89; C. Scott Dixon, ‘‘Die religio¨se Transformation der Pfarreien im Fu¨rstentum BrandenburgAnsbach-Kulmbach: Die Reformation aus anthropologischer Sicht,’’ in L€ andliche Fr€ ommigkeit: Konfessionskulturen und Lebenswelten 1500–1850, ed. N. Haag et al. (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002), 27–42; Ulrich Pfister, ‘‘Pastors and Priests in the Early Modern Grisons: Organized Profession or Side Activity,’’ Central European History 33 (2000): 41–65; On Lu¨tzelmann’s case, see chapter 9. 63. Visitation of 1601, BStA E 1, Arisdorf: ‘‘Das versegnen wo¨lle ye innen nit lassen außreden, sagen es beschech mit gottes worten’’; other complaints about ‘‘superstition’’ from Liestal, Waldenburg, and Riehen. 64. Richard Weiss, ‘‘Grundzu¨ge einer protestantischen Volkskultur,’’ Schweizerisches Archiv f€ ur Volkskunde 61 (1965): 75–91; Farnsburg chapter, BStA HH 15,1, 29 March 1593. Robert Scribner does not sufficiently acknowledge this distinction in his articles ‘‘Magic and the Formation of Protestant Popular Culture in Germany’’ and ‘‘The Reformation, Popular Magic and the ‘Disenchantment of the World,’ ’’ both in Religion and Culture in Germany (1400–1800), ed. Lyndal Roper, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 81 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 323–45 and 346–65, respectively. 65. Two of the most notorious examples of recalcitrant Catholics were Adam Ka¨mi, who lived in the fortress outside Benken and who was involved in several runins with the pastor Johann Parcus and his wife, and the Schafner of the Bla¨sihof in Kleinbasel, which was owned by a monastery in the Black Forest. Both men ignored repeated admonitions to conform, at least outwardly, to the city’s official religion. On Ka¨mi, KRP I, 13 December 1594, 14 January 1595; on the Bla¨sihof Schafner, see the documents in KRP II, 18 September 1607 through 12 February 1608. For a summary of the church’s difficulties with Anabaptists, Jecker, Ketzer—Rebellen—Heilige, 145–73. 66. Bernard Vogler, ‘‘Die Entstehung der protestantischen Volksfro¨mmigkeit in der rheinischen Pfalz zwischen 1555 und 1610,’’ ARG 72 (1981): 158–95. 67. Liestal chapter, 14 March 1605, BStA Kirchen Archiv HH 13, 1, 29–30: ‘‘Also ist auch verstanden worden, das die Kilchgnossen meertheils flyssig sigendt Gottes Wort zuho¨ren, andechtig im gebett, mitt verbesserung ires lebens in waren glauben die heilige Sacrament zuempfahen, sich selbs vnd die iren vnd angeho¨rend zur frombdkeit vnd Gott dem herren zu danckhen ehren vnd prysen, ein eifer habende nach irem besten vermo¨genn vnd gnad Gottes. Diß alles nun ist von meinen

notes to pages 256– 262

397

mittbruderen angezeigt worden, nitt das alles oder alles so gar scheur shlecht abgange (dan es mag nitt alles zu bo¨ltzen getryet worden) sonder das meertheils nach der ghorsame deß glaubens glebt wirt, habent sie nitt wo¨llend von wegen ettlicher so etwan gefaelet die gantzer gmein verschreyen, danach wiewoll vil zu verbesseren wie fu¨rgenumen, so mag es doch khein ustreg vnd kuffe gewu¨nnen der rechten besserung in der unbendigen welt, den der oder die der Herr uß gnaden verlyche denen so in forchten vnd anruffen.’’ 68. Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘The Evolution of the Lutheran Pastors’ Manual in the Sixteenth Century,’’ Church History 73 (2004): 536–65. 69. BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 116, 312–3, list of questions to be asked during the censure of the clergy, 313v: ‘‘Gespu¨ret man das etliche durch die predig gebessert, andere verstockt werden?’’ 70. Karl S. Bottigheimer and Ute Lotz-Heumann distinguish between conformity and conversion but also cite the cases of popular resistance to Reformed confessionalization in Lippe and Brandenburg, ‘‘The Irish Reformation in European Perspective,’’ ARG 89 (1998): 268–309. For more specific examples of loyalty to Lutheran practices, Heinz Schilling, ‘‘Between the Territorial State and Urban Liberty: Lutheranism and Calvinism in the County of Lippe,’’ in The German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 263–83; Bodo Nischan, ‘‘The Exorcism Controversy and Baptism in the Late Reformation,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 31–51, and ‘‘Ritual and Protestant Identity in Late Reformation Germany,’’ in Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe, ed. Bruce Gordon (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1996), 142–58. 71. Karl Gauss, ‘‘Die Gegenreformation im baslerisch-bischo¨flichen Laufen,’’ Basler Jahrbuch (1918 and 1919): 31–76 and 91–155; and ‘‘Therwil und Ettingen in der Zeit der Reformation und Gegenreformation,’’ Basler Jahrbuch (1925): 107–63; and Geschichte der Landschaft Basel und des Kantons Basellandschaft, vol. 1, Von der Urzeit bis zum Bauernkrieg des Jahres 1653 (Basel: Lu¨din, 1932), 539–85.

chapter 12 1. Bernard Roussel, ‘‘ ‘Faire la Ce`ne’ dans les e´glises re´forme´es du royaume de France au seizie`me sie`cle (ca. 1555–ca. 1575),’’ Archives de sciences sociales des religions 84 (1994): 99–119, and ‘‘ ‘Ensevelir Honnestement les Corps’: Funeral Corteges and Huguenot Culture,’’ in Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685, ed. Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 193–208; Christian Grosse, ‘‘ ‘En esprit et en ve´rite´’? La part du rituel dans la culture religieuse re´forme´ (Gene`ve, XVI sie`cle),’’ in Calvinus Praeceptor Ecclesiae: Papers of the International Congress on Calvin Research, Princeton, August 20–24, 2002, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 388 (Geneva: Droz, 2004), 303–21; and the articles collected in Maria Cristina Pitassi, ed., Edifier ou instruire? les avatars de la liturgie r
eform
ee du XVIe au XVIIIe siecle (Paris: Campion, 2000). 2. Wilfrid Prest, ‘‘Why the History of the Professions Is Not Written,’’ in Law, Economy and Society, 1750–1914, ed. G. R. Rubin and David Sugarman (Abingdon, U.K.: Professional Books, 1984), 300–30, and ‘‘The Professions and Society in Early Modern England,’’ introduction to The Professions in Early Modern England, ed. W. Prest (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 1–24. 3. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ‘‘Training and Professionalization,’’ in Power Elites and State Building, ed. W. Reinhard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 149–72;

398

notes to pages 262– 264

Rosemary O’Day, ‘‘The Anatomy of a Profession: The Clergy of the Church of England,’’ in Prest, The Professions in Early Modern England, 25–63; M. Hawkins, ‘‘Ambiguity and Contradiction in ‘the Rise of Professionalism’: The English Clergy, 1570–1730,’’ in The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. A. L. Beier et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 241–69. 4. Arguing for professionalization, Rosemary O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), 1–23; emphasizing continuation of traditional elements as well, Hawkins, ‘‘Ambiguity’’; Ulrich Pfister, ‘‘Pastors and Priests in the Early Modern Grisons: Organized Profession or Side Activity,’’ Central European History 33 (2000): 41–65; with regard to education, Ernst Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft und Mobilit€ at: Die protestantischen Geistlichen zw€ olf s€ uddeutscher Reichst€ adte zwischen Passauer Vertrag und Restitutionsedikt, Schriften zur su¨dwestdeutschen Landeskunde 43 (Leinfelden: DRW, 2002), 51–7. 5. Ulrich Im Hof, ‘‘Die Entstehung der reformierten Hohen Schule: Zu¨rich (1528)—Bern (1528)—Lausanne (1537)—Genf (1559),’’ in Beitr€ age zu Problemen deutscher Universit€ atsgr€ undungen der fr€ uhen Neuzeit, ed. P. Baumgart and N. Hammerstein, Wolfenbu¨tteler Forschungen 4 (Nendeln: 1978), 243–62; Urs Martin Zahnd, ‘‘Lateinschule—Universita¨t—Prophezey: Zu den Wandlungen im Schulwesen eidgeno¨ssischer Sta¨dte in der ersten Ha¨lfte des 16. Jahrhunderts,’’ in Bildungs- und schulgeschichtliche Studien zu Sp€ atmittelalter, Reformation und konfessionellem Zeitalter, ed. Harald Dickerhof, Wissensliteratur im Mittelalter 19 (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1994), 91–115. Strasbourg followed the same model; Anton Schindling, Humanistische Hochschule und freie Reichsstadt: Gymnasium und Akademie in Straßburg 1538–1621, Vero¨ffentlichungen der Instituts fu¨r europa¨ische Geschichte Mainz 77 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1977), 26–33. The northern Netherlands presents a significant exception to the more general linkage between academy and church. Although the university of Leiden was founded in part to prepare men for the ministry, through the early seventeenth century the Dutch Reformed church retained the practice of ordaining men for the ministry, even though they had little or no academic training, if they could pass a rigorous examination; Willem Frijhoff, ‘‘Inspiration, instruction, compe´tence? Questions autour de la se´lection des pasteurs re´forme´s aux Pays-Bas, XVIe–XVIIe sie`cles,’’ Paedagogia Historica 30 (1994): 13–38; Herman J. Selderhuis, ‘‘Predigerausbildung in der Niederlanden. Kurzbericht zum gegenwa¨rtigen Stand und zu weiteren Perspektiven der Forschung,’’ in Erziehung und Schulwesen zur Konfessionalisierung und S€ akularisierung: Forschungsperspektiven, europ€ aische Fallbeispiele und Hilfsmittel, ed. Heinz Schilling and Stefan Ehrenpreis (Mu¨nster: Waxmann, 2003), 175–85. 6. Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft, 160–73. Geneva was a special case, since it did not recruit native sons to the ministry until the seventeenth century. 7. William G. Naphy, ‘‘The Renovation of the Ministry in Calvin’s Geneva,’’ in The Reformation of the Parishes: The Ministry and the Reformation in Town and Country, ed. Andrew Pettegree (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 113–32; Karin Maag, ‘‘Financing Education: The Zurich Approach, 1550–1620,’’ in Reformations Old and New: Essays on the Socio-Economic Impact of Religious Change c. 1470–1630, ed. Beat Ku¨min, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1996), 203–16; Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft, 61–74; Bernard Vogler, ‘‘Recrutement et carrie`re des pasteurs strasbourgeois au XVI sie`cle,’’ Revue d’histoire et philosophie religieuses 48 (1968): 151–74; Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft, 49–51, 91–110. 8. The closest parallel to Basel within Lutheran Germany was Wu¨rttemberg, which also had both a stable stipendiary system and close control over its future

notes to pages 264– 266

399

pastors, with similar results regarding the high level of education of its pastors by the end of the sixteenth century, but Wu¨rttemberg’s very size tended to work against the pressures toward homogenization that were so pronounced in Basel; Martin Brecht, ‘‘Herkunft und Ausbildung der protestantischen Geistlichen des Herzogtums Wu¨rttemberg im 16. Jahrhundert,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur Kirchengeschichte 80 (1969): 163–75; Charlotte Methuen, ‘‘Securing the Reformation through Education: The Duke’s Scholarship System of Sixteenth-Century Wu¨rttemberg,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994): 841–51; Bruce Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners in W€ urttemberg during the Late Reformation, 1581–1621 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 24–43. 9. O’Day, The English Clergy, 75–104; O’Day, ‘‘Anatomy’’; Thomas Kaufmann, ‘‘The Clergy and the Theological Culture of the Age: The Education of Lutheran Pastors in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’’ in The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe, ed. C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 120–36. Gerald Strauss has pointed out that the territorial nobility opposed the policies of church and state governments more generally to protect not only their rights of appointment but their other jurisdictional rights as well, ‘‘The Reformation and Its Public in an Age of Orthodoxy,’’ in The German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 194–214. 10. Cf. Riegg’s discussion of career advancement and geographic mobility, Konfliktbereitschaft, 160–73. 11. Such requests were rarely granted. Hans Grell, the Farnsburg dean, requested replacement at the 1536 synod, BSt Kirchen Akten A 9, 168r; at the synod the following year, both Grell and his counterpart in the Mu¨nchenstein chapter, Jacob Immeli, again asked to be allowed to resign; BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 174v. Both pastors were moved to parishes in different chapters, and the need to appoint successors was brought up at the 1538 synod, BStA Kirchen Akten A 9, 187r. The Liestal dean, Romanus Weinmann, requested that he be allowed to step down at the 1590 synod because his eyesight was failing, KRP I, 155–66; his request was finally granted at the general chapter meeting of 1593, BStA Kirchen Archiv A 24, no. 4. 12. Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Fr€ uhneuzeit: Deren Anteil an der Entfaltung fr€ uhmoderner Staatlichkeit und Gesellschaft: Dargestellt am Beispiel des F€ urstentums Braunschweig-Wolfenb€ uttel, der Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel und der Stadt Braunschweig, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 62 (Gu¨tersloh: Gu¨tersloher Verlagshaus, 1996), 393–416. 13. See, for instance, Johann Georg Gross’s catechetical sermons on the fifth commandment, Thesaurus Concionum sacrarum omnigenarum (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1616), cols. 39–43, 144–8, 303–8, as well as his two oath-taking sermons from 1616, cols. 1537–9 and cols. 1542–4, and his sermon on the duties of the magistrate, cols. 1677–80. 14. Gross included the duty of his hearers to heed the word of God and its ministers in the catechetical sermons cited in note 13, as well as in one of his installation sermons, Thesaurus Concionum, cols. 1992–4; see also the installation sermon in Wollebius, Concionum Miscellanearum Fasciculus, variis occasionibus inserviens, diuque desideratus: Nunc primum in Usum S. Ministerii Candidatorum in lucem emissus, ed. Johann Jacob Wollebius (Basel: Ko¨nig, 1648), 11–18. 15. Wilhelm Zepper, Ars Habendi et Audiendi Conciones Sacras (Siegen: Corvinus, 1598), 43–53. Grynaeus was the notable exception to the tendency not to publish vernacular sermons during the 1580s and 1590s. While the younger Grasser’s sermons on Lamentations indicate that publication of vernacular sermons did continue, their number was significantly less than that of vernacular Lutheran sermons and sermon collections.

400

notes to pages 266– 271

16. BUB MsKiAr 22b, no. 101, 260; Gross, Thesaurus Concionum, cols. 2001–6; 1988–94; on funeral sermons, Andreas Wendland, ‘‘Gelehrte Kirchenlehrer und geplagte Knechte Gottes. Geistliches Amtsversta¨ndnis, Selbstwahrnehmung und Rhetorik im Basel des 17. Jahrhunderts,’’ BZ 103 (2003): 51–83. 17. Bernhard Klaus, ‘‘Soziale Herkunft und theologische Bildung lutherischer Pfarrer der reformatorischen Fru¨hzeit,’’ Zeitschrift f€ ur Kirchengeschichte 80 (1969): 22–49. 18. Not only did these include the stipends created for students at a territory’s own university, but both princes and imperial cities without their own institutions of higher education established stipends at universities such as Wittenberg to support the training of future clergy; Andreas Go¨ssner, Die Studenten an der Universit€ at Wittenberg: Studien zur Kulturgeschichte des studentischen Alltags und zum Stipendienwesen in der zweiten H€ alfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Arbeiten zur Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte 9 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003), 69–90. 19. Kaufmann, ‘‘Clergy and Theological Culture.’’ 20. Riegg, Konfliktbereitsschaft, 190–4. 21. James M. Kittelson, ‘‘Successes and Failures in the German Reformation: The Report from Strasbourg,’’ ARG 73 (1982): 153–74, and ‘‘Visitations and Popular Religious Culture: Further Reports from Strasbourg,’’ in Pietas et Societas: New Trends in Reformation Social History. Essays in Memory of Harold J. Grimm, ed. K. C. Sessions and P. N. Bebb, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 4 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1985), 89–102; Vogler, ‘‘Recrutement et carrie`re.’’ 22. Geoffrey Parker, ‘‘Success and Failure during the First Century of the Reformation,’’ Past and Present 136 (1992): 43–82. 23. Parker, ‘‘Success and Failure’’; Bernard Vogler has also pointed out that confessional polemic from the pulpit could backfire when the prince converted, for it encouraged skepticism and indifference among the laity, who were expected to conform to their prince’s new faith, ‘‘Die Ausbildung des Konfessionsbewußtseins in den pfa¨lzischen Territorien zwischen 1555 und 1619,’’ in Festgabe f€ ur Ernst Walter Zeeden zum 60. Geburtstag am 14. May 1976, ed. Horst Rabe et al., Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte 11 (Mu¨nster: Aschendorff, 1976), 281–8. 24. Riegg also contrasts the greater confessional stability, and therefore the stronger position of individual clergy, in imperial cities in comparison to the princely territories, Konfliktbereitschaft, 256–7. On the debates surrounding the term ‘‘second Reformation,’’ see the articles in Heinz Schilling, ed., Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland—das Problem der ‘‘Zweiten Reformation.’’ Wissenschaftliches Symposion des Vereins f€ ur Reformationsgeschichte 1985, Schriften des Vereins fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte 195 (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1986). 25. Parker, ‘‘Success and Failure.’’ 26. On such comparisons between Catholic and evangelical beliefs and practices in popular woodcuts, Robert W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 190–205. 27. Wolfgang Bru¨ckner, ‘‘Loci Communes als Denkform: Literarische Bildung und Volkstradition zwischen Humanismus und Historismus,’’ Daphnis 4 (1975): 1–12; Otto Ritschl, System und systematische Method in der Geschichte des wissenschaftlichen Sprachgebrauchs und der philosophischen Methodologie: Programm zur Feier des Ged€ achtnisses des Stifters der Universit€ at K€ onig Friedrich Wilhelms III (Bonn: 1906), 14–18. 28. Hamm has defined Fr€ ommigkeitstheologie as a movement through the fifteenth century and early sixteenth century concerned with inner appropriation and

notes to pages 271– 275

401

practical outworking of religious ideals and beliefs. Because of its tendency toward simplification and emphasizing what was viewed as essential or central, it contributed to ‘‘normative centering,’’ or concentration on certain core ideas and themes within theology and the church. Berndt Hamm, ‘‘Reformation als normative Zentrierung von Religion und Gesellschaft,’’ Jahrbuch f€ ur Biblische Theologie 7 (1992): 241–79, ‘‘Von der spa¨tmittelalterlichen reformatio zur Reformation: der Prozeß normativer Zentrierung von Religion und Gesellschaft in Deutschland,’’ ARG 84 (1993): 7–82; ‘‘Fro¨mmigkeit als Gegenstand theologiegeschichtlicher Forschung: Methodisch-his¨ berlegungen am Beispiel von Spa¨tmittelalter und Reformation,’’ Zeitschrift torische U f€ ur Theologie und Kirche 74 (1977): 464–97; ‘‘Was ist Fro¨mmigkeitstheologie?’’ in Praxis Pietatis: Beitr€ age zu Theologie und Fr€ ommigkeit in der Fr€ uhen Neuzeit. Festschrift f€ ur Wolfgang Sommer. ed. Hans-Jo¨rg Nieden and Marcel Nieden (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1999), 9–45. 29. Walter Sparn, ‘‘Zweite Reformation und Traditionalismus: Die Stabilisierung ¨ bergang zum 17. Jahrhundert,’’ Pirckheimer Jahrbuch (1991): der Protestantismus im U 117–31, and ‘‘Die Krise der Fro¨mmigkeit und ihr theologischer Reflex im nachreformatorischen Luthertum,’’ in Die Lutherische Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland, ed. Hans Christoph Rublack, Schriften des Vereins fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte 197 (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1992), 54–82. 30. Philip Benedict makes a similar point in comparing English Puritans to French Huguenots, ‘‘Two Calvinisms,’’ in The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots, 1600–85, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2001), 208–28. 31. Hans Guggisberg, ‘‘Das lutheranisierende Basel. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag,’’ in Die Lutherische Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland, ed. Hans Christoph Rublack, Schriften des Vereins fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte 197 (Gu¨tersloh: Mohn, 1992), 199–201. 32. Amy Nelson Burnett, ‘‘The Myth of the Swiss Lutherans: Martin Bucer and the Eucharistic Controversy in Bern,’’ Zwingliana 32 (2005): 45–70. 33. Winfried Schulze, ‘‘Konfessionalisierung als Paradigma zur Erforschung des konfessionellen Zeitalters,’’ in Drei Konfessionen in einer Region: Beitr€ age zur Geschichte der Konfessionalisierung im Herzogtum Berg vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Burkhard Dietz and Stefan Ehrenpreis, Schriftenreihe des Vereins fu¨r Rheinische Kirchengeschichte 136 (Bonn: Rheinland Verlag, 1999), 15–30; Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘‘The Concept of ‘Confessionalization’: A Historiographical Paradigm in Dispute,’’ Memoria y Civilizacio´n 4 (2001): 93–114. The concept of confessionalization from below is most strongly argued by Heinrich R. Schmidt, ‘‘Sozialdisziplinierung? Ein Pla¨doyer fu¨r das Ende des Etatismus in der Konfessionalisierungsforschung,’’ Historische Zeitschrift 265 (1997): 639–82, but see also Marc R. Forster, ‘‘With and without Confessionalization: Varieties of Early Modern German Catholicism,’’ Journal of Early Modern History 1 (1997): 315–43. 34. On the morals legislation and the magistrate’s concern for religious reform before the Reformation, Rudolf Wackernagel, ‘‘Raimundus Peraudi und die kirchlichen Zusta¨nde seiner Zeit in Basel,’’ BZ 2 (1903): 264–67; Bernhard Neidiger, ‘‘Stadtregiment und Klosterreform in Basel,’’ in Reformbem€ uhungen und Observanzbestrebungen im sp€ atmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. Kaspar Elm, Berliner Historische Studien 14: Ordensstudien 6 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 539–67; after the Reformation, Adrian Staehelin, ‘‘Basel unter der Herrschaft der christlichen Obrigkeit,’’ Basler Jahrbuch (1958): 19–56; on similar developments in Bern, Andre´ Holenstein, ‘‘Reformierte Konfessionalisierung und bernischer Terrritorialstaat,’’ in Territorialstaat und Calvinismus ed. Meinrad Schaab, Vero¨ffentlichungen der

402

notes to pages 275– 276

Kommission fu¨r geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden Wu¨rttemberg B/127 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993), 5–33. 35. The stance of Basel’s Senate is an interesting counterpart to the position of the magistrates of the imperial cities of Upper Swabia, where Peer Friess also sees a reluctance to use church discipline to strengthen their political position. As was the case in Basel, Friess concludes that Lutheran confessionalization in these cities was determined not by the views of influential individuals, whether pastors or politicians, but by the actual political circumstances of the cities; ‘‘Lutherische Konfessionalisierung in den Reichsta¨dten Oberschwabens,’’ in Konfessionalisierung und Region, ed. Peer Friess and Rolf Kiessling, Forum Suevicum, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte Ostschwabens und der benachbarten Regionen 3 (Constance: Universita¨tsverlag Konstanz, 1999), 71–97. 36. See the documents assembled in BUB MsKiAr 22b, nos. 41–50, 139–52 (letter of the Senate to the Mu¨nchenstein Landvogt, 17 March 1591, letter of Waldenburg’s Obervogt Hieronymus Wix to pastor Martin Pfirter passing on the Senate’s order, 27 March 1591; letter of the Kirchenrat to the rural deans asking for information about whether individuals had been excluded from the Lord’s Supper, 10 April 1591, and the letters of several pastors to their dean reporting on whether anyone had been excluded from the Lord’s Supper, mid-April, 1591); KRP I sessions on 9 April, 16 April, 19 April, 21 May. Easter was on 4 April 1591. 37. On the so-called Rappenkrieg, Niklaus Landolt, Untertanenrevolten und Widerstand auf der Basler Landschaft im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte und Landeskunde des Kantons Basel-Landschaft 56 (Liestal: Verlag des Kantons Basel-Landschaft, 1996), 286–478; the role played by the church, 463–5, and on Stru¨bin’s actions as mediator between the peasants and the representatives of the Senate in the negotiations that led to the final resolution of conflict in 1594, 359–67. Seven years later, in a letter regarding the newly-introduced Kirchendienerordnung, the rural pastors gathered in general chapter reminded the Senate of the ‘‘fear and need, scorn and insults, and greatest danger to body and goods, wife and children’’ that they had endured during the peasant uprising, BUB MsKiAr 22c, no. 10, 59–64. At the time of the rebellion, however, the Senate rebuked Gregorius Brandmu¨ller, pastor of Waldenburg, for his attempts to intercede on behalf of the peasants, BStA Protokolle, Kleiner Rat 2, 26 May and 2 June 1591, 216v and 218r. Brandmu¨ller may have been spared harsher handling because his father, Johannes, was one of the four senior pastors in the city and professor of Old Testament. 38. Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte, ‘‘Die Drei-Sta¨nde-Lehre im reformatorischen Umbruch,’’ in Die fr€ uhe Reformation in Deutschland als Umbruch: Wissenschaftliches Symposion des Vereins f u€r Reformationsgeschichte 1996, ed. Bernd Moeller, Schriften des Vereins fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte 199 (Gu¨tersloh: Gu¨tersloher Verlag-Haus, 1998), 435–61, and ‘‘Obrigkeitskritik und Widerstandsrecht: Die politica christiana als Legitima¨tsgrundlage,’’ in Aspekte der politischen Kommunikation im Europa des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. Luise Schorn-Schu¨tte, Historische Zeitschrift Beiheft 39 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004), 195–232. 39. This distinction thus supports Heinz Schilling’s periodization of confessionalization, with a preconfessional phase from the late 1540s to the early 1570s, a crisis occurring in the 1570s, and confessionalization per se becoming established from 1580 on, ‘‘Die Konfessionalisierung im Reich: Religio¨ser und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland zwischen 1555 und 1620,’’ Historische Zeitschrift 246 (1988): 1–45, as opposed to those historians who see confessionalization as beginning already in the 1520s; cf. Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘‘Konfession und Konfessionalisierung in

notes to pages 276– 278

403

Europa,’’ in Bekenntnis und Geschichte: Die Confessio Augustana im historischen Zusammenhang, ed. Wolfgang Reinhard, Schriften der philosophischen Fakulta¨ten der Universita¨t Augsburg 20 (Munich: Vo¨gel, 1981), 165–89; Schmidt, Konfessionalisierung im 16. Jahrhundert, Enzyklopa¨die deutscher Geschichte 12 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), 110–5. 40. On the changes to Basel’s political elite, Samuel Schu¨pbach-Guggenbu¨hl, ‘‘Ha¨upter und Herren: Der Kleine Rat zu Basel 1585 bis 1590: Verhalten einer politischen Elite,’’ BZ 95 (1995): 57–105, Thomas Maissen, ‘‘Zum politischen Selbstversta¨ndnis der Basler Eliten, 1501–1798,’’ BZ 100 (2000): 19–40. 41. Heinrich Richard Schmidt, ‘‘Gemeinde und Sittenzucht im protestantischen Europa der Fru¨hneuzeit,’’ in Theorien kommunaler Ordnung in Europa, ed. Peter Blickle, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 36 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996), 181–214; cf. Helge Schnabel-Schu¨le, ‘‘Vierzig Jahre Konfessionalisierungforschung: Eine Standortbestimmung,’’ in Friess and Kiessling, eds., Konfessionalisierung und Region, 23–40. 42. One is tempted to posit a third direction, perhaps of ‘‘confessionalization from the side’’? On a more serious note, a comparison of this study of Basel with the approach and the conclusions of the two monographs examining the long-term development of Strasbourg’s church is instructive. Lorna Jane Abray highlights the clergy’s distinct set of concerns and priorities, as distinguished from those of both magistrate and laity, but she tends to stress competition rather than cooperation and thus overlooks the areas of overlap between the three groups, The People’s Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy, and Commons in Strasbourg, 1500–1598 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), esp. 209–27. James M. Kittelson recognizes that the process of institutionalizing the reformation was more cooperative and evolutionary, but he seems more concerned with criticizing Abray’s work and focusing on the leadership of church, university, and city than with looking at the underlying developments within the practice of the ministry. Kittelson’s findings for Strasbourg are similar to those presented here for Basel, but unfortunately his polemical tone detracts from his arguments, Toward an Established Church: Strasbourg from 1500 to the Dawn of the Seventeenth Century, Vero¨ffentlichungen des Instituts fu¨r Europa¨ische Geschichte Mainz 182 (Mainz: von Zabern, 2000), esp. 239–59.

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protokolle Kleiner Rat 1 (1587–89) Kleiner Rat 2 (22 September 1589–28 June 1591) Kleiner Rat 13 (2 July 1611–29 December 1613)

¨ cher ratsbu A 6: Schwarzes Buch, 1523– B 4: Erkanntnisbu¨cher 1, 1525–44

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Index

Academic Senate, 82, 92, 99–102, 106–7 age, 43–5, 78 at death, 20 at first appointment, 20, 200 at matriculation, 121–3, 281 Agricola, Rudolf, 112–3 Alumneum/civic stipends, 79, 99–104, 106–7, 122–3, 144 Amerbach, Bonifacius, 60, 92–3, 102, 104 Anabaptists, 48–9, 51, 59, 63, 74, 132, 226, 237, 252, 256, 269 Andreae, Jacob, 135, 179 appointment/election, 197, 199–206, 212, 217, 264–5, 268 archdean, 209–210, 212, 215 Arisdorf, 207, 225, 230, 233–4, 241, 255 Aristotle, 112–21, 124, 131, 134, 137, 140, 143, 152, 154, 271, 292–3 arts faculty, 78, 107, 111, 117–26, 201 assistant pastor. See deacon Augustinian Hermits, 21, 28–9 Baden, Margraviate of, 28, 34, 41, 106, 134, 184, 199, 202–3, 205, 214 ban ordinance, 70, 72–3, 75–6, 250–2

Bannherren (ban brothers), 69–72, 75–6, 203, 249–52, 254–6, 262, 273 baptism, 6, 49–52, 54–5, 69, 96, 97, 181, 230, 237–42, 249, 259, 284 registers, 224, 240–1, 284 See also liturgy Basel bishop of, 20–23, 33–4, 199, 215, 258 diocese of, 21 prince-bishopric of, 20, 33 See also Blarer von Wartensee, Christoph; episcopal villages Basel Confession, 31, 47–50, 145, 197, 212, 215–6 Beck, Sebastian, 34, 143–5, 150 Bellarmine, Robert, 150, 168 Benken, 203 Bern, 30, 32, 34–6, 130,–1, 242, 263–4 Bertschi, Marcus, 26, 29, 60–1, 73, 75 Beza, Theodore, 114, 132 Blarer von Wartensee, Christoph, 33 Borrhaus, Martin, 82–4, 129–31, 133, 151, 178, 224 Brandmu¨ller, Jacob, 193 Brandmu¨ller, Johannes, 37, 102, 135, 139–40, 176–9, 183, 191, 270 Bretzwil/Reigoltswil, 203, 234, 243

444

index

Bucer, Martin, 31, 32, 49–50, 61, 73, 130–1, 133–4, 144, 162, 212, 224, 249, 274 Bullinger, Heinrich, 57, 60–1, 81–4, 114, 131, 160, 224, 239 burial, 238, 247–8 Buus, 225, 246, 255 Caesarius, Johann, 113, 118–9 Calvin, Jean, 5, 12, 31, 57, 82–3, 153, 162, 224, 239, 247, 249–51, 273–4 Capito, Wolfgang, 32, 51, 73, 79, 82, 130, 133, 144, 204 careers, pastoral, 12–13 length, 40, 42, 208, 287 turnover, 40–1, 45, 199, 206–7, 286 See also appointment/election; installation catechism, 15, 47–8, 92–7, 145–6, 181, 230–4, 259 Heidelberg, 97, 232 instruction/examination, 12, 55, 64, 69, 93–5, 125, 143–4, 228–31 by Oecolampadius/Myconius, 50, 52–5, 92, 95–7, 148, 216–7, 230–1 by Wollebius, 97, 233–4 by Wyssgerber, 53–4, 217 cathedral, 19, 21–2, 27, 56, 60, 131, 226, 253 pastor of (antistes), 26, 32, 35, 39, 70, 73, 80, 127–8, 135, 144, 150, 186–7, 198, 203, 207, 214–5, 218, 221, 271, 274 preacher (archdeacon) at, 23, 28–9, 144, 184, 215, 227 sermons at, 56, 93, 105, 179–86, 227, 232 Catholics, 9, 12, 26–7, 74, 241–2, 252, 256, 258, 269–72 criticism of, 48–9, 52, 58–9, 64, 86, 134, 142, 149–51, 167–8, 175–6, 190, 269–71, 277 priests, 6–8, 19, 22–3, 28, 47, 77–8, 198, 206, 239, 241 See also clergy Cellarius, Martin. See Borrhaus, Martin censure of clergy, 71, 73–5, 213, 217 Chrisman, Miriam, 9 church attendance, 56–7, 64, 70, 94, 105, 107, 165, 180, 225–6, 234–5, 240, 254, 256, 262, 276–7

church discipline, 12–13, 75–6, 213, 238, 249–54, 256, 258, 273, 276 Christology, 31–2, 49, 96–7, 116, 130, 132–3, 141, 143, 149, 151–2, 184, 197, 233, 272 Cicero, 113, 118–9 Clauser, Conrad, 162–3 clergy: Catholic, 6–7, 10, 20–3, 26–7, 84; Protestant, 10–1, 14, 42–3, 263–9 colleges, 92, 99–109, 123, 125, 132, 165, 180, 201 common deacon, 144, 204, 207–8, 210 conduct: of college residents, 104–7; of pastors, 71, 211–12, 253 confession of sin, 7, 51, 246–7, 238, 257 confessionalization, 14, 116, 272–8 Consensus Tigurinus, 31, 44 coregent. See preceptor/coregent Council of Basel, 21–2, 26 curriculum: gymnasium/Latin school, 91–5, 98; university, 111–2, 117–22, 125, 165 Daneau, Lambert, 114, 224 Davis, Natalie, 4 deacon/assistant pastor, 40, 207–8, 240. See also individual churches Decalogue. See Ten Commandments Deputaten, 22, 74, 99, 106, 197, 202, 204–5, 209–10, 212–13, 215–7, 219 descent into hell, Christ’s, 54, 95, 148, 168, 216–7, 247 dialectic, 111–22, 124–7, 129, 131–2, 158, 165–6, 200, 269–71 applied to preaching, 94, 160–164, 191, 193 applied to theology, 114–7, 137–42, 152–5, 160–1, 270–1, 292–3 evolution of, 111–7 textbooks, 113–5, 118–20, 140 Dickens, A. G., 3 Dietken, 225–6, 231 disputations, 84, 105–6, 108, 118, 120–1, 125, 132, 135, 139, 143–5, 147–52, 165, 282, 289 district governors (Oberv€ ogte), 70–1, 74, 204, 252, 275 Dominicans, 21, 26, 92, 104 drunkenness, 204, 226, 252–3 Duffy, Eamon, 4

index education, 11–14, 98, 267–70 amount, 6, 23, 26, 28–9, 38–9, 41–2, 77–8, 98, 198–200, 263–4, 267–8, 280, 286 See also Alumneum/civic stipends; curriculum; scholarships; stipendiary system episcopal villages, 20, 33, 85, 184, 199, 200, 202–3, 210, 258 Erasmus, 3, 6, 22, 101–2, 113, 158, 166, 248 excommunication, 72, 76, 146, 250–1 exegesis, 8, 84, 94, 98, 111, 114, 130, 137–8, 140–2, 146, 158, 161–2, 167–70 families of pastors, 37–8, 102, 204, 206, 210–1, 253 Farnsburg chapter, 208, 225 Farnsburg preacher, 204, 208, 210 First Helvetic Confession, 49–50 Formula of Concord, 10, 33, 133, 184, 199, 274 Franciscans, 21, 26, 28–9, 60, 62, 80, 92 Franciscan church. See Spital/Franciscan church Frenkendorf. See Munzach/Frenkendorf Gast, Johannes, 29, 60–1, 82, 84–5 Gelterkinden, 234, 255 generations, 8–10, 12–14, 19–20, 29, 39, 43–6, 85–6, 98, 117, 125, 128, 134, 142, 144, 153, 165, 197–200, 258–9, 267–71, 278 Geneva, 34, 38, 44, 52, 57, 114, 116, 139, 201, 245, 247, 252, 263, 273 godparents, 51, 181, 237, 239, 241–2, 249 grammar, 118, 129–30 Grasser, Johann Jacob, 191, 193 Grasser, Jonas, 178–9 Greek, 94–5, 98, 105, 118–9, 125, 129–31, 137–8, 165 professor of, 80 Gross, Johann Georg, 34–5, 143–7, 153, 169, 186, 243 disputations under, 147–8, 151 sermons of, 187–93, 232–3, 235, 266 Gross, Johannes, 193 Grynaeus, Johann Jacob, 33–6, 95–6, 128, 134–40, 142–4, 153, 184–8, 197, 200, 203–4, 214–9, 226–7, 229–32, 239,

445

241, 243–4, 246, 264–6, 271, 273–4, 291–2 disputations under, 147–51 sermons of, 179–83, 192–3, 257 theology lectures of, 135, 138–9 Grynaeus, Simon, 73, 80–3, 114, 247 Gugger, Johann Jacob, 179, 184–6, 191, 215, 271 guilds, 23, 35, 37, 72, 203, 250 Gwalther, Rudolf, 133, 224 gymnasium, 93–8, 120, 122, 125, 144, 153, 187, 201 Hamm, Bernd, 222, 271 H€ aupter, 68–9, 74–5, 250 Hebrew, 118, 129–31, 138–9, 142, 165, 291 professor of, 80–1, 134, 176 Heidelberg, 38, 80, 116, 135, 138–9, 152, 180, 201, 264, Hemmingsen, Nils, 161–2 Holtz, Sabine, 192 homiletics, 145, 157–70, 235, 270, 273 Hospinian, Johannes I, 102, 120, 210 humanism, 9–10, 80, 111–3, 124, 142, 158–9, 270 Hu¨ningen, 28, 173, 202, 206 Hyperius, Andreas, 114, 161–2, 166, 190 identity, 8–9, 12, 20, 46, 92, 108, 152, 214, 235, 257–8, 265, 268, 273–4, 276 installation, 205–6, 216 Karlstadt, Andreas von, 60, 64, 73, 75, 81–4, 129 Keckermann, Bartholomaeus, 164, 189 Kilchberg, 241 Kirchendienerordnung (1597), 205–6, 216 Kirchenrat (1532–39), 69–71, 74 Kirchenrat (pastors’ weekly meetings), 184, 197, 202–3, 205, 214–5, 217–8, 227–8, 232, 240–1, 243, 246, 253, 263–4, 267, 275 Koch, Ulrich, 33, 37, 131, 135, 152 Krag, Andreas, 166 La¨ufelfingen, 224, 226 Langenbruck, 233–4 Latin schools, 5, 11, 79, 92–4, 98, 119, 122, 125, 180, 229, 263 Lausen, 200, 204, 206–7, 223, 226

446

index

Le Buc (Bucanus), Guillaume, 164, 189 lectionary, 58, 153–4, 162, 173, 175, 181, 187, 224 Liestal, 28, 206, 208, 223, 225, 227 Liestal chapter, 208, 253, 256 liturgy, 15, 50–2, 56, 231–2, 256, 277 agenda, 50–52, 55, 224, 245 baptismal, 50–51, 240–1 Eucharistic, 51 Lord’s Supper, 30–4, 51–2, 54, 69, 96–7, 108, 116, 131–2, 136, 138, 148–9, 184, 197, 212, 216–7, 223, 228, 233, 237–8, 242–5, 251–3, 256, 259, 272, 274 administration of, 242–4 doctrine of, 49–50, 55, 130, 133–4, 235 frequency of, 237, 244 in sermons, 61–3, 181–3, 189–90 See also liturgy; oblates; precommunion examination; sickbed visitation Lu¨thardt, Johannes, 29, 62–4 Lu¨tzelmann, Conrad, 203, 255 Luther, Martin, 3, 5, 26, 49, 61–2, 136, 164, 224 Mannheim, Karl, 8–9 Matthiae (Madsen), Jacob, 166 Melanchthon, Philipp, 26, 57, 82, 116, 119, 133, 139, 161–2, 164, 193 textbooks by, 113–4, 132, 158–9, 165–6, 270 metaphysics, 116–7, 120–1 Meyer, Jacob, 144, 204 Meyer, Wolfgang, 34, 143–5, 147, 151, 166, 204, 246–7, 266 midwives, 239–40 Mu¨nchenstein, 28, 207, 224, 230, 244 Mu¨nster, Sebastian, 80–81, 118 Munzach/Frenkendorf, 223 Musculus, Wolfgang, 224 Muttenz, 203 Myconius, Oswald, 31–2, 48, 64, 73, 75, 77, 81–5, 130, 198, 209, 243 preaching of, 60–2 revisions to catechism, 52, 54–5, 95, 216, 231 New Testament, 80–3, 93–5, 131–2, 149, 163, 224 professor of, 81–2, 131, 135, 144 Neuser, Wilhelm, 10

oblates, 242–3, 248–249 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 26–8, 30, 47, 48, 68, 74, 75, 80–1, 84, 92, 144, 153, 204, 291–2 catechism of, 52–3, 54, 95–6, 146, 204, 216, 231, 247, 248, 249–50, 251, 270, 274 sermons of, 57–60 theology lectures of, 58–9, 83 Old Testament, 80, 83–4, 129, 135–7, 138, 140–2, 148, 163, 178, 184, 224, 247 professor of, 34, 81–3, 131, 135, 139–40, 144, 176, 229 Oltingen, 28, 224, 241–2 Osiander, Lucas, 162 Pantaleon, Heinrich, 84 Parcus, Johann, 37, 203 parishes, 22–3, 26–27, 222–225, 251, 258, 265 See also individual parishes Parker, Geoffrey, 269 pastoral care, 5–8, 12–14, 221–2, 238, 245, 254–5, 257–8 Pedagogium, 93, 105, 118–23, 201 pericopes. See lectionary Perkins, William, 163–4, 166 Phrygio, Paul, 27–8, 68, 80–81 plague, 34, 40, 42, 45–6, 56, 81, 100, 103, 123, 131, 143, 149, 154, 165, 173, 187, 199, 203, 226–7, 244–6, 278 Platter, Felix, 86 Platter, Thomas, 60, 93, 119, 122 Polanus von Polansdorf, Amandus, 34, 128, 135, 139–40, 145–6, 152–4, 187, 192, 200, 216, 271, 291, 293 disputations under, 147–51 homiletics text by, 167–9 lectures of, 141–3, 168–9 polemic, 48–9, 132, 149–51 in sermons, 48, 58–60, 62–3, 86, 171–2, 175–6, 182, 190, 269–271 population, 22, 223 Pratteln, 29, 230 prayer, 51, 53, 56, 93–4, 167, 174, 180–3, 192, 234, 245, 256 preacherships, endowed, 8, 23, 26, 60 preaching, 12–14, 47–8, 55–64, 76, 171–94, 211, 222–8, 269–73

index medieval, 7–8, 12 schedule, 56, 179, 181, 187, 223, 226–7 preceptor/coregent, 79, 105, 107 precommunion examination, 55, 97, 228–9, 233–4, 237 predestination, 96–7, 130, 132, 149, 182–3, 257, 272 prefect, 105, 107–8, 201 printing, 26, 34, 131, 162, 166 professionalization, 14, 262–9, 272, 274 Prophezei, 80, 82, 131 Ramism, 112, 115–7, 121, 128, 148, 271 in preaching, 163–4, 166–7, 169–70, 186, 188–9, 191–4, 200, 235, 256–7, 272–3 in theology, 116–7, 140–2, 145–8, 152–3, 293 Ramus, Peter, 112, 115–6, 132, 140 Rappenkrieg, 275 recruitment, 67, 77–9, 122, 262–4, 267 Reformation Ordinance (1529), 27, 47–50, 55–6, 60, 68–9, 71–22, 74–5, 80, 84, 211, 214, 221, 223, 228–9, 245, 249 religious houses, 21–2, 26–7, 60 rhetoric, 111, 113–4, 117–9, 124–5, 129, 131, 138–9, 142, 269–70 applied to preaching, 94, 98, 157–67, 172, 174–5, 181–2, 185, 188 Riegg, Ernst, 263, 267 ritual, 4–5, 261–2, 277 Rosenblatt, Wibrandis, 144, 204 Rotenfluh, 203, 224, 234, 243 Rublack, Hans-Christoph, 192 Ru¨mlingen, 202 rural chapter, 208, 211, 264 deans, 205, 208–9, 212–4, 216, 227, 265 meetings, 211–6, 244, 248, 253, 256, 276 ordinances (1562 and 1582), 211–4 Ryter, Jacob Christoph, 216–7 St. Alban, 21–3, 27, 56 pastor of, 26, 102, 204, 208, 227 St. Clara, 21, 56, 227 St. Elizabeth, 56, 208, 221 pastor of, 144, 187, 227, 232, 242 St. Jacob, 28, 206–7

447

St. Johann, 22–3, 27 St. Leonhard, 21–3, 26, 56, 240, 266 deacon of, 102, 187, 227, 253 pastor of, 29, 73, 193, 212, 217, 227, 232 St. Margaret, 144, 187, 207 St. Martin, 22–3, 27, 56 pastor of, 26, 58, 208, 227 St. Peter, 21–3, 39–40, 56, 240, 266 deacon of, 227, 245 pastor of, 26–7, 32, 37, 61, 73, 80–1, 131, 143–4, 187, 227, 232 St. Theodore, 22–3, 56, 72, 102, 240 deacon of, 102, 173, 176, 191, 193, 207, 227 pastor of, 23, 26, 29, 37, 73, 81, 144, 176, 227, 253 St. Ulrich, 22, 27, 29. See also St. Elizabeth sacraments, 7–8, 12, 14, 49–50, 55, 74, 94, 97, 237–8, 248–9, 262, 277 Schilling, Heinz, 10 scholarships, 100–3, 144, 152 scholasticism, 80, 112 Schorn-Schu¨tte, Luise, 265 Scribner, R. W., 4 Second Helvetic Confession, 33, 45, 151 Senate, city of Basel, 20, 26–8, 32, 55, 60–2, 68–77, 81–2, 84, 92, 99–100, 131, 133, 171, 205, 207, 209–11, 215–8, 225, 227, 228, 234–5, 237, 251, 253, 265–7, 274–6 edicts of, 33, 56, 47, 70, 72–3, 76, 79, 97, 99, 199, 205, 207, 225, 250 role in appointing pastors, 27, 201–4, 264 sermons, 12, 56–64, 83–5, 94, 98, 143–6, 157–8, 160–93, 205, 218, 223–8, 232–5, 248, 257, 265–6, 269–73, 277 catechetical, 173–4, 187, 189, 224, 232–3 content, 58–64, 171–2, 175–183, 185–6, 188–93 funeral, 176–78, 187, 191–2, 248, 266, 272 form, 57, 160, 162, 167–9, 172, 174, 176–82, 185–92, 270–1 Ratspredigt, 56, 181, 227 Sunday vespers, 56, 226–7 Thursday, 227–8, 265 wedding, 62–3, 173, 176, 178, 187 weekday, 56, 173, 185, 187–8, 223–6

448

index

sickbed visitation, 7, 14, 50–2, 74, 234, 238, 244–9, 257, 259 Sisgau chapter, 209, 211 Sissach, 208, 225–6, 241 Spangenberg, Johann, 224 Sparn, Walter, 272 Spital/Franciscan church, 26, 56, 61–2, 81, 165, 184, 187, 203, 227 Spitz, Lewis, 9 stipendiates, 79, 99–104, 106–9, 122–3, 125, 131, 165, 203, 280–81 stipendiary system, 79, 92, 102, 103–4, 108, 262–3, 267. See also Alumneum Strasbourg, 6, 31–3, 35, 38, 73, 82, 130, 144, 176, 217, 263–4, 268 Strauss, Gerald, 4, 261 study guides, 160–2 studying, 27–8, 68, 171, 224 Sturm, Johann, 91, 115, 119 Sulzer, Simon, 32–4, 36–7, 39, 44, 128, 130–35, 139, 149–50, 152, 184, 200, 202, 204–5, 209, 212, 215, 239, 250–1, 273–4 superstition, 252, 255 synods, 21, 27–28, 62–3, 68–76, 133, 135, 209–17, 230, 232, 250–1, 254, 257–8, 275–6 grievances submitted at, 69–72, 76, 226, 228, 237–8 ordinance, 73–4, 77, 171 Ten Commandments, 51, 53–5, 64, 93, 95–7, 184, 193, 216–7, 230–3 Tenniken, 204, 225 theology faculty, 11, 34, 80–5, 124, 127–54 matriculation in, 73, 84, 124, 201 Todd, Margo, 248 Tu¨bingen, 34, 38, 80–2, 134, 139, 176, 179, 264

University of Basel, 5, 11–12, 22, 26, 30, 34–5, 78–85, 111, 117–25, 262–3, 267 degrees granted at, 79, 123 matriculation at, 35, 78, 121–3, 281 statutes of, 73–4, 77, 82, 84 students at, 78–9, 84, 117 time to degree, 123–5, 281 See also arts faculty; colleges; curriculum; Pedagogium; theology faculty Valla, Lorenzo, 112–3 Vermigli, Peter Martyr, 81–2 visitations, 70, 72–3, 76, 182, 209, 212, 215–7, 222–6, 231–2, 243, 245, 251–2, 256, 276 records, 4, 13, 231, 239, 254–5, 258, 268–9 Vogler, Bernard, 256 Waldenburg, 62–3, 230, 233 Waldenburg chapter, 208, 223 Weiss, Richard, 255 Weller, Hieronymus, 161 Wintersingen, 204, 224, 226, 231 Wissenburg, Wolfgang, 28–9, 72–3, 81, 85, 243 Wittenberg Concord, 31–2, 50, 130, 133, 151, 212 Wollebius, Johannes, 14, 34–5, 97, 128, 144–7, 151–3, 186–93 sermons of, 187–93, 221, 235, 253 Wurstisen, Christian, 121, 135, 173–7, 179, 181, 183, 193, 202, 204–5, 207 Wyssgerber, Christoph, 53, 217 Zepper, Wilhelm, 163, 266 Zurich, 30–2, 34–5, 44, 52, 57–8, 60–1, 64, 68, 71, 81, 84, 106, 114, 131, 133, 212, 242, 245, 247, 263 Zwinger, Theodor I, 86, 121 Zwingli, Ulrich, 31, 45, 57, 106