The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) [1 ed.] 9780199795086, 0199795088

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Usage
Introduction
1. Consolation in Rite and Word in the Later Middle Ages
2. The Consolation Tradition in the Latin Church
3. Suffering and Consolation in Late Medieval Mysticism
4. Suffering and Salvation in the Early Luther
5. Suffering and the Theology of the Cross
6. Early Evangelical Consolation Literature
7. Pastoral Care of the Sick and Suffering in the Evangelical Church Ordinances
8. Later Evangelical Consolation Literature I
9. Later Evangelical Consolation Literature II
10. Lay Suffering and Solace
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Appendix: Select Early Modern Protestant Works of Consolation and Devotion from the German Lands Arranged Alphabetically by Author with Number of Extant Editions
Notes
Bibliography
Person Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z
Scripture Index
Subject Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z

Citation preview

The Reformation of Suffering

OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY Series Editor David C. Steinmetz, Duke University Editorial Board Irena Backus, Université de Genève Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia THE UNACCOMMODATED CALVIN Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition Richard A. Muller THE CONFESSIONALIZATION OF HUMANISM IN REFORMATION GERMANY Erika Rummell

GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS ON THE TRINITY AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD In Your Light We Shall See Light Christopher A. Beeley

THE PLEASURE OF DISCERNMENT Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian Carol Thysell

THE JUDAIZING CALVIN Sixteenth-Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms G. Sujin Pak

REFORMATION READINGS OF THE APOCALYPSE Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg Irena Backus

THE DEATH OF SCRIPTURE AND THE RISE OF BIBLICAL STUDIES Michael C. Legaspi

WRITING THE WRONGS Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation John L. Thompson

THE FILIOQUE History of a Doctrinal Controversy A. Edward Siecienski

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 REFORMING MARY Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century Beth Kreitzer TEACHING THE REFORMATION Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629 Amy Nelson Burnett THE PASSIONS OF CHRIST IN HIGHMEDIEVAL THOUGHT An Essay on Christological Development Kevin Madigan GOD’S IRISHMEN Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland Crawford Gribben REFORMING SAINTS Saints’ Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–1530 David J. Collins

ARE YOU ALONE WISE? Debates about Certainty in the Early Modern Church Susan E. Schreiner EMPIRE OF SOULS Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth Stefania Tutino MARTIN BUCER’S DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism Brian Lugioyo CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics J. Warren Smith KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY A Study in the Circulation of Ideas Amy Nelson Burnett READING AUGUSTINE IN THE REFORMATION The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620 Arnoud S. Q. Visser SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660–1714 Variety, Persistence, and Transformation Dewey D. Wallace, Jr. MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT IMAGINATION The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany Philip M. Soergel THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany Ronald K. Rittgers

The Reformation of Suffering Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany

z

RONALD K. RIT TGERS

1

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. 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 © 2012 by Oxford University Press USA Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries 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 Rittgers, Ronald K., 1965– The reformation of suffering : pastoral theology and lay piety in late medieval and early modern Germany / Ronald K. Rittgers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 978-0-19-979508-6 1. Reformation—Germany. 2. Suffering—Religious aspects—Lutheran Church—History of doctrines—16th century. 3. Pastoral theology—Germany—History—16th century. 4. Consolation—History—16th century. I. Title. BR307.R57 2012 231c.809031—dc23 2011037943

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

In memory of my stepfather

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

A Note on Usage

xiii

Introduction 1. Consolation in Rite and Word in the Later Middle Ages 2. The Consolation Tradition in the Latin Church 3. Suffering and Consolation in Late Medieval Mysticism 4. Suffering and Salvation in the Early Luther 5. Suffering and the Theology of the Cross 6. Early Evangelical Consolation Literature 7. Pastoral Care of the Sick and Suffering in the Evangelical Church Ordinances 8. Later Evangelical Consolation Literature I 9. Later Evangelical Consolation Literature II 10. Lay Suffering and Solace Conclusion

3 12 37 63 84 111 125 163 185 218 230 257

Abbreviations

265

Appendix: Select Early Modern Protestant Works of Consolation and Devotion from the German Lands Arranged Alphabetically by Author with Number of Extant Editions

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Notes

275

Bibliography

393

Person Index

443

Scripture Index

457

Subject Index

461

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Acknowledgments

this project has required several years to reach its conclusion, and these years have brought with them a number of important lessons regarding the research and writing process. Chief among these lessons has been the recognition that while scholarship requires many hours of solitude and private study, it is also a deeply communal process that requires much conversation, debate, and reliance on the knowledge and wisdom of one’s colleagues, both those in one’s own backyard and those who live and work farther afield. The anchoritic elements of scholarship must be balanced, supported, and even disciplined by coenobitic practices and engagements. I have done my best to learn this lesson as I have worked on this project, especially by being very deliberate about entering into conversations with a number of scholars at various stages in its development. These conversations have been absolutely essential to the final form of this book, and I am deeply grateful to those who have taken the time to enlighten, encourage, correct, and challenge me along the way. A number of scholars read and provided helpful comments on portions of the manuscript. They include Jill Bepler, Cornelia Niekus Moore, Anne Thayer, Joseph Goering, Gil Meilaender, and Matthew Wranovix. I have also benefited greatly from e-conversations with Carolyn Walker Bynum, Thomas Tentler, Marcia Colish, and others whom I cite in the notes. The daily Kaffeestunde at the Herzog August Bibliothek was likewise a source of both refreshment and wonderfully stimulating exchange. I owe a special debt of gratitude to four scholars who agreed to read and comment on the book manuscript in its entirety. The critical feedback provided by Amy Nelson Burnett, Scott Dixon, Berndt Hamm, and Robert Kolb has strengthened this project immeasurably and also saved me from many errors and missteps; the ones that undoubtedly remain are wholly my own.

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Acknowledgments

These scholarly conversations (and friendships) have been supported and greatly encouraged by the generosity of a number of institutions and organizations. I have received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the A. T. S. Lilly Theological Scholars Grant Program, the Herzog August Bibliothek, the Whitney Humanities Center of Yale University (A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Grant), and the Creative Work and Research Committee of Valparaiso University (Kapfer Research Award). I am grateful for this support. I am also grateful to the Kade Foundation for establishing the Erich Markel Chair in German Reformation Studies at Valparaiso University. I would not have been able to complete this project without the research support that comes with the Markel Chair. The staffs of several libraries and archives have played a similarly essential role in promoting and supporting my research in both its solitary and communal dimensions. I am grateful to staff members at Harvard’s Houghton Library, Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Divinity School’s Library, Nuremberg’s city archive (Stadtarchiv), the Historical Archive at the German National Museum (Nuremberg), and Valparaiso University’s Christopher Center Library, especially the Interlibrary Loan Department. A special word of thanks goes to the wonderful people at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel, Germany. I had the privilege of working at this world-class library for almost a full year, and I must say that it was the most enjoyable research experience of my scholarly career. To have had extended access to such an outstanding collection of primary sources and secondary literature was by itself a great gift, but to have been assisted in my research by such a knowledgeable, friendly, and generous staff amounted to an embarrassment of scholarly riches. I am very grateful to Jill Bepler and others who made the time my family and I spent in Wolfenbuettel so rewarding. On this side of the Atlantic, I am grateful to Damian Zurro, my research assistant at Yale Divinity School. This project has also been supported by several communities that fall outside the bounds of the academy. The Knoell family in Nuremberg invited my family into their home during the summer of 2004; in fact, they gave us their home while they pitched their tent elsewhere. Many, many thanks. The Martin Luther Gemeinde in Wolfenbuettel provided much support, inspiration, and practical help during the year my family lived in Germany. Thanks to all of the faithful souls there, especially the Isensees. To my dear wife, Jana, and our three sons, Alec, Blake, and Owen—my

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primary community—I also wish to express heartfelt thanks. You have all been involved in this project in ways both known and unknown to you. You have watched me labor away at this book over the years and have provided unceasing support and encouragement throughout the process, along with a good measure of healthy distraction from research and writing—daily soccer with the boys behind the Anna-Vorwerk-Haus was a cherished part of my daily ritual in Wolfenbuettel. You have also each made sacrifices on my behalf so that I could research and complete this project, and I am deeply grateful to you for this expression of love, especially to my beloved “AMICO” (see chapter 10). I have dedicated this book to the memory of my stepfather, Stephen B. Barlow. Along with my mother, it was his encouragement and support that enabled me to take up the scholarly life in the first place. I remain deeply grateful to him for his boundless generosity to me. My stepfather passed away in the early stages of my research for this book, my father just as I was finishing it, both after prolonged illnesses. This book on suffering has itself been surrounded by suffering from its beginning to its end. Ronald K. Rittgers Pentecost 2011 Valparaiso, Indiana

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A Note on Usage

in this book, I use the word “Church” with an upper-case C to refer to the ancient communion of Christians that existed before schisms occurred between and among Eastern and Western Christians or, less frequently, to the aggregate of all contemporary Christian churches. I also use “Church” in proper place names, such as the “St. Sebald Church,” and in names of Christian denominations, such as the “Roman Catholic Church” or the “Lutheran Church.” I do not use the phrase “the Medieval Church,” as it implies that the Latin church was the only (or only legitimate) church in the Middle Ages, which would exclude Eastern Orthodox churches, among others. My typical designation for “Medieval Church” is “Latin church.” I reserve the term “Reformation” for the collective effort of Protestants and Catholics to reform church and society in the early modern period; I do not use “Reformation” as shorthand for the Protestant Reformation; rather, I specify which version of reformation I am referring to by adding the appropriate adjective: “Protestant,” “Lutheran,” “Zwinglian,” “Radical,” “Catholic,” and so on. “Evangelical” refers to Christians in the sixteenth century who wished to promote what they saw as a more biblical version of Christianity in opposition to Rome. While there were sixteenth-century Catholics who referred to themselves as evangelical Christians, the term was appropriated especially by those who were at odds with Rome and who eventually separated—or were separated—from the Roman communion. “Protestant” is a synoym for “evangelical” in this book, although I do not employ it until the narrative reaches 1529, when the term was invented. “Germany” refers not to the post-Napoleonic country but to what contemporaries called “the German lands,” that is, the German-speaking areas of early modern Europe, including Bohemia and, in some cases, portions of the Baltics.

xiv

A Note on Usage

While I endeavor to use gender-inclusive language to refer to human beings throughout, I do not do so at the expense of fidelity to original sources, which frequently are not gender-inclusive. I use traditional language for God throughout. Translations from foreign-language sources are my own unless otherwise noted.

The Reformation of Suffering

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Introduction suffering is as old as humanity, at least humanity “east of Eden.” The opening chapters of Genesis, which speak of a pristine creation free of suffering and death, do so in large part because they wish to emphasize that life as human beings know it is not what it either could or should be, and this is not good—suffering is not good, although it may serve to promote the good. Thus, Genesis moves very quickly to the “fall” of humanity and insists that while humanity longs for Eden, paradise has been lost. The sacred texts and stories of the vast majority of human cultures similarly embrace the fact of suffering along with the need to make some sense of it. Human beings are deeply averse to meaninglessness, and therefore, from time immemorial, we have engaged in efforts to secure a measure of significance or value for our lives in the face of the meaning-destroying forces of suffering and death. Such efforts have played a central role in the development of human culture and society down through the centuries. Each society has included certain people who have taken on the weighty task of finding order in the midst of the chaos unleashed by suffering and have then sought to commend (or command) this nomos to others.1 As the German philosopher Max Scheler once observed, “A doctrine on the meaning of pain and suffering was, in all lands, at all times, in the whole world, at the core of the teachings and directives which the great religious and philosophical thinkers gave to men. On this meaning was built an instruction and an invitation to encounter suffering correctly, to suffer properly.”2 In the premodern West,3 the primary creators and purveyors of doctrines of suffering were the Christian clergy. It is they who sought to render suffering meaningful to themselves and their contemporaries. It is they who endeavored to teach others how to suffer properly, and it is they who sought to reprove their contemporaries when they failed to do so. But the clergy did not always teach the same thing about suffering, nor did they recommend the same ways of coping with it. Their doctrines of suffering changed over time, and these changes had profound implications for both church and society, affecting nearly every aspect of human life. This book examines what was arguably the most important change in the

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Christian clergy’s doctrine of suffering in the premodern West, the change that took place in the Protestant Reformation. Recent scholarship on the early modern clergy has not examined this change, certainly not in a direct and systematic fashion. Over the past decade or so, scholars have developed a renewed interest in the early modern clergy, one of the “hot topics” in Early Modern/Reformation Studies today. Whereas earlier works on priests and pastors in the Age of Reform focused on the major reformers and their theology,4 the more recent literature examines clergymen from all walks of life and includes treatments of their preaching,5 education, social origins,6 and relationships with their flocks.7 The new literature on the early modern clergy has greatly enriched our understanding of who the early modern clergy were, how they were trained, and how they functioned in early modern society. However, curiously absent from this new literature is an examination of one of the early modern clergy’s most important tasks: to provide consolation to Christians who suffered in body and soul. There has been no treatment of the clergy’s doctrine(s) of suffering and the profound changes such teaching underwent in the Protestant Reformation.8 And yet suffering is everywhere in the extant pastoral and devotional literature of the period. This is no doubt owing to the fact that suffering was such a prominent feature of early modern existence. Something like one out of every four or five infants died in their first year of life, and only half reached the age of ten.9 Those who survived childhood could be stricken with any number of diseases and were also susceptible to the three great threats of war, famine, and plague, which recurred on a regular basis; one German city experienced an outbreak of plague every eleven years on average, which was characteristic for most urban centers in the German lands.10 Contemporary medicine tried in vain to provide cures for such assaults on the human body. Still, as Mary Lindemann has warned, we should not characterize the early modern period as a time when human beings were constantly ill; it is more accurate to say that people were constantly in danger of falling ill and that they felt this vulnerability acutely.11 The anxiety that this feeling of vulnerability created contributed to the inward suffering of the age, which also included grief and depression, along with doubt and despair, each of which is abundantly attested to in the extant sources. No wonder the pastoral and devotional literature of this period has so much to say about suffering and consolation. But the prevalence of these themes must also be attributed to the Protestant “reformation of suffering.” In the sixteenth century, Protestant

Introduction

5

theologians and pastors engaged in an effort of unprecedented scope and urgency to change the way their contemporaries understood and coped with suffering. They did so because they believed that the traditional “popish” approach to suffering was not sufficiently Christian and that it thus led souls astray. This reformation of suffering was a major feature of the larger reformation of church and society that Protestant clergymen sought to effect in the early modern period. In many ways, suffering was the battlefield on which the early modern Christian confessions—or at least their leaders—fought for the souls of the European population, each seeking to persuade (and require) the masses to suffer as it thought best. Suffering was viewed as the most important litmus test of confessional loyalty, for it was in suffering, as nowhere else, that people’s deepest religious convictions were revealed. It is most unfortunate, therefore, that scholars have not paid greater attention to the Protestant reformation of suffering. This book seeks to correct this scholarly oversight. It seeks to put suffering on the map of Early Modern/Reformation Studies in a new way. We have important treatments of suffering in pre-Reformation theology, spirituality, and art.12 There is also a steady stream of works on Luther’s famous theology of the cross and the place of suffering in it.13 Death and dying have received a great deal of attention,14 as have the themes of suffering and consolation in the theology, hymns, and literature of seventeenth-century Germany.15 Finally, scholars have done a lot of work on cataclysmic suffering, such as plague and war, and on medicine and disease in general.16 This book seeks to do something different. First, while it is interested in suffering of any kind, this book focuses especially on what one might call daily suffering, that is, the suffering of body and soul that afflicted the living on a regular basis. This is not a book about death, although the fact of human mortality figures prominently in its pages. I deal with plague and war, but this is also not a book about catastrophic suffering. Grief, illness, depression, despair, and the dangers of childbirth receive much more attention. I examine suffering of the body along with suffering of the soul because clerical consolers posited such a close connection between the two; suffering of various kinds was nearly always spiritualized and was therefore seen as being susceptible to the same spiritual remedies. Second, this book is a contribution to the history of pastoral care, not to the history of medical care; my sources are pastoral and devotional works, not books and pamphlets on medicine. Of course, there was a great deal of overlap between pastoral and medical care in the later Middle

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Ages and the early modern period, although the degree of overlap decreased as the early modern era wore on.17 The sources I examine recognize a legitimate role for both the pastor and the physician in ministering to the sick and the suffering, but they also increasingly acknowledge a certain separation of spheres of competence that both are expected to observe. I focus on the pastoral sphere because this accords best with my training and interests; I lack both the expertise and the length of days to master the literature on both spheres. Third, while this book pays close attention to Luther (chapters 4 and 5), the real focus is on the “Wittenberg circle” (chapters 6 through 9), a term that refers to the group of pastor-theologians who adhered to the theology of Luther and Melanchthon, even though not all of them actually studied with the two reformers at the Leucorea.18 Historians have largely ignored how members of this circle thought about suffering, how their views on suffering were communicated to the common clergy and laity, and how the same received and modified these views. With this focus on the Wittenberg circle, I am seeking to extend Berndt Hamm’s analysis of late medieval Frömmigkeitstheologie (literally “piety-theology”) into the Reformation period and beyond. As one scholar explains, Frömmigkeitstheologie is Hamm’s “designation for a genre of late medieval writing and praxis, much of it derived from and directed toward pastoral care, which was especially concerned with the pursuit of an authentic Christian life as defined by the values and institutions of the day.”19 Frömmigkeitstheologie was a form of practical theology whose primary concern was spiritual edification and comfort, not speculation.20 This book examines what might be called Reformation Frömmigkeitstheologie, focusing especially on the themes of suffering and consolation in Protestant sources. Finally, this is not a book about early modern confessionalization, at least not in the first place, which is something of a novelty in German Reformation Studies. The confessionalization thesis states that religious reforms and reformers (unwittingly) contributed to the formation of the early modern state by creating the new creedal confessions, ecclesiastical structures, and emphasis on social discipline that were so vital to state building and the overall modernizing process.21 This thesis has played an extremely important role in German Reformation Studies, opening up many new avenues of scholarly inquiry. But the thesis also has weaknesses. The most obvious is that it tends to view everything from the perspective of early modern state development, rather than from the broader perspective of the complex evolution of Latin Christendom. Thus, it tends

Introduction

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to have a narrow and instrumentalized view of religion. I believe that my research has important things to say about early modern confessionalization, especially by showing the crucial role that the reformation of suffering played in this process. As Thomas Kaufmann has observed, one of the distinctive Merkmale (features or characteristics) of early modern Lutheran culture was its approach to suffering. I examine this approach in great depth and thus seek to add to our understanding of Lutheran confessional culture.22 But, similarly to Kaufmann, I am primarily interested in relating my study of this culture to long-term trends in Latin Christendom, not to the formation of the early modern state and modernity. I believe that this broader historical perspective enables me to make the best sense of my sources.23 This book attempts to demonstrate at least three things. First and most obvious, it argues that there was a reformation of suffering in the sixteenth century. I go to great lengths to show continuity between Protestant and Catholic theology and piety, but I am finally most impressed by the discontinuity that existed between the two confessions with respect to suffering. This difference may be seen in Wittenberg-inspired theology and pastoral care and also in lay piety, especially in towns and cities. The theological engine of this change was the Protestant theology of salvation, which rejected the coupling of suffering and salvation in traditional penitential theology and piety, alleging that it promoted works-righteousness. Suffering was no longer salvific, at least not in the way it once had been, a change of momentous importance for Protestant piety, pastoral care, and culture in the early modern period. Thus, this is a book about profound change. Second, the book highlights the emphasis on consolation in the Wittenberg-inspired pastoral and devotional literature in order to balance out the stress on discipline that is so prevalent in the current scholarly literature. One historian has recently asserted, “Above all it was the concern with discipline that really set the Protestant clergymen apart.”24 When the clergy is viewed as the “final link in a chain of command reaching from the courts and the chanceries down to the churches and households of the parish,”25 this assertion is certainly correct. But when the clergy is viewed as the final link in a chain of pastoral care reaching from the leading theologians down to the churches and households of the parish, this assertion is problematic. In keeping with this latter perspective, one could reformulate the assertion to say that above all, it was the concern with consolation that set the Protestant clergymen apart, at least

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the Lutheran clergymen. Even prominent scholar Susan Karant-Nunn, who has made so much of the disciplinary role of the early modern Lutheran clergy, has stressed in her most recent book that Trost (consolation) was the tell-tale characteristic of Lutheran pastoral care and piety, an emphasis that she finds sorely missing in Reformed Protestant sources.26 Karant-Nunn does not examine the theological lineage and content of this consolation; in keeping with her interests as a cultural historian she deals primarily with how Lutheran consolation sought to shape lay emotional life. I am interested in each of these issues, although I spend the majority of my time in this book examining the former two. I seek to provide an in-depth treatment of the consolation that Karant-Nunn has found in such abundance in her Lutheran sources. Trost was a very rich concept in Lutheran Christianity. In many ways, it defies a narrow definition as spiritual comfort or solace that is implied in a simple juxtaposition with discipline, for it contained within it certain aspects of discipline such as instruction and guidance.27 Trost was a means of bringing comfort to suffering Christians by communicating to them the Lutheran gospel in word and deed. Perhaps it would be better not to claim that early modern Lutheran clergymen were concerned above all with either discipline or consolation, for they were clearly interested in both and in many cases viewed them as the same thing or as two parts of the larger task that occupied their days, the preaching of the Lutheran gospel and the conforming of souls and society to its norms. Third, this book seeks to demonstrate that premodern Christians did not attribute all human suffering to divine punishment for sin, as is frequently thought. The analysis of Christian pastoral and devotional literature will clearly show that the clergy consistently provided numerous explanations for suffering; divine punishment for sin was but one among many of the causae for adversity suggested by both Catholic and Protestant theologians. The fact of suffering was held to be the result of sin, especially original sin, but this did not mean that each instance of suffering could be causally linked to a specific sin and its divine punishment. The reason premodern Christian consolers adopted numerous explanations for suffering is that the primary source of their consolation was the Bible, which similarly offers multiple reasons for human adversity. A model of retributive justice informs much of the Bible, with God either directly meting out blessing and woe or simply allowing human beings to reap what they have sown.28 The expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden (Genesis 3:23–24) is a prime example of direct divine punishment for sin. The retributive justice model should not be seen as an abstract standard of

Introduction

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justice in the Bible, for it is embedded within the covenant relationship between God and Israel or God and the Church and therefore is subject to the dynamics of this relationship. The model is assumed in most of the Bible and attests to the biblical authors’ conviction that humanity inhabits a moral universe governed by a just God.29 But there are numerous examples of this model either not being enforced for reasons of divine mercy (Nehemiah 9:31) or appearing not to “work” (Job and Ecclesiastes) in the face of inexplicable suffering. In the latter case, the model is still upheld— Job is finally rewarded for his righteous response to God’s sermon (Job 42:3–6)—but its actual operation is said to be enigmatic and not open to human scrutiny. Still, in the prophets and especially in the New Testament, there is hope of a future age in which the righteous and the unrighteous will receive their due, and justice will finally be served. Even Christ upholds the retributive justice model. When he rebukes people for speculating about the eighteen who were killed when the Tower of Siloam fell on them (Luke 13:4–5) or when he chastises the disciples for trying to connect a man’s blindness with a specific sin (John 9:1–12), he does not deny the model, certainly not explicitly; rather, he opposes a simplistic and self-aggrandizing application of it. But the Bible contains other explanations for suffering that have nothing to do with punishment for sin.30 Suffering can test devotion to God, as in the case of Job (according to the opening two chapters); it can prove character and refine faith (Psalm 66:10; Proverbs 3:11–12; Hebrews 12:4–11; 1 Peter 1:6–7); it can afford an opportunity for identification with Christ in his suffering (Acts 5:42; Philippians 1:29); it can provide an occasion for the display of God’s healing power (John 9:3); and finally, at least in some cases, it can defy all explanation and provoke God’s covenant people to voice a just lament against the Almighty (Psalms 44, 88, 89). From one point of view, then, this book is an exercise in the history of biblical exegesis, for the majority of sources examined are in one way or another seeking to apply Scripture and its numerous explanations of adversity to the lives of suffering Christians. While this book spends a good deal of time discussing late medieval and early modern theology, especially pastoral theology, it also examines the impact of this theology on clergy and laypeople. I am interested in the production, transmission, and reception of ideas about suffering and consolation in the German lands of late medieval and early modern Europe. The majority of the book deals with production and transmission, but comments about reception (among both common pastors and laypeople)

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are sprinkled throughout the work, and the final chapter deals with this topic exclusively. This book is a work of both intellectual and social history; it is a contribution to historical theology, the history of pastoral care, and the history of lay religiosity. It seeks to integrate the insights and wisdom of the “old history” of the Reformation, which examined the great ideas of the great theologians, with the concerns and corrections of the “new history,” which insists on the importance of social context and attention to nonelites. The sources I have examined for this project reflect this broad interest. They include everything from formal theological treatises and summas to pastoral handbooks and church ordinances to devotional works and sermons. They also include lay pamphlets, diaries, and personal letters.31 I have cast my net rather widely in search of sources that discuss late medieval and early modern attitudes toward suffering and consolation. The majority of my sources fall into the broad category of Trostschriften, or consolation literature, which includes works of many kinds that were intended to provide solace and guidance to those who suffered in body or soul.32 I have scoured the relevant secondary literature and searched various library databases in order to isolate the most interesting and most significant works of consolation from the late medieval and early modern period. Chapters 1 through 3 examine these sources in the pre-Reformation period, while chapters 4 through 10 do so for the Reformation and Confessional Age, reaching into the early decades of the seventeenth century. In chapters 4 through 10, I have adopted the convention of providing a work’s earliest date of publication followed by the number of extant editions given in Roman numerals so that the reader may gain an immediate sense of a work’s overall significance.33 I provide this information in initial citations and also in the appendix. In most cases, I provide English titles for works in the text and then give original-language titles in the notes and bibliography; I also provide English titles in the bibliography where a translation of the work is available. The original-language titles in the notes thus serve as a guide to finding works in the bibliography. I have sought to place the late medieval and early modern Trostschriften in their largest possible context, extending my analysis of their antecedents all the way back to the ancient world, both Christian and pagan (chapter 2). I wish to provide the reader with a very rich sense of the tradition of consolation in which early modern theologians and pastors stood. I also wish to avoid the peril of either implying or stating that themes and concerns in the late medieval or early modern Trostschriften were new,

Introduction

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when in fact they were quite old, a failing one finds in works that do not take adequate account of the long history of Christian consolation.34 As I have indicated, the bulk of this book focuses on the themes of suffering and consolation in the Wittenberg version of reformation. This decision has been necessitated by the enormous number of extant sources from the Wittenberg circle—there are hundreds and hundreds of Trostschriften and related works. But I consistently place the Wittenberg circle within the larger multiconfessional context of late medieval and early modern German-speaking Europe, seeking throughout to provide a nuanced analysis of the lines of continuity and discontinuity between late medieval Catholic and early modern Lutheran doctrines of suffering, on the one hand, and between Lutheran and other Protestant doctrines of suffering, on the other. Catholic sources receive a great deal of attention in this book, and I also attend to Reformed Protestant, Anabaptist, and Spiritualist ones. It is my hope that this book will motivate scholars working on these other early modern Christian confessions to produce similar studies.35 While I am under no illusions about my ability as a historian to recapture the past wie es eigentlich gewesen (as it actually happened) in my sources, I do believe that I can reconstruct the world of my subjects in a way that would be vaguely recognizable to them. I believe that the historian can see but only as in a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12).36 I hope that the imperfect image of the past that I present here will be sufficiently clear to warrant the reader’s careful consideration. I also hope that it will be clear enough to be of some interest and even help to readers who are themselves engaged in the weighty task of trying to find meaning in the midst of suffering.

1

Consolation in Rite and Word in the Later Middle Ages how did the late medieval German church seek to minister to suffering Christians? How did the clergy endeavor to help the laity understand and cope with the afflictions of body and soul that attended their daily lives? What resources were available to priests to assist them in this ministry? These questions are related to the larger issues of what the clergy understood the care of souls to entail and how well prepared they were to practice this “art of arts.”1 These queries are also related to the matter of lay expectations of pastoral care: just what kind of ministry did the laity seek from its priests, did everyone expect the same thing, and what kind of pastoral care did they actually receive? Finally, these questions relate to the Latin church’s theology of suffering, that is, to what intellectual and spiritual leaders in Christendom had to say about the role of adversity and tribulation in the Christian life and how these ideas were communicated to the common clergy. Late medieval Christianity had a unique and deep fascination with passio—both Christ’s and the Christian’s—and this fascination directly informed the pastoral care, spirituality, and popular piety of the period. Scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the place of suffering in the latter two but have largely ignored its role in pastoral care. The purpose of the following three chapters is to remedy this oversight. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the care of souls in late medieval Europe, focusing especially on the kinds of pastoral resources that were available to the vast majority of priests as they sought to minister to suffering Christians. Chapter 2 sets the late medieval cura animarum within the broader history of consolation in the Christian West, noting how ancient and medieval treatments of suffering and its alleviation continued to shape and inform pastoral care on the eve of the Reformation. Chapter 3 examines the place of suffering in late medieval German mysticism, showing how the mystics and their writings influenced the care of souls in the pre-Reformation period.

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The Pastoral Revolution The place to begin our examination of the pastoral care of suffering Christians in the later Middle Ages is with the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), an event of signal importance in the history of the care of souls in the Latin West.2 Lateran IV did not deal with ministry to suffering Christians per se, but it did have much to say about pastoral care in general. In fact, some scholars maintain that Lateran IV effected a “pastoral revolution” in late medieval Europe.3 As we will see, this revolution had important implications for the Latin church’s ministry to suffering Christians. Pope Innocent III convened the council for three main reasons: to call for a renewed crusade to the Holy Land, to call for a new crusade against heretics within Christendom, and to work for the reform of the Latin church,4 especially its clergy. More than half of Lateran IV’s seventy-one canons deal with matters related to the clergy and the care of souls.5 The council was attended by 404 bishops and an even larger number of abbots, canons, and temporal rulers; it was arguably the crowning achievement of Innocent’s impressive pontificate—he died shortly after its completion.6 The emphasis on the cura animarum at Lateran IV was unprecedented in the history of Western church councils. As Leonard Boyle explains: Among other things, [Lateran IV] provided the parochial priest with a responsibility vis-à-vis his parishioners which he never had had in any explicit fashion before this, and it consolidated at large in the Church an identity which he had been slowly acquiring since the First Lateran Council of 1123. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was at the Fourth Lateran Council that the cura animarum came into its own for the first time ever. Before the council there was an entity called the cura animarum and there were priests known as parochial or parish priests (“presbiteri parochiales”), but it was the Fourth Lateran Council which gave both these parochial priests and the cura animarum or parishioners an identity and a self-awareness, and an honorable, recognized place in the Church at large.7 What exactly did the cura animarum’s “coming into its own” entail for pastoral ministry? Among other things, it included concern for the proper selection, training, and supervision of parochial priests. Echoing Pope Gregory I, Canon 27 observes that because guiding souls is “a supreme art” (ars

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artium), bishops should take great care to prepare and ordain only worthy men to this sacred office. Bishops are to see to it that candidates for the priesthood are properly instructed in “the divine services and the sacraments of the Church, so that they may be able to celebrate them correctly.” Those bishops who ordain ignorant and incompetent men are to be “subject to severe punishment,” as are the unworthy priests they appoint. Canon 27 concludes that it would be preferable to “have a few good ministers than many bad ones, for if a blind man leads another blind man, both will fall into the pit” (cf. Luke 6:39; see Matthew 15:14).8 Canon 30 similarly specifies that prelates should not promote unsuitable men to ecclesiastical benefices: “Nobody of a sound mind is ignorant of how much damage to churches arises from this.”9 Canon 11 repeats a neglected provision from the Third Lateran Council (1179) that required cathedral churches to appoint a master who would instruct the clergy of the cathedral church and other poor students free of charge. The Lateran IV canon extends the earlier provision to include any church with adequate means, requiring such churches to hire a master who can teach grammar and other branches of study. Metropolitan churches are to employ a theologian to teach Scripture to priests and others “and especially to instruct them in matters which are recognized as pertaining to the care of souls.”10 According to Canon 6, metropolitans are also to hold annual provincial councils with their suffragans where they correct excesses and reform the morals of those under their care, especially the clergy; bishops are also to hold annual synods for the same purpose.11 In sum, then, the central task of the clergy according to Lateran IV was to understand and celebrate properly the services and sacraments of the church, as Canon 27 reflects. The clergy was also to instruct the laity in orthodox Christian doctrine, something that is specified in the very first canon, which begins with a lengthy confession of the Catholic faith.12 This provision assumes that the clergy itself must understand Christian doctrine; hence the strong emphasis throughout on the proper instruction of priests. Canon 10 praises the role of preaching in the Christian ministry, maintaining that the “nourishment of God’s word” is “especially necessary” to the salvation of Christian people. But the same canon also makes it clear that preaching is not to be left to parish priests, who were deemed unequal to the task. Rather, bishops are to appoint “suitable men” who can carry out the ministry of preaching and also assist bishops in visiting and caring for the parishes under their care.13

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Arguably the most important provision of Lateran IV for the subsequent history of pastoral care was Canon 21, which requires annual communion and confession of every Christian, the first such provision of its kind to be universally binding throughout Latin Christendom.14 Unlike preaching, this canon specifies that the ministry of sacramental confession is to be exercised by parish priests and not transferred to better-trained clerics, although penitents are allowed to seek out other confessors— usually monks—with the permission of their priests.15 Canon 21 calls for parish priests to possess considerable skill as they confess their parishioners. The confessor is to be “discerning and prudent, so that like a skilled doctor he may pour wine and oil over the wounds of the injured one.” The priest is to make a careful inquiry into the penitent’s sins and their circumstances, “so that he may prudently discern what sort of advice he ought to give and what remedy to apply, using various means to heal the sick person.”16 Boyle has commented on the important shift in expectations of both confessor and penitent in Canon 21. Both are required to be far more active and self-aware than was either necessary or possible in the Latin church’s approach to private confession in preceding centuries.17 The priest is no longer expected simply to apply in mechanical fashion the appropriate penance to the appropriate sin.18 Now he is called to be a doctor of souls who is involved in a very delicate operation. Similarly, the penitent can no longer be content with a listing of offenses but must open his conscience to his priest as together they search out hidden mortal sin to be excised through confession and healed through divine grace. Boyle goes so far as to assert that this shift led to a “revolution in spirituality.”19 Leading theologians and pastors of the Latin church soon produced a whole raft of literary works designed to assist priests in fulfilling Lateran IV’s ambitious goals for pastoral care, especially regarding the ministry of sacramental confession.20 These works, which Boyle refers to collectively as pastoralia, may be defined as “any and every literary aid or manual which may be of help to a priest in his cura animarum, whether with respect to his own education or that of the people in his charge.”21 This literature sought to disseminate diocesan statutes, canon law, and basic theology to common priests and through them to the laity.22 Pastoralia existed before Lateran IV, but there was an explosion of this literature following the conclusion of the landmark council.23 What does this literature have to say about the clergy’s ministry to suffering Christians?

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If we confine ourselves to the kinds of pastoralia that parochial priests were most likely to possess—that is, the works on pastoral care that were “best-sellers” or the ones that bishops and episcopal synods either encouraged or required priests and parishes to possess—the initial answer to our query would have to be not much. The general or comprehensive handbooks for pastoral care that began appearing in the thirteenth century, and with ever-increasing frequency in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, have very little to say about the clergy’s ministry to suffering Christians. The topic is mentioned here and there but always in passing; it rarely receives sustained or focused attention. For example, Guido of Monte Rochen’s Handbook for Curates (1483), arguably the most popular pastoral handbook in late medieval Germany,24 hardly broaches the topic at all. The Handbook for Curates is essentially a manual on how to celebrate the sacraments properly that includes a primer on the Christian faith. Guido discusses the seven sacraments, the Christian creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the seven gifts of the blessed. The pastoral care envisioned in the Handbook for Curates consists of basic catechesis and faithful administration of the sacraments. The same could be said of other important pastoral handbooks in late medieval Germany, including the anonymous Summa for Simple Priests (1487),25 Johannes Auerbach’s Guide for Curates (compiled ca. 1420, printed 1469),26 and Johann Ulrich Surgant’s Manual for Curates (1503),27 each of which was recommended for parish use by late medieval German synods.28 The widely popular anonymous Manual for Parish Priests (compiled mid-thirteenth century, printed 1489) is similarly interested in basic doctrine and proper administration of the sacraments,29 as is Aquinas’s Concerning the Articles of Faith and the Sacraments of the Church, which, owing to the influence of Nicholas of Cusa, made its way into German provincial and synodal statutes and from there to the common clergy.30 Like Guido’s Handbook for Curates, these works rarely discuss suffering. These general pastoral handbooks were intended to help priests fulfill the duties specified in Canon 27 of the Fourth Lateran Council, namely, correct celebration of the church’s services and sacraments. Therefore, this literature was very practical in nature. One scholar puts it this way: the pastoral manuals “presented the content and method of pastoral care in no-nonsense dry-as-dust scholastic fashion. Lacking any literary merit, they were all that the humanists hated most in scholasticism. They had all the charm of an auto-repair manual—and they were just as practical. They are an excellent example of the uninspired utilitarian seriousness of much

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late medieval scholasticism.”31 Other scholars have taken issue with this caricature of the late medieval pastoralia but still agree with its central point about the nonspeculative, highly practical nature of this literature.32

Expectations of Pastoral Care The care of souls envisioned in the pastoralia corresponded well with the expectations of the vast majority of late medieval laypeople. As R. N. Swanson explains: Summarising lay expectations of the priesthood is not too difficult. On the one hand, they were defined by actions: the priests provided the power and protection of the sacraments and sacramentals. This might be purely spiritual, by granting absolution, the cleansing of extreme unction, and the fact of transubstantiation. It might be more utilitarian—the benefits of the blessing of crops; prayers and masses for good weather or a safe journey, or the many other purposes covered by votive masses; and protection for humans and animals by providing blessed candles, bread, and water. Beyond that, the laity simply wanted a clerical presence: clergy to provide spiritual services in celebrating, instruction, and a good example. Here they clearly matched the ideals demanded by the church hierarchs, as constantly reiterated in synodal decrees. . . . But primarily [the laity] wanted priests who would do what they wanted, quickly and efficiently.33 As Swanson indicates, the desire for protection and deliverance from suffering directly informed lay expectations of pastoral care. Despite the centrality of the Passion in late medieval piety (see chapter 3), most people were still interested in finding relief from suffering. They wanted their priests to provide them with reliable access to divine grace and power, which would prevent or alleviate suffering. Lay expectations of the divine—and of priests as mediators of the divine—were governed in large part by a do-ut-des mentality that sought divine favors in exchange for services rendered. These services included adoration, worship, good works, and material contributions. The divine favors included protection, healing, and also forgiveness. A number of scholars have commented on the presence and prevalence of this mentality in medieval

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lay piety,34 especially among burghers, who were accustomed to such calculations by their participation in the mercantilist economies of their cites.35 We should not reduce lay piety to this mentality, for it was far richer and more complex than this rather crass outlook would suggest. Nevertheless, the do-ut-des mentality was a defining feature of much lay religiosity and thus helped to govern lay expectations of pastoral care. Laypeople believed, as did the authors of the pastoralia, that correct performance of the sacred rites would provide access to the divine power and protection they desired. From one point of view, then, the pastoralia did not need to say much about suffering explicitly because they said a great deal implicitly by providing for proper performance of sacred rites. As Swanson notes, these rites included both sacraments and sacramentals. The eucharistic host was held to be the most powerful sacred “object.” It not only mediated forgiveness but also could provide divine healing and thus was an important part of many healing rituals.36 So, too, were various blood relics of Christ, such as pieces of the cross or the holy lance, which were believed to retain a portion of the Savior’s actual blood.37 “Sacramentals” refers to a whole host of quasisacraments that were held to accomplish some salutary spiritual effect through the prayers of the clergy. They included sacred objects such as holy water or candles; blessings of people, animals, crops, or possessions; exorcisms of demons or demonic influence; and consecrations of various kinds.38 In many cases, the promised effect of these sacramentals was divine protection or healing. The laity expected similar “pastoral care” from the saints. One requirement for sainthood was demonstration of posthumous miraculous intervention.39 The vast majority of miracles attributed to the saints—that is, to their intercession with God, who performed the miracle—were healings.40 That laypeople took seriously the ability of saints to heal or protect is evidenced in their private letters, in which they regularly commended one another to the protection of the saints, most notably the Virgin Mary.41 When saints did not provide the sought-after healing or protection, their images might be ritually humiliated,42 or their devotees might turn to other saints. Or they might turn to magic and traditional folk religion. The primary motivation behind recourse to magic and various pagan remedies was the desire to find relief from suffering.43 Here lay expectations frequently clashed with those of the Latin church. From the early Middle Ages on, the church hierarchy had sought to dissuade

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laypeople (and clerics) from seeking out such means of protection and healing, largely because they were considered to be demonic in origin.44 This effort continued into the later Middle Ages. A central concern of Nicholas of Cusa’s ambitious mission to reform the German church (1451–1452) was to purge popular piety of any unorthodox elements.45 Extant visitation ordinances and parish decrees from the papal legate’s mission reveal this design very clearly,46 as do Cusa’s sermons. On one occasion, he preached, “Many and infinite are the superstitious practices that lead every soul from the true foundation of the Christian faith by the diabolical and deceptive light itself; the one who falls from the foundation of faith is a son of perdition [ John 17:12; 2 Thessalonians 2:3]. Therefore such superstitions must be expelled and not tolerated.”47 One such superstition involved blood relics, at least according to Cusa. The papal legate argued that the resurrected Christ’s blood was invisible and therefore could not be seen in bleeding eucharistic hosts and the like. As it turned out, Pope Nicholas V disagreed with Cusa on this point, and blood relics remained an important part of popular piety.48 Still, Cusa’s mission was quite influential, at least in terms of setting official expectations for the reform of the German church; his reform measures made their way into several influential synodal statutes, which set out episcopal expectations for German clerical and lay life in the later Middle Ages. Similarly influential was his call for catechesis as the German church’s most effective tool against “heterodox” devotion. The late medieval catechetical effort preceded Cusa’s mission to Germany but also received new inspiration from it.49 Similarly to Cusa’s, one of the primary goals of this effort was to root out superstition. This was especially the case in treatments of the First Commandment—“You shall have no other gods before me.”50 The Augustinian canon Stephan von Landskron (ca. 1411–1477) argues in his popular catechism, The Heavenly Street (manuscript 1465, incunabulum 1484),51 that whatever befalls Christians, be it blessing or woe, happens by divine decree and thus must be received as good and necessary for their salvation, having been foreordained by their loving Father.52 Thus, Stephan maintains that one way of breaking the First Commandment is to despair (verzagen) of God’s mercy in the face of adversity and misfortune. Instead, Christians must realize that tribulation is a “good sign” (ein gu[o]tt zeichen) of spiritual health.53 Rather than turning to superstition or astrology for healing,54 Stephan says of Christians, “We commend ourselves fully to his grace and place all

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of our hope in him, for he is our Lord, our loving Creator, our Protector, our Defender and Savior.”55 Several decades before Stephan’s Heavenly Street appeared, University of Paris chancellor Jean Gerson had made a similar attack on superstition in his influential Work in Three Parts (manuscript ca. 1404, incunabulum 1467), which appeared in Germany in both Latin and German.56 Gerson was arguably the most important theologian and reformer of the opening decades of the fifteenth century and, along with figures such as Thomas á Kempis and Johannes von Staupitz, was one of the most important sources of the Frömmigkeitstheologie that was so widespread on the eve of the Reformation.57 In his treatment of the Ten Commandments, Gerson warns Christians not to sin against the First Commandment by murmuring against the divine ordering of events, “as if God were not altogether just, good, and merciful, and wholly loving and desirable.” Christians must be patient and not seek help and healing through magic or pagan remedies, “as if God himself were not altogether good, powerful, and wise enough to come to their aid, as much as it may be expedient for their needs.”58 God might provide this aid in any number of ways, but, as we have seen, according to the pastoral literature of the day, God acted primarily through the rites and rituals of the Latin church. Therefore, catechists tried at all costs to direct suffering Christians to the grace, protection, and healing available in the church’s sacraments and sacramentals, lest they be tempted to dabble in magic or pagan remedies. This form of pastoral care sufficed for most laypeople. A cultic and practical cura animarum is what the Latin church offered, and it is what most laypeople wanted, especially when they were suffering. The emphasis in the pastoralia on the proper performance and reception of the sacraments corresponded very well to lay needs for grace, protection, and healing as laypeople faced adversity. But there was also a portion of the population that desired additional consolation. Especially in the towns and cities, there were laypeople who wanted both verbal and cultic consolation; they desired solace through words and through sacraments.59 While the pastoralia are short on this kind of consolation, they do contain important comments on it in their treatments of the sacrament of extreme unction and the sacrament of penance. Here one finds exceptions to the general rule regarding the pastoralia’s lack of explicit attention to suffering. Priests who read these treatments could find help in developing a ministry of verbal instruction and consolation to the sick and suffering in their flocks.

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Consolation in Word: Unction The sacrament of extreme unction, or last rites, was initially a rite for the sick that originated in apostolic times (see James 5:14–17). It eventually became associated with the Latin church’s emerging penitential system,60 and by the twelfth century—or perhaps even earlier61—the custom of anointing the body with holy oil became focused almost exclusively on the dying and was administered after confession and Communion.62 Like these two sacraments, it was held to bestow grace and the forgiveness of sin.63 While the rite’s original purpose of providing bodily healing was not entirely lost,64 its ability to heal souls was more strongly emphasized.65 In the later Middle Ages, many laypeople were reluctant to receive extreme unction precisely because of its historical evolution into a rite associated with death; they thought they would certainly die if they were anointed with the blessed oil.66 Confession and Communion did not carry this stigma, and so they became more prominent in the clergy’s ministry to the sick and dying.67 The importance of extreme unction for our purposes lies not in the frequency of its administration but in the role it played in the development of a ministry of verbal instruction and consolation. Surgant’s Manual for Curates (1503) contains a very interesting section on extreme unction that includes detailed instructions in the vernacular on how a priest is to console a suffering Christian after he has anointed him with oil. It begins (in Latin) by instructing the priest to speak softly and gently (blande leniterque) to the dying person, kindly admonishing him to place all of his hope in God and to bear his illness or scourging from God (infirmitatem seu flagellum dei) patiently. He should believe that his condition will result in his own purgation (purgationem), and he should never doubt or despair of the mercy of God. The priest is then to hold an image of the crucifix before him in order to assure him that Christ has died for him and that God does not desire the (eternal) death of a sinner but that he should repent and live.68 The priest is then to speak the following words to him in German: Therefore you should not despair of God’s mercy, but place all your hope and confidence in God. [You should] endure your sickness patiently and offer up your small suffering in the great suffering of Christ [vnd üwer cleins lyden opfern in das groß lyden christi]. Therefore, you should not fear any trial, but find in all necessities a place of refuge under the protective covering of the holy cross. You should

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faithfully call upon God the Lord [i.e., Christ] and ask that he would place his aforementioned bitter suffering between your sin and his strict judgment, and enable you to meditate on his suffering devoutly, with all thankfulness, so that you may always eternally participate in the fruit of the suffering. In addition, you should also call upon the worthy and highly praised queen and mother of God, the Virgin Mary, and all of God’s saints and angels, that they might come to your aid in your final hour, and if you depart from this realm, that they will lead you into eternal blessedness. Finally, the priest is to ask the sick person if his desire and will are in accordance with what has just been spoken, and he is to respond in the affirmative. The priest is then free to add: “May the unfathomable mercy of God the Lord Jesus Christ, the precious merit of the painful suffering of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, the faithful compassion and intercession of the noble [and] famous bearer of God, the worthy Virgin Mary, the merit of all the saints, and the consoling protection of the holy cross be with you in your final need, and protect you from all that might harm your soul and body. Amen.”69 Surgant goes on to say that extreme unction provides both forgiveness of sin and “holy medicine” for the health of body and soul; he holds out the possibility that the anointing will restore the sick person’s physical health. Extreme unction also benefits those who are present at the deathbed. As they stand in the presence of death, they are to reflect on the souls of their loved ones who have gone before them and also assist the priest in consoling their dying brother, saying together an Our Father and an Ave Maria.70 For their devout participation in last rites, they are to be granted forty days’ indulgence for mortal sins.71 Surgant’s treatment of extreme unction falls within the larger ars moriendi (art of dying) tradition of the later Middle Ages.72 The literature on preparation for death was extremely popular among both the clergy and the laity, more popular than extreme unction itself,73 and it included the same kind of ministry of verbal consolation that we have seen in Surgant’s Manual for Curates. The origins of this literature may be traced to a work attributed (perhaps falsely) to Anselm of Canterbury (1034–1109), the Admonition of Anselm, which contained a list of questions and answers that a priest could use when ministering to a sick or dying Christian.74 Theologians such as Jean Gerson, the father of the ars moriendi tradition,75 drew on the Admonition as they produced a new genre of pastoral and devotional literature beginning in the early fifteenth century. Gerson’s

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Work in Three Parts (manuscript ca. 1404, incunabulum 1467), which he wrote for simple priests, was one of his best-known works in the later Middle Ages.76 (Part three of the Work in Three Parts addresses the art of dying, while parts one and two deal with the Ten Commandments and confession, respectively. As was true of parts one and two, part three first appeared as a separate work and continued to be published on its own after the Work in Three Parts appeared.)77 The famous Strasbourg preacher Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg produced a Booklet for the Dying (1480/81) that was based on Gerson’s Concerning the Art of Dying78 and later translated the Work in Three Parts into German (Der dreieckecht Spiegel/The Three-Sided Mirror, 1510).79 Gabriel Biel had already done so in 1475.80 Like Surgant, Gerson presents sickness and suffering as an opportunity to atone for the penalty of sin that the dying Christian should seize by bearing his affliction patiently.81 There is the same encouragement to call upon the saints—especially the Virgin Mary—and the angels as the end approaches and also to avail oneself of the blessing of last rites.82 Perhaps most important, there is the same strong emphasis on divine mercy and divine agency, symbolized by the presence of the crucifix.83 Gerson urges the sick person to pray the following prayer to Christ: Most sweet Jesus, because of the honor and strength of your most blessed Passion, grant that I may be received into the number of your elect. My Savior and my Redeemer, I give myself totally to you; may you not reject me. To you I come; may you not repel me. Lord, I ask for your paradise not on account of the worth of my merits but in the strength and efficacy of your most blessed Passion, through which you willed to redeem wretched me, and vouchsafed to purchase paradise for me with the price of your blood.84 The clear emphasis here is on divine grace and the merit of Christ’s Passion, an emphasis that was widespread in late medieval pastoral and devotional literature, as Berndt Hamm has so convincingly shown.85 Human merit has very little place in Gerson’s prayer. Bodily healing also has very little place. While Gerson holds out the possibility that extreme unction can effect a bodily cure, he warns priests not to give the suffering Christian too much hope of recovery, lest this false consolation (falsam consolationem) deter him from penitence and confession. Geiler issues the same warning.86

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Surgant’s treatment of extreme unction and these brief comments about its context in the ars moriendi tradition already suggest several of the most common themes that appear in discussions of suffering in late medieval pastoralia and devotional works: God’s sovereignty over suffering and misfortune; God’s goodness and mercy in the midst of adversity; the priority of divine merit over human merit at life’s end; the importance of bearing suffering patiently; the connection between suffering and purgation from sin; the connection between the Christian’s suffering and Christ’s Passion; the importance of the sacraments as means of grace and consolation in the midst of adversity; the help provided by the saints— especially the Virgin Mary—and the angels; and the possibility, though not the probability, of healing.87 These are the main themes that would be rehearsed and elaborated upon in the consolation literature of the later Middle Ages. As the clergy sought to help laypeople understand and cope with suffering, they would turn to these themes again and again. The deathbed was not the only place where priests were able to do so, and in any case, it is not the focus of this book. Confession also provided an ideal opportunity for priests to instruct and console laypeople who were suffering but were not necessarily in danger of death. Those in the midst of adversity could receive the comfort of absolution from their confessors and also an important and uniquely late medieval message about suffering.

Consolation in Word: Confession We have already seen that Lateran IV’s most important innovation in terms of pastoral care was the requirement of annual confession. We have also seen that Canon 21 shaped the subsequent nature of the late medieval cura animarum and the pastoralia designed to support it in a profound way; this literature devotes more attention to the sacrament of penance than any other topic. General pastoral handbooks spend more time discussing this sacrament than they do the other sacraments, and there are more works devoted solely to confession than to any other topic.88 Before we turn to examine some of these works, a brief word about late medieval penitential theology and the place of suffering in it is in order. Late medieval theologians made a significant and novel contribution to the history of suffering in the Christian West by viewing suffering as a specific kind of penance. By all accounts, this innovation, which one sees

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time and again in the pastoral literature, profoundly shaped the pastoral care and piety of the later Middle Ages. Unfortunately, it has not received the scholarly attention it deserves.89 The Fourth Lateran Council did not provide an official theology of the sacrament of penance; it simply required that Christians make annual confession. There were a number of efforts in the later Middle Ages to articulate how the sacrament of penance worked, and while there was disagreement on the specifics of the rite—especially on the respective roles of human and divine agency within it—most theologians agreed on some essential points.90 The sacrament consisted of four ingredients, three of which appertained to the penitent and one of which related to the priest: contrition, confession, satisfaction, and absolution. Beyond this, there was widespread agreement on a theological distinction that was absolutely central to the late medieval church’s understanding of penance and suffering: the guilt or debt of sin versus the penalty or punishment for sin.91 The debt of sin—culpa—referred to the burden of guilt that human beings incurred initially as a result of the fall (i.e., original guilt) and then subsequently as the result of each postbaptismal sin. The penalty for sin— poena—denoted divine punishment for both original sin (i.e., eternal damnation and the partial tainting of human nature) and for postbaptismal sin (i.e., suffering in this life and the next).92 The majority view on the eve of the Reformation was that Christ’s death had atoned for original guilt and eternal damnation, the benefits of which were communicated via baptism, but the tendency toward sinning—the fomes peccati (tinders of sin)— remained for humanity to contend with until the resurrection of the dead. When late medieval Christians gave in to their dark side and sinned, they were instructed to turn to the sacrament of penance to relieve the new burden of debt and punishment that they incurred. Not to seek divine grace for sin was to risk an eternity in hell, if the sin were mortal, or, more typically, to face an extended period of time in purgatory, where one would suffer the remaining poena for one’s venial sins, along with the yetunfulfilled penances one had undertaken in this life, and thus be purified before one entered heaven. (While the Catholic doctrine of purgatory was not fully defined until the Council of Trent,93 it was given formal status among the Latin church’s teachings already in the thirteenth century—in 1254 by Pope Innocent IV and in 1274 at the Second Council of Lyons—and was “ubiquitous” in late medieval Christianity thereafter.94) Only priestly absolution communicated through the sacrament of penance could forgive the debt of sin, but it was up to the penitent to deal with the penalty for

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sin, in cooperation with the Latin church’s many forms of assistance.95 One of the primary motivations for late medieval devotion was the desire to atone for the remaining penalty for one’s sins. Poena certainly received more attention than culpa in the period’s devotional literature. By virtue of their possession of the power of the keys, priests could transform the penalty that one deserved to suffer in purgatory—where the pains were unspeakable if temporary—into a more bearable form of penance that one could endure in the here and now. This penance, or work of satisfaction, typically took one of three forms: fasting, prayer, or works of mercy.96 These three were held to fulfill the definition of a work of satisfaction, which involved both making amends for past sins—that is, compensating God for wrongs committed against him—and protecting against future ones.97 Penance typically entailed a measure of selfdenial or self-deprivation, and, as we will see, it could also entail suffering imposed by others, including God. Finally, penance had to be undertaken voluntarily to be efficacious, because the sin for which it atoned was committed voluntarily.98 In addition to performing works of satisfaction, one could also atone for the penalty for one’s sin by obtaining indulgences.99 The Latin church began dispensing indulgences in the eleventh century, and Pope Clement VI laid out the scriptural justification for them in the bull Unigenitus on January 27, 1343 (although the doctrine was not officially defined until 1518 in Cum Postquam).100 The perceived need for indulgences stemmed from the rigors of the ancient and early medieval Christian penitential systems, which, at least in theory, were still in force in the later Middle Ages,101 even though most theologians held that their ideals were extremely difficult to fulfill.102 Indulgences may be seen as the culmination of an effort to mitigate these rigors through episcopal intervention and the substitution of lesser penances that began already in the early medieval period.103 Indulgences were based on the idea that the episcopate, because it possessed the power of the keys, had access to a treasure of merit, a kind of spiritual bank account that contained all of the superabundant meritorious deeds of Christ and the saints, especially their righteous suffering. The idea was that Christ’s merit, along with that of the saints, exceeded the amount of good works that God demanded for the salvation of humanity. That is, there was leftover merit, and the pope, along with the other bishops, believed that they had control over it. By obtaining some of this excess merit, one could reduce the amount of time one had to suffer in purgatory. Indulgences offered Christians a way of reducing the penalty for sin that

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they owed God in exchange for confessing their sins and performing some good work that benefited Christendom.104 A final important aspect of late medieval penitential theology is worth noting before we turn to consider the treatment of suffering in confessional manuals and pastoral handbooks. Not only did priestly absolution provide forgiveness of sin, and thus freedom from a guilty conscience, but it could also provide bodily healing. Because of the widespread assumption that spiritual health affected bodily health,105 it made sense to conclude that the spiritual healing effected by absolution could influence the body. This assumption is clearly present in Canon 22 of the Fourth Lateran Council and also directly informs the treatments of extreme unction that we have seen above.106 Confession occurred before last rites precisely because the health of the soul was held to influence the health of the body (and also because of the preoccupation with sin, penance, and forgiveness in late medieval piety). When late medieval Christians referred to confessors as doctors and to absolution as medicine, they were not simply employing a useful metaphor—they believed that spiritual healing could effect physical healing, although, as in the case of extreme unction, they knew full well that it did not usually do so. (Medically speaking, absolution and other forms of consolation were held to restore bodily health by helping to rebalance the bodily humors.)107 What did treatments of sacramental confession in the pastoralia have to say about suffering? The Dominican Johannes von Freiburg (1250–1314) addresses the topic of suffering directly in his Summa for Confessors (earliest manuscript 1287/8, numerous manuscript and printed editions), one of the most popular treatments of the sacrament of penance in the later Middle Ages.108 Boyle observes of this work, “the Summa confessorum spread all over Europe and was the dominant summa for confessors over the next two centuries.”109 He also asserts that “it may prove not to be an exaggeration to state that the Summa confessorum was the most influential work of pastoral theology in the two hundred years before the Reformation.”110 This was especially the case in Germany.111 We also have evidence to confirm that late medieval German priests and their churches owned copies of the Summa for Confessors and presumably used them.112 Johannes von Freiburg addresses the topic of suffering in his discussion of penances. He presents suffering as a work of satisfaction that falls under the general rubric of fasting.113 Late medieval penitential theology taught that whereas prayer restored proper order in the penitent’s relationship to God and works of mercy did the same with regard to neighbor,

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fasting brought order to the penitent’s relationship with himself, primarily by battling concupiscence of the flesh. Johannes von Freiburg was not alone in seeing suffering as a species of fasting; Aquinas held the same view, and it became standard in the late medieval pastoralia.114 Guido’s Handbook for Curates, Auerbach’s Guide for Curates, and the Summa for Simple Priests assume the connection between suffering and fasting,115 as does another influential summa for confessors, Angelo’s Summa (1476).116 (Luther burned a copy of this summa in 1520 to indicate his break with late medieval penitential theology.) Johannes von Freiburg includes all manner of tribulations and illnesses in his treatment of penitential suffering, not simply self-imposed (or clerically imposed) works of satisfaction (e.g., vigils, pilgrimages, etc.).117 Penitential suffering also clearly includes suffering imposed directly by God; the Summa for Confessors has a questio devoted to divinely imposed suffering. Here Johannes follows his fellow Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, arguing that such scourges can be counted as a penance only if they are received and endured patiently as a purgation of sins and thus made one’s own work of satisfaction.118 Angelo’s Summa makes the same argument.119 If one does not receive them in this way, the afflictions remain purely vindictive (rationem . . . vindicationis) in character.120 Elsewhere in the Summa for Confessors, Johannes holds up Job as an example of how Christians should bear their afflictions, and he turns to Hebrews 12:6 for an explanation of why the faithful suffer: “The Lord scourges every child whom he receives.” In a highly significant move, Johannes, citing two prominent thirteenth-century canonists—Raymond of Peñafort and Hostiensis—directs confessors to count as a penance whatever evil (omnia male) penitents have patiently endured. However, such suffering could only be viewed in this way if it was “imposed” by a priest and treated as a penance by confessants. (This simply meant that penitents had to inform their confessors of their suffering and then regard it as a penance for sin that had been justly imposed.) In this way, afflictions could contribute to salvation by reducing the poena that Christians deserved to suffer for sins in both this life and the next—an extremely powerful idea.121 Not only was the Summa for Confessors copied, printed, and cited frequently in Germany, but it was also translated into the vernacular by another Dominican several decades after Johannes von Freiburg’s death (1314). The Summa of Canon Law of “Bruder Berthold” was probably produced in the second half of the fourteenth century—the earliest manuscript comes from the end of the same century122—and while it purports

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to be a simple translation of the Summa for Confessors, it is actually a reworking of the text according to Berthold’s lights. Brother Berthold chose those portions of the Summa for Confessors that he thought would be most helpful to laypeople and simple priests and then organized them in an alphabetical format for greater ease of access. The Summa of Canon Law, which, as its name suggests, is as much a compendium of canon law as it is a confessional manual, circulated especially in southern Germany, where its Bavarian dialect would have been most familiar.123 It was quite popular.124 Brother Berthold includes a whole section on suffering—under L for Leiden—in his Summa of Canon Law, a fact that is quite significant; he obviously thought that it was an important topic. (The Summa for Confessors was not arranged alphabetically and thus contains no similar section devoted exclusively to suffering. Even those versions that include an alphabetical index do not have a separate entry for suffering.)125 Berthold first addresses the issue of when suffering in this life is meritorious (lonper) and when it is not. After observing, “The suffering by which a person is troubled in this time is great indeed,”126 Berthold divides suffering into three categories: self-imposed penance such as fasting, watching, weeping, and going on pilgrimages; self-flagellation, such as striking one’s breast and beating oneself with rods and scourges; and sickness, along with affliction that causes harm to one’s body, possessions, honor, or friends.127 Commenting on this third category, Berthold, following the Summa for Confessors, argues that when Christians endure such affliction willingly and receive it as an opportunity to do penance, then it consoles them and helps them render satisfaction for their sin. But if they do not wish to suffer in this way and react to their afflictions with great impatience, their trials “are not useful, either for body or soul, rather they are then a sign of God’s wrath.”128 Berthold then suggests, still following the Summa for Confessors, that confessors should tell penitents that the suffering they endure and the good works they perform are all means of doing penance for sin and thus are meritorious.129 Berthold proceeds to elaborate on the causes of human suffering, readily conceding that divine punishment for sin is but one of them, as the title of this section of the Summa of Canon Law clearly attests: “that one sometimes suffers without guilt but not without reason” (daz man etzwann an schuld vnd niht an sach lydet). Once again, Berthold follows the Summa for Confessors, although not in the title of this section, which comes from Thomas Aquinas.130 Berthold obviously wanted to emphasize that

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suffering was not always and perhaps not even usually a punishment for sin. He argues that sometimes God sends adversity to humble a Christian so that the Christian might avoid becoming prideful. At other times, God sends suffering to test a person’s patience so that God might increase the person’s merit on account of this proven endurance. Suffering also moves a person to turn to God for help and to develop a greater sorrow for sin. It can also protect people from a life of sin and eventual damnation, as in the case of children who perish because of their parents’ sinful ways, which they might otherwise have followed. Finally, Berthold observes that some people suffer not because they have sinned but so that the power and glory of God may be revealed, as in the case of the blind man in John 9.131 (See chapter 2 for further discussion of the causae of suffering in medieval consolation literature.) Berthold also comments on indulgences (ablaz) and makes explicit something that was implicit in the traditional theology of penance on which they were based. He asserts that the Latin church’s treasury of merit can be increased daily by the good works of good people and also by “their suffering that they endure patiently through God.”132 By suffering well, Christians could actually increase the store of merit from which popes and bishops drew as they provided forgiveness for the remaining penalty for sin. If Christians bore their adversity patiently, they could benefit the salvation of their fellow believers and not simply their own. Their merit would be added to that of Christ, the martyrs, and the saints and then could be applied to Christians who lacked a sufficient supply of their own. This argument was based on the idea that the living could benefit the departed through their prayers and suffrages, which has a long history in Christianity, going back at least to the second century—it is clearly present in Augustine.133 Late medieval theologians introduced an extremely powerful idea into the pastoral care and piety of their day: suffering as penance for the poena of sin. There were certainly precedents for this idea in the Latin Christian tradition. Already in the early third century, Tertullian could refer to the endurance of temporal punishment as rendering satisfaction for sin to God and thus canceling (expungere) eternal torments.134 The idea that human suffering could function as a penance for postbaptismal sin and its consequences was a central feature of the Western penitential system as it evolved in the Middle Ages. But it was not until the thirteenth century and thereafter, when the Latin church’s penitential theology achieved its mature form, that this idea received the kind of systematic attention

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we have discussed above. Now certain kinds of suffering (i.e., those patiently endured, whether imposed by God or by human beings) were defined as a certain kind of penance (i.e., fasting) for a certain consequence of sin (i.e., poena). It was also first in this period that this powerful idea was conveyed to common priests in a literature specifically designed for their use. As we have seen, the idea that suffering could serve as a penance for the poena of sin did not remain confined to university lecture halls but made its way into the practical pastoral and devotional literature of the day. A vernacular confessional manual entitled the Sinner’s Mirror for Confession (1510) provides further evidence for the widespread dissemination of this powerful idea. The anonymous author instructs penitents to make the following request of their confessors: I ask you lastly . . . that you would now place on me a small and brief sacramental penance that I can perform already in this hour or on this day. I also ask that you would apply to me, counting it as a penance, the merit of our Lord Jesus Christ’s suffering . . . along with all my good works, or those which others have done for me (be they prayers, fasts, alms-giving, pilgrimages), plus all the grace and indulgence I have obtained, and also all the sickness and adversity I have suffered, and, finally, all of the concern and work . . . by which I meet my material needs. Apply to me all of these things as a satisfaction for my sin.135 The Latin church wanted laypeople to view suffering as a species of penance and instructed them to embrace its spiritual benefits. This was the Christian view of suffering, and the church’s intellectual leaders wanted their contemporaries to adopt it, as a means of both discipline (i.e., Christianization) and consolation. This view was supposed to help Christians make sense of suffering; it was supposed to render suffering plausible, even meaningful, as part of the holy and merciful God’s good plan to redeem humanity. Suffering was not simply punishment for sin; it was also an expression of divine grace, because it provided one with an opportunity to shorten one’s stay in purgatory and also to be conformed more closely to the image of Christ and the saints. In many ways, the patient endurance of divinely sent suffering was the ideal penance, for it rendered compensation to Christ the judge in kind for his suffering on humanity’s behalf.

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The connection between suffering and penance was present throughout late medieval pastoralia and devotional literature; it was not limited to penitential works. We have already seen it in Surgant’s treatment of extreme unction and Gerson’s comments on the art of dying. The famous fourteenth-century Franciscan preacher Marquard of Lindau promoted this connection in his sermons and devotional works,136 as did the wellknown fifteenth-century writer of model sermons Johann Herolt.137 The connection was also present in the sermons of the late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Augustinian leader (and spiritual adviser to the young Luther) Johannes von Staupitz,138 and it was affirmed at the Council of Trent;139 it also turns up in lay diaries.140 By all accounts, the idea that suffering was salvific had widespread currency in late medieval (and early modern) Catholicism.141

The Training and Quality of the Clergy Thus far, we have focused on prescriptive literature for common priests but have said very little about the priests themselves. Having examined the ideals of the pastoralia, it is now appropriate to ask about actual ministry. What kind of pastoral care might late medieval Christians have actually received from their parish priests, especially in the midst of suffering? How closely did the cura animarum conform to the stipulations of Lateran IV or the pastoralia it inspired (or to lay expectations)? A number of scholars have expressed skepticism about the success of the “pastoral revolution” envisioned by Innocent III and the framers of the Lateran IV canons. Far from effecting monumental change in the quality of pastoral care, these scholars argue, the council and its pastoralia did little to alter the lamentable state of the clergy and the cura animarum in the later Middle Ages. In the 1970s, Jean Delumeau argued that the late medieval clergy was largely ignorant and incompetent, a state of affairs that both arose from and contributed to the marginally Christian nature of Europe at the time. In Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, Delumeau painted a dismal picture of the late medieval clergy and late medieval Christianity in general, arguing that the failings of the pre-Reformation Latin church contributed directly to the appeal of Protestantism, an appeal he found unfortunate if understandable.142 Most priests, who were drawn in large part from the common folk, were “scarcely more educated in religion” than their flocks

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and were thus unable and probably unwilling to say mass devoutly, hear confessions faithfully, and, especially, instruct the laity in the catechism adequately.143 According to Delumeau, there was no golden age of faith in medieval Europe, although he made a great deal of the lay religious awakening in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Unfortunately, the Latin church did little to nurture this new spiritual interest. A key factor in this failure was the lack of any formal seminary training for late medieval priests,144 something that would not be required until the Council of Trent.145 Delumeau thus asserted, “In the face of these increased spiritual needs, the parish clergy, especially in the countryside, were still as uneducated and undertrained [as before]. The drama of the Church was the lack of theological solidity in too many pastors, which meant that they were incapable of meeting the new religious demands of their faithful.”146 Delumeau then offered the following rather provocative—for the 1970s— research hypothesis: “on the eve of the Reformation, the average westerner was but superficially christianized.”147 He depicted the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation as (regrettable) efforts at Christianization. Scholars have debated Delumeau’s hypothesis and, for the most part, have concluded that it goes too far. Late medieval Europe was Christian but in a specifically late medieval way. Most people did not possess a sophisticated understanding of Christian doctrine, but this is not what the church required. Participation in the liturgical and sacramental life of the church coupled with an intention to believe the essentials of the faith, even if one did not fully understand them—so-called implicit faith—was the order of the day. Laypeople were expected to know and understand the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles’ Creed but not much else. As John Van Engen explains, “In medieval religious culture, the element of cognitive confession was never absent and may never be discarded. Yet it usually followed rather than preceded the liturgical practice that all took for granted.”148 Van Engen argues, “The real measure of Christian religious culture must be the degree to which time, space, and ritual observance came to be defined and grasped essentially in terms of the Christian liturgical year.”149 By this measure, many scholars would agree with Van Engen that late medieval Europe was Christian.150 Scholars have also seen as one-sided Delumeau’s claim that the late medieval clergy was ignorant and incompetent. To be sure, scholars generally concede that many late medieval priests received very little theological or pastoral training and that the problems of simony, absenteeism, pluralism, and clerical immorality continued throughout the pre-Reformation

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period and beyond.151 As R. N. Swanson observes, “ensuring the quality of the parish clergy was one of the most persistent and fundamental problems facing the western church throughout the [late medieval] period. . . . Quite possibly most of the clergy received no structured training at all.”152 Most priests learned the cura animarum through an informal apprentice system in which they received on-the-job training from a senior priest; they engaged in what Joseph Goering has called “social learning,” rather than in a priestly education based on books.153 The quality of the apprenticeship, of course, depended on the respective quality of the master and the apprentice, neither of which could be taken for granted in the later Middle Ages.154 The requirements for entering such an apprenticeship were rather minimal. Having demonstrated sufficient knowledge of basic Christian doctrine, coupled with adequate facility in Latin and a life free of impediments to the priesthood and scandalous sin, a man, provided he was of age,155 could be admitted to the priesthood. There was typically some kind of examination of knowledge and morals upon ordination, but the standards could be quite low or unevenly enforced.156 As we have seen, Lateran IV called for greater attention to the training and supervision of priests—something that was repeated at later councils157—but according to Swanson, “the effects were variable and limited.”158 A study on the impact of Lateran IV in Germany paints an even bleaker picture: “the legislation of Lateran IV had little appreciable impact on the German church in general, or upon the vast majority of German clerics as individuals. Imposed from above, the Lateran decrees failed in their intended purpose and remained for the most part mere bureaucratic statutes.”159 Another scholar concludes the same regarding Nicholas of Cusa’s attempted reform of the German church and its clergy.160 This very negative (and stereotypical) view of the late medieval clergy must be balanced by other evidence that indicates a steady rise in the quality of the priesthood in the later Middle Ages, especially the urban clergy.161 R. Emmet McLaughlin has shown that in response to calls from fifteenth-century reformers for a university-educated priesthood, a great number of German clerics matriculated at a university in Germany or abroad.162 McLaughlin cites regional studies that reveal a surprisingly high percentage of university-educated secular clergy in Germany in the fifteenth century: 19 percent in some areas but 60 percent in others, with an average of 40 percent. (The figures were higher for regular clergy.)163 McLaughlin asserts that a “significant minority” of the pastoral corps at

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the beginning of the sixteenth century was university-educated.164 Of course, this also means that a significant majority was not. It is important to point out that the vast majority of clerics who attended university never received a degree and likely took few, if any, courses in theology or canon law. McLaughlin readily acknowledges this fact.165 Clerics occupied themselves with the basic arts curriculum. And even if they did attend lectures on theology or canon law, it is highly unlikely that they learned much about the care of souls in the classroom, certainly not in any practical sense.166 There were no university courses in pastoral theology in the later Middle Ages. In fact, there were no institutions of any kind that sought to teach the “art of arts.”167 (The same is true of the Reformation period.) Clerics may well have received such practical instruction in a residential college, some of which were run by the Brothers of the Common Life, but this would have been purely informal.168 Beyond this, McLaughlin stresses that university training, by teaching the scholastic method, enabled clerics to read and understand the numerous manuals and summas that were available to help them carry out the cura animarum. Thus, attendance at university enabled a cleric to make use of the supplemental materials that the church produced to help him learn pastoral care. If McLaughlin’s findings are valid, and they have been corroborated by two recent dissertations,169 then it would be safe to assume that a “significant minority” of the late medieval German priesthood possessed the intellectual—and perhaps also the spiritual170—qualifications to carry out the basic tasks of their office: to celebrate and administer the sacraments, to instruct the laity in basic Christian beliefs, to pray for divine protection of people and their possessions, and to provide various kinds of blessings for the same. As we have seen, the late medieval clergy exercised a ministry that was largely cultic in nature; it emphasized correct performance of specified rites to provide reliable access to divine power and grace in the midst of the vicissitudes of this life and in hope of salvation in the next. But we have also seen that this cultic ministry was not the sum total of the clergy’s responsibilities.171 Priests were expected to administer extreme unction and hear confessions. While there has been a vigorous scholarly debate on their ability to confess penitents competently,172 the guidelines contained in Canon 21 of Lateran IV clearly call for more than a merely cultic ministry. The same is true of preaching. Whereas Lateran IV restricted this ministry to episcopal designees, synodal legislation from the fifteenth century increasingly called on parish priests to preach.173 A recent Yale dissertation on the clergy

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in the late medieval diocese of Eichstätt shows that priests obeyed this legislation: they did preach, and their sermons were typically moralistic and penitential in tone, the Ten Commandments serving as a favorite text.174 Studies of preaching in medieval Europe as a whole have reached similar conclusions.175 The Yale dissertation also emphasizes that the late medieval German clergy responded positively to the urgings of reformers such as Jean Gerson and Nicholas of Cusa for common priests to have access to a whole range of pastoralia and not simply to Mass books and copies of local synodal statutes. The provincial councils of Mainz (1451) and Cologne (1452) and the episcopal synods of Würzburg, Eichstätt, and Augsburg (1452) all followed Cusa’s lead and required parishes to have copies of Thomas Aquinas’s Concerning the Articles of Faith and the Sacraments of the Church and pastoral handbooks such as Guido’s Handbook for Curates and Pope Gregory I’s Pastoral Rule.176 The author of the dissertation, Matthew Wranovix, surveys parish libraries in the diocese of Eichstätt, along with the personal libraries of select priests and the records of the 1480 Eichstätt church visitation,177 and concludes: “Although there certainly were parish churches whose libraries were ‘barebones,’ in [fifteenthcentury] Germany at least, the well-stocked parish library was no rarity. Nor were its texts obsolete. Sermons, treatises, summas, manuals, and handbooks from popular fourteenth- and fifteenth-century authors were common and even texts reflecting the renewed interests of the late Middle Ages in patristics and rhetoric could find space on parish shelves.”178 Echoing McLaughlin, Wranovix maintains that a “significant minority” of Eichstätt’s diocesan clergy had attended university in either Ingolstadt or Vienna179 and argues that the diocese’s clergy was on the whole more competent and bookish than many scholars (including Delumeau) have appreciated. The author argues that “the same social processes that were driving the emergence of the proverbial more ‘confident’ and ‘assertive’ laity of the late Middle Ages encompassed the clergy as well. These processes had the effect of binding the clergy more effectively into secular and ecclesiastical administrative structures and began the process of clerical professionalization long before the Protestant and Catholic Reformations made this an explicit goal.”180 There is thus good reason to conclude that a newly confident and assertive clergy was available to minister to the newly confident and assertive laity in the later Middle Ages, although both groups made up a minority of the overall lay and clerical populations. It is also safe to conclude that this ministry included consolation of suffering Christians through both rite and word.

2

The Consolation Tradition in the Latin Church the treatments of extreme unction and the sacrament of penance in the late medieval pastoralia were by no means the only places clergy could turn to for guidance as they ministered to suffering Christians in the pre-Reformation German lands. Those parish priests who were intellectually and spiritually fit for their offices, along with members of the regular clergy who were entrusted with the cura animarum, could consult another important source as they engaged in this vital ministry. There was an abundant supply of consolation literature in the late medieval German lands that was part of a long tradition of such literature in the Christian West. An examination of this tradition and its ancient origins will provide a fuller sense of the resources that were available to the late medieval German clergy as they sought to instruct and console the sick and the suffering in their midst. As we consider the history of medieval Christian consolation literature, we will see not only significant borrowing from non-Christian sources but also a consistent effort to identify multiple causes of adversity and thus multiple solutions. The fact of suffering was owing to sin, that is, to divine punishment for sin—on this everyone agreed—but it did not follow that every instance of tribulation or adversity could be interpreted as an expression of God’s wrath. There was a diversity of causae—causes or reasons—for suffering in the Christian consolation literature that belies the stereotypical view of how traditional Christianity understood the relationship between sin and adversity. Adam’s sin accounted for the fact of suffering but not for every example of suffering; here Job proved much more useful and compelling to Christian consolers.

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Ancient Pagan Consolation Early Latin-speaking theologians such as Cyprian, Ambrose, and Jerome produced works of consolation that drew heavily on pagan consolation literature,1 especially Cicero and Seneca.2 (In this, they were following the precedent of the Apostle Paul, whose epistle to the Philippians also borrowed from Greco-Roman sources.)3 Therefore, before we can understand the Latin patristic approach to suffering and consolation, which had a lasting effect on the consolation literature of the Middle Ages, we must first briefly examine the pagan sources that the early fathers (and mothers) of the Church sought to Christianize. While many of these sources focus on remedies for the bereaved, these same remedies were also applied to other forms of suffering and adversity, the vast majority of which stemmed from the fact of human mortality. The pagan consolation literature did not begin with Cicero and Seneca; these philosophers drew on works that preceded them by centuries. Pagan thinking about consolation predates even Homer and is present in works of Plato and Aristotle, along with many others.4 Despite these early origins, the Greek consolation genre got its formal start with the Academic philosopher Crantor of Soli (ca. 325–ca. 275 b.c.), who is known as the father of this literature.5 His work On Grief seeks to console a father (Hippocles) for the loss of his children but also includes comments beyond this immediate situation, encompassing sorrow of other kinds. On Grief exercised a tremendous influence on the subsequent GrecoRoman consolation literature by identifying the salient issues with which this literature would occupy itself. One author summarizes these issues as follows: “the dispensations of fate (or the gods), death and afterlife, grief and its therapies.”6 Although it is no longer extant, parts of On Grief survive in works of Cicero and Plutarch, where Christians such as Jerome and Augustine encountered it.7 Of similar importance is Cicero’s Consolatio, which is also not extant, although much of it appears in books 1 and 3 of his Tusculan Disputations (45 b.c.), a work he wrote to console himself upon the death of his daughter Tullia.8 (Both Jerome and Augustine read the Consolatio,9 and the Tusculan Disputations directly influenced the important works of consolation by Boethius and Isidore of Seville—see discussion below.) In the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero explains that the task of philosophy is to teach a person to face death: philosophy seeks to “offer relief from anxieties, fears, and desires” that stem from human mortality10 and is thus an art

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of caring for the human soul;11 philosophy both allows and requires one to become one’s own spiritual physician.12 In order to learn the art of consolation, Cicero turned to a number of ancient philosophical schools.13 His comments on consolation in the Tusculan Disputations reveal him to be an eclectic Stoic who largely agrees with this school’s account of the universe and the proper end of human existence but who also appreciates the wisdom of other schools, especially regarding the mitigation of grief. In keeping with his moderate Stoicism, Cicero argues that the best way to care for the soul is to ensure that it is governed by reason, for he thinks that reason participates in the eternal logos that governs the universe.14 For Stoics, the task of the human logos was to live in accordance with the divine logos, or God.15 This meant accepting the unexpected twists and turns of fate as the providential and beneficent workings of God—thus, there is no place in Cicero’s work for objecting to fate.16 Living in accordance with reason also meant distinguishing between what was within one’s power to control and what was not and then, through the exercise of reason, becoming indifferent to all things that exceeded one’s reach.17 In order for reason to govern the soul in this way, the soul had to be free from the distraction of emotions, at least extremely strong ones such as grief.18 Hence the Stoic emphasis on apatheia, or lack of strong emotion. The soul had to expel or suppress strong emotions in order to be what it truly was, that is, to live in accordance with its nature, the great goal of Stoicism.19 Apatheia was seen as the necessary treatment for the disease of unbridled passion.20 This concept plays an important role in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. The central argument of the work is that death is not evil, and therefore it ought not to be a cause of fear or anxiety. For Cicero, life is something that human beings have on loan from nature with no fixed term; nature may recall this loan at any time—these are the conditions to which all human beings have agreed simply by virtue of being born.21 Cicero cannot say for sure what the afterlife will hold for the soul or even if there is an afterlife. He appears to prefer the Platonic belief in the immortality of the soul,22 for he says that the soul is divine and therefore eternal,23 but he also entertains the possibility that the soul simply perishes with the body at death. In either case, death is not evil, for in the former scenario, the soul progresses on to blessedness—Cicero rejects any notion of postmortem suffering for human souls in the Tusculan Disputations24—while in the latter, it is completely insensible, because it is nonexistent.25

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Although death is not an evil for Cicero, he understands that it causes a certain amount of distress to those whose loved ones are claimed by it. Parting company with Stoics such as Cleanthes, he allows for moderate grief (metriopatheia).26 Cicero writes, “for we are not sprung from rock,27 but our souls have a strain of tenderness and sensitiveness of a kind to be shaken by distress as by a storm.” He then cites Crantor to support his position: “‘I do not in the least agree with those who are so loud in their praise of that sort of insensibility which neither can nor ought to exist. Let me escape illness: should I be ill, let me have the capacity for feeling I previously possessed, whether it be knife or forceps that are to be applied to my body. For this state of apathy is not attained except at the cost of brutishness in the soul and callousness in the body.’”28 Still, Cicero will not allow for unrestrained grief, and he insists that grief has no positive function, neither for the living, the dead, nor the gods.29 Grief arises from false beliefs about the nature of human existence and therefore must be restrained and controlled by reason. Grief is not an obligation of nature; rather, “it is a matter of the will, plain and simple.”30 Cicero goes on to provide a number of remedies for grief that would become accepted topoi in the subsequent Christian consolation literature: the importance of contemplating and preparing for all possible vicissitudes before they happen, so that one is not astonished when tragedy strikes;31 the value of considering others who have suffered similar or greater losses, a remedy that is held to be especially useful when faced with the death of a child;32 and the healing effects of time, especially when aided by reason, which Cicero maintains can greatly accelerate these effects.33 The enlightened comforter was to use these and other remedies as he sought “to do away with distress [aegritudine] root and branch, or allay it, or diminish it as far as possible, or stop its progress and not allow it to extend further, or to divert it elsewhere.”34 Cicero concludes by providing a three-step approach to the cure of grieving souls: “The first remedial step therefore in giving comfort will be to show that either there is no evil or very little; the second will be to discuss the common lot of life and any special feature that needs discussion in the lot of the individual mourner; the third will be to show that it is utter folly to be uselessly overcome by sorrow when one realizes that there is no possible advantage.”35 Another pagan work of consolation that had a significant influence on Christian consolation literature was Seneca’s To Marcia on Consolation (A.D. 40). This letter echoes several of the themes we have seen in Cicero, but Seneca treats his topic with even greater rhetorical force. Seneca’s

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task in this letter was to urge Marcia to stop mourning for her son, who had been dead for three years. Similarly to Cicero, Seneca recommends premeditation as an important defense against excessive grief.36 He also reminds Marcia of the fragile nature of life and the fickle nature of fate. Seneca writes, “And so we should love all of our dear ones . . . but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.”37 He argues: If you grieve for the death of your son, the blame must go back to the time when he was born; for his death was proclaimed at his birth; into this condition was he begotten. . . . We have come into the realm of Fortune, and harsh and invincible is her power; things deserved and undeserved must we suffer just as she wills. . . . Like a mistress that is changeable and passionate and neglectful of her slaves, she will be capricious in both her rewards and her punishments.38 According to Seneca, Marcia should consider that others have suffered from greater losses and simply be grateful that she had her son for as long as she did.39 It is far better for him to have died young and thus avoided the evils of this life than to have continued to live.40 Moreover, Seneca insists that the soul of Marcia’s son is still alive and now is happy and blessed, because it has escaped the clutches of fortune.41 (Similarly to Cicero, Seneca discounts the possibility of punishment in the next life.)42 In light of all of these considerations, Marcia should now simply submit to fate,43 the message of the vast majority of ancient pagan consolation literature.

Ancient Christian Consolation Literature Christians borrowed a great deal from the consolation literature of Cicero, Seneca, and other pagan philosophers and in many ways were engaged in the same effort: to remove the sting of death, to render it somehow less foreboding, even benign or blessed, and thus to try to make sense out of the sorrow and suffering that were part and parcel of the human mortal condition. There were important differences in the ways they went about doing so, but one should not lose sight of this common project or of the means and remedies they shared. For example, Christian consolers could readily advocate the pagan notion of premeditation. In his work On the

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Death of Satyrus (378), Ambrose says that the blow of his brother’s death has been especially difficult for him to bear because it came so unexpectedly—Satyrus had survived shipwreck only to die of disease. The famous bishop of Milan thus had no time to prepare himself mentally and emotionally for this tragedy, which he states would have greatly weakened the blow.44 Ambrose also readily acknowledges that Christians are in no way exempt from the common lot of humankind; they are fully mortal and are just as susceptible to death and disease as anyone else. In the same treatise, he writes, “Who would think that he ought to be excepted from the lot of the dying, who has not been excepted from the lot of being born?” Ambrose observes that even Christ died a bodily death, not refusing “the law of the flesh.”45 More than a century earlier, Cyprian had voiced a similar opinion. In his On Mortality (252), one of the earliest postcanonical works of Christian consolation, the bishop of Carthage addressed the perceived problem of Christians dying along with pagans in a recent plague. (On Mortality was still being published in the sixteenth century.)46 Cyprian asserts: It troubles some that we have this mortality in common with others. But what in this world do we not have in common with others as long as this flesh, in accordance with the law of our original birth, still remains common to us? As long as we are here in the world we are united with the human race in equality of the flesh, [but] we are separated in spirit. And so, until this corruptible element puts on incorruptibility and this mortal element receives immortality [1 Corinthians 15:53] and [Christ] conducts us to God the Father, the disadvantages of the flesh [carnis incommoda], whatever they are, we have in common with the human race.47 According to Cyprian, Christians are fully passible; their faith in no way exempts them from the many vicissitudes and vulnerabilities of mortal existence. This most basic feature of human existence—the ability to suffer—linked Christians securely to the whole human race. Christian consolers also employed several of the practical remedies found in the pagan consolation literature: the healing effects of time,48 death as liberation from the evils of this life,49 the benefit of dying young,50 the fickle nature of life’s course,51 the importance of seeing loved ones as being “on loan” to us,52 and the fact that consolation—even Christian

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consolation—did not always work. In a letter that Jerome wrote to his friend Heliodorus (396) on the death of the latter’s nephew, Nepotianus, the famous monk-scholar confesses that he finds it very difficult to overcome his grief, regardless of his familiarity with various Christian remedies: “The fact is, for all my resistance and opposition the tears still run down my cheeks, and though I know the teaching of the virtues and have the hope of the resurrection a feeling of longing is crushing my believing heart. O death, you who divide brother from brother and, harsh and cruel as you are, separate those who are united in love!”53 Finally, and perhaps most important, Christian consolers agreed with their pagan counterparts that one must not protest the will of God (or the gods); rather, one must submit oneself entirely to the designs of divine providence. Thus, Cyprian writes in On Mortality, “We must not murmur [as Israel did in Numbers 17:25], beloved brethren, but must patiently and bravely bear with whatever happens, since it is written: ‘A contrite and humble heart God does not despise’ [Psalm 50:19].”54 Plutarch once wrote that a grieving person must conform herself “uncomplainingly and obediently to the dispensation of things.”55 Christian consolers fully agreed. As in Cicero and Seneca, there was no room in early Christian consolation for protest against the divine will. We have already seen Cyprian and Jerome hint at the central difference between pagan and Christian consolation: belief in the Resurrection. Time and again, early Christian theologians stress the centrality and certainty of the Resurrection (and the Last Judgment) against the ambivalence and ambiguity of their pagan counterparts on the afterlife. In On Mortality, Cyprian writes, “Many of us are dying in this mortality, that is, many of us are being freed from the world. This mortality is a bane to the Jews and pagans and enemies of Christ; to the servants of God it is a salutary departure [salutaris excessus].  .  . .The just are called to refreshment, the unjust are carried off to torture.”56 Ambrose similarly boasts in On the Death of Satyrus: So, then, my tears shall cease, for one must yield to healthful remedies, since there ought to be some difference between believers and unbelievers. Let them, therefore, weep who cannot have the hope of the resurrection, of which not the sentence of God but the strictness of faith [fidei inclementia] deprives them. Let there be this difference between the servants of Christ and the worshippers of idols, that the latter weep for their friends, whom they suppose to have perished for ever; that they should never cease from tears, and

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gain no rest from sorrow, who think that the dead have no rest. But from us, for whom death is the end not of our nature but of this life only, since our nature itself is restored to a better state, let the advent of death wipe away all tears.57 A little later on, he asserts: And certainly if they have ever found any consolation who have thought that death is the end of sensation and the failing of our nature, how much more must we find it so to whom the consciousness of good done brings the promise of better rewards! The heathen have their consolation, because they think that death is a cessation of all evils, and as they are without the fruit of life, so, too, they think that they have escaped all feeling and pain of those severe and constant sufferings which we have to endure in this life. We, however, as we are better supported by our rewards, so, too, ought we to be more patient through our consolation, for they [i.e., departed Christians] seem to be not lost but sent before, whom death is not going to swallow up, but eternity to receive.58 In On the Belief in the Resurrection, an address that Ambrose delivered seven days after his funeral oration in honor of Satyrus, the bishop of Milan asks very simply, “What grief is there which the grace of the Resurrection does not console? What sorrow is not excluded by the belief that nothing perishes in death?”59 Ambrose directly assails pagan ambiguity about the afterlife: “The heathen mostly console themselves with the thought, either of the common misery, or of the law of nature, or of the immortality of the soul. And would that their utterances were consistent, and that they did not transmit the wretched soul into a number of ludicrous monstrosities and figures [in varia portentorum ludibria formasque]!”60 This confidence in the Resurrection was the source of other important differences between Christian and pagan consolers. In On Mortality, Cyprian sees the hope of future blessing as the motivation for the Christian’s ability to remain steadfast not only in the midst of death but also when confronted with daily suffering: The fear of God and faith ought to make you ready for all things. Though it should be the loss of private property, though it should be the constant and violent afflictions of the members by wasting

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diseases, though it should be the mournful and sorrowful tearing away from wife, from children, from departing dear ones, let not such things be stumbling blocks for you, but battles; nor let them weaken or crush the faith of the Christian, but rather let them reveal his valor in the contest, since every injury arising from present evils should be made light of through confidence in the blessings to come. Unless a battle has gone before there cannot be a victory; when a victory has been won in the conflict of battle, then a crown also is given to the victors.61 Pagan philosophers could also say that tragic events prove the character of human beings; this is the central argument of Seneca’s On Providence, which similarly employs the metaphor of a soldier or a gladiator being tested and strengthened through battle. Seneca also compares God’s habit of allowing misfortune to befall the good man to an earthly father who disciplines his children for their good, a metaphor that recurs throughout Christian consolation literature.62 But Christians such as Cyprian still believed that they suffered better than pagans because of the hope of the Resurrection: “every injury arising from present evils” could be borne patiently and faithfully as the Christian looked to the manifold and certain blessings of the next life. When commenting on the Apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” and subsequent assertion that God’s grace is made sufficient in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:7–9), Cyprian writes, “When, therefore, some infirmity and weakness and desolation attacks us, then is our power made perfect, then our faith is crowned, if though tempted it has stood firm. . . . This finally is the difference between us and the others who do not know God, that they complain and murmur in adversity, while adversity does not turn us from the truth of virtue and faith, but proves us in suffering [corroborant in dolore].”63 This final line is very important. According to Cyprian, the most important distinction between Christians and pagans was that the former suffered well, while the latter suffered poorly. For Cyprian, this distinction was proof of Christianity’s superiority to every form of pagan religion or philosophy—Christianity was the supreme philosophy. Cyprian also sees the Resurrection as the reason Christians should not mourn their dead, because “we know that they are not lost but sent before . . . and that no occasion should be given to the pagans to censure us deservedly and justly, on the ground that we grieve for those who we say are living with God, as if entirely destroyed and lost, and that we do

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not show by the testimony of the heart and breast the faith which we declare in speech and word!”64 Cyprian cites the Apostle Paul’s statement about the importance of Christians not grieving “as those who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) and then later in the same treatise asserts, “Rather, beloved brethren, with sound mind, with firm faith, with rugged virtue, let us be ready for every manifestation of God’s will; freed from the terror of death, let us think of the immortality which follows. Let us show that this is what we believe, so that we may not mourn the death even of our dear ones and, when the day of our own summons comes, without hesitation but with gladness we may come to the Lord at His call.”65 Christian consolers typically allowed greater room for grief and mourning than Cyprian here permits. The example of Christ weeping at the death of Lazarus (John 11:35) made such a stern view difficult for most Christians to accept. Ambrose defended his tears of sorrow for Satyrus: But we have not incurred any grievous sin by our tears. Not all weeping proceeds from unbelief or weakness. Natural grief [naturae dolor] is one thing, distrustful sadness [tristitia diffidentiae] is another, and there is a very great difference between longing for what you have lost and lamenting that you have lost it. . . . I confess, then, that I too wept, but the Lord also wept. He wept for one not related to Him, I for my brother. He wept for all in weeping for one, I will weep for thee in all, my brother.66 Ambrose even tells his audience that Christ is touched by their tears for Satyrus.67 Jerome also mentions Christ’s tears for Lazarus and the Apostle Paul’s joy at the recovery of Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25–30) and concludes that Heliodorus may mourn for Nepotianus, provided he puts limits to his grief.68 Even Augustine, who famously checked his son, Adeodatus, when he wept at Monica’s death, could cite Crantor with approval, arguing that mourning is an acceptable response to death and that it is inhuman not to show emotion. Augustine cites Christ’s tears for Lazarus to support his case.69 What we see here is a Christian version of metriopatheia based on the hope of the Resurrection and the humanity of Christ. There is a final important difference between early Christian and pagan consolation literature that we should mention before moving on to consider medieval works of consolation: the Christian God. The Christian insistence on a single, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving Deity, who had assumed human form in Christ, was in direct opposition to pagan

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polytheism and pagan notions of fate.70 This God had created humankind for fellowship with himself, imposed death and suffering when the first humans broke this fellowship—mortality and hardship were not simply part of the (original) nature of things71—and worked to restore this fellowship through Christ. It was he who sent trials, tribulations, and adversities for the proving of human souls, and it was he who provided hope of deliverance from them. It was the Christian God who was the ultimate source of Christian consolation; it was he who removed the sting of death (1 Corinthians 15:55). Stressing these important differences between Christian and pagan approaches to suffering and death played an important role in early Christian apologetics. Christians used suffering to argue for the superiority of their creed, seeking to make the case that they suffered better than pagans, largely because of their belief in the Resurrection and the consolation it provided. For Christians, suffering provided an important opportunity to argue for the truth of their religion and also to prove and refine their own faith in its superiority. This was especially the case among the Christian martyrs, who saw their suffering as a summons to imitate Christ and to bring glory to his name.72 In time, this need to defend and die for the faith would diminish as Christianity eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire and persecution subsided. The need for consolation remained, of course, but it took on a less apologetic tone and became part of the effort to Christianize the masses.

Medieval Consolation Literature The intellectual and spiritual leaders of the early medieval Latin church continued to produce consolation literature as they sought to help the clergy minister to suffering Christians in the very different context of a fallen Roman Empire and the mission field of pagan northern Europe. Much of this new literature was directly informed by ancient works of consolation, both pagan and Christian. Although the verbal and rhetorical ministry of consolation that we have seen in Cyprian, Ambrose, and Jerome would soon give way to a ministry of consolation focused primarily on ritual and sacraments, there were attempts to preserve and mediate the ancient heritage, in addition to contributing new insights to it. The most well-known work of medieval consolation from the modern perspective is Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius was a philosopher and a high government official during the reign of the Ostrogothic

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king Theodoric. Accused of treason, he was subsequently imprisoned and slated for execution, which took place in 524 or 525. Boethius wrote his work on consolation from prison, drawing heavily on pagan consolation literature, especially Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations.73 The central question of the text is why the innocent suffer and the wicked prosper as God apparently looks on, a topic of immense and obvious personal interest to Boethius, who insisted that he had been falsely accused. In the ensuing dialogue between Philosophy and Boethius, the latter learns that the path to consolation lies in correcting his false thinking about himself and the world. He must recover knowledge of himself as a mortal creature endowed with reason and also be reminded of the original source and proper telos of creation, namely, the eternal mind and ultimate good, God, who governs the world sovereignly and justly. Human beings are not privy to God’s good plan for the world and thus experience it as fickle and chaotic. Nevertheless, God sends blessing and woe to move the just toward the good— and hence true happiness—and to drive the wicked away from it. In this sense, as Philosophy explains, “every fortune is indeed good,” for it always accomplishes God’s good design.74 Therefore, “the wise man ought not to chafe whenever he is locked in conflict with Fortune”;75 rather, he should submit himself to the workings of providence, knowing that the divine mind has ordered things so that his inborn desire for happiness might find its resting place not in ephemeral things but in God and God alone. Here we see the same emphasis on subjection to fate or the divine will that was present in ancient consolation literature, both pagan and Christian. The Consolation of Philosophy was not especially popular in the centuries following Boethius’s death. It was not until it was Christianized by Alcuin—Boethius makes no explicit references to Christ in the work— and introduced to the court of Charlemagne that it became well known. (Alcuin and later Christian commentators replaced Lady Philosophy with Wisdom or Theology and interpreted pagan notions of providence, fate, and free will along Augustinian lines.)76 The work provided comfort to medieval luminaries such as Alfred the Great and Dante77 and eventually made its way into the curricula of various medieval Latin schools and also the curricula of universities and monastic schools. Future clerics who attended these schools were thus likely familiar with The Consolation of Philosophy, and even if the Latin proved difficult for them, there were a number of vernacular translations available in the later Middle Ages, including seven in German.78 But The Consolation of Philosophy did not really have a significant influence on the cura animarum, at least not in a

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direct fashion; this was not its goal. Its importance for our purposes lies in the way it attests the ongoing influence of pagan sources on Christian consolation and, as we will see, the way it indirectly shaped the late medieval care of souls through the works of consolation that it inspired. If we wish to find a Christian treatment of consolation that had a direct impact on the medieval care of souls, we could do no better than Pope Gregory I’s Pastoral Rule. As John McNeill has observed, “Of all the popes, none was more the pastor of the Western Church than Gregory the Great.”79 Gregory’s Pastoral Rule was arguably the most influential work of its kind in the early and high Middle Ages.80 Reformers such as Jean Gerson were still recommending it in the later Middle Ages, as were a number of late medieval German provincial councils and synods.81 Gregory wrote the work in the late sixth century to explain his reluctance to take up the papal office, arguing that the demands and burdens of the office exceeded his abilities and gifts. (Gregory finally consented to being made pope in 590.) The new pope asserted that the government of souls, which he, drawing on Gregory Nazianzen, dubbed the “art of arts” (ars artium),82 ought not to be entered upon lightly, and Gregory urged his readers to count the costs before doing so. The Pastoral Rule went on to provide for the medieval clergy the kind of rule for life that Benedict provided for Western monks.83 Although it is not a work of consolation, Gregory’s Pastoral Rule contains important comments on the place of suffering in Christian life and Christian ministry, along with recommendations for a ministry of verbal consolation. Early on in the Pastoral Rule, Gregory argues that the “school of adversity” (adversitatis magisterio) cleanses the pastor’s heart with the sorrow it brings and returns him to himself, that is, to a recollection of his own unworthiness and to his identity as a follower of Christ, who chose not the way of a king but the way of the cross.84 Gregory clearly expected the Christian pastor to minister to members of his flock who were also enrolled in this school. Later in the Rule, he maintains that a pastor should not be so caught up in the contemplation of heavenly things that he forgets to be compassionate to those on earth. He says that the pastor should “transfer to himself the infirmities of others” and then transcend them and himself through contemplation.85 Gregory also explains what form this ministry of compassion should take in the case of sick and suffering Christians.86 He instructs pastors to remind suffering Christians of several things. Reminiscent of Seneca’s advice in On Providence, he says that the sick are to be admonished to realize

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that “they are sons of God by the very fact that the scourge of discipline chastises them. For unless it were in His plan to give them an inheritance after their chastisements, He would not trouble to school them in affliction.”87 Here Gregory quotes a number of biblical passages, most notably for the subsequent tradition Hebrews 12:5 (cf. Proverbs 3:12): “My son, do not neglect the discipline of the Lord, and do not grow weary when He rebukes you, for the Lord chastises those whom He loves, and He scourges everyone whom He receives as a son.” This verse was one of the most frequently cited passages in the medieval and early modern consolation literature. Gregory also wants the sick to be told that if they wish to arrive in the heavenly country, they first have to endure hardships in this country. He observes that just as the stones for the Temple of God were prepared outside Jerusalem so they could be set in place without the sound of a hammer (1 Kings 6:7), “so we are now smitten with scourges outside, that afterwards we may be set into the Temple of God without the stroke of discipline, and that the strokes may now cut away whatever is inordinate in us, and that then only the concord of charity may bind us together in the building.”88 Gregory’s ministry of compassion includes four more exhortations to sick and suffering Christians that would become mainstays of the subsequent consolatory tradition. First, such Christians should consider how their earthly fathers chastised them to make them fit for an earthly inheritance and then see their divinely sent afflictions, though they be hard, as light in comparison with the eternal inheritance for which they are being prepared.89 Second, they should reflect on how bodily affliction returns one to true knowledge of oneself as vulnerable and infirm. Here Gregory compares the body and its afflictions to Balaam’s ass, which, according to Numbers 22:21–41, saw the invisible divine obstacle to Balaam’s intended and ungodly destination and sought to warn its master of the obstacle’s existence, albeit unsuccessfully. Gregory’s point is that Balaam should have listened to his donkey and the suffering Christian to his afflicted body, for each has an important message for the soul about its condition before God.90 Third, sick Christians should consider how great a gift bodily affliction is because it cleanses one of one’s past sins by calling them to mind and also restrains sins of the future by threatening further pain.91 (There is no mention here of suffering as atoning for sins as in late medieval penitential literature.) Finally, sick Christians should persevere in patience as they consider how Christ was constantly afflicted by his enemies, even though he was sinless, and therefore how sinful human beings should welcome similar afflictions because they recall one from sin.92

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These explanations of the role of suffering in the Christian life, which Gregory largely borrowed from earlier patristic sources, would be repeated time and again in subsequent consolation and devotional literature; we have already seen several of them in Berthold’s Summa of Canon Law. Perhaps what is most striking about Gregory’s account of suffering in the Christian life is that he makes so little of its penal nature. He certainly believed that suffering was a punishment for sin,93 but this is not what he emphasizes in the Pastoral Rule. Gregory had already cautioned against positing too direct a connection between sin and suffering in his Moralia, a set of talks on Job that he gave before becoming pope, which had a decisive influence on medieval moral theology.94 Gregory observes in the Moralia that Job’s friends failed to appreciate that suffering was of different kinds and served a number of purposes in the divine economy. Job’s friends assumed a simple relationship between sin and suffering, virtue and blessing, and therefore wrongly concluded that Job was being punished for his sins.95 According to Gregory, there are at least four kinds of divinely imposed suffering, and here we see him expand the reasons for suffering that he gave in the Pastoral Rule: some by which a sinner is punished but with no thought of his correction; some by which a sinner is punished so that he might be corrected; some by which a person is afflicted not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones; and some by which a person’s past sins are not punished, nor his future ones prevented, but his love for his divine deliverer is caused to burn more ardently. Like those of the blind man in John 9, Job’s sufferings belonged in the final category.96 The genuineness of his love for his redeemer was being both tested and refined as Satan deprived him of his creaturely comforts and dearest possessions: “For pain tests if the one at peace truly loves something” (Poena quippe interrogat, si quietus quis veraciter amat).97 Gregory exhorts his auditors (and readers) to follow Job’s example and to bear their suffering patiently, for, he argues, all adversity comes from God, and God cannot will anything unjust.98 The other important early medieval work of consolation that we should consider is Isidore of Seville’s Synonyma, which was also available to priests entrusted with the care of souls in the later Middle Ages. The famous Spanish theologian and philosopher became bishop of Seville about a decade after Gregory became pope, but, unlike Gregory, Isidore occupied his metropolitan see for more than thirty years—he died in 636, Gregory in 604. His Synonyma, or Soliloquia, as it was also known in the Middle Ages, consists of a dialogue between a human being (homo) and

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Reason (ratio), in which the latter seeks to show the former the path to true happiness. The format is thus similar to The Consolation of Philosophy, and, like Boethius, Isidore is clearly indebted to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations,99 though not to Boethius himself.100 As its title suggests, the Synonyma is in the first place a work of rhetoric that explores Latin synonyms, but its actual content conforms to the theme indicated in the subtitle: Concerning the Lamentation of a Sinful Soul. It is not clear if the soul in question is Isidore’s or if the dialogue relates to any specific crisis he experienced. The work begins with the groanings of a man who feels himself utterly despised and rejected by the human family. The afflicted man says of himself, “I have been forsaken by all people.”101 He says that he has been falsely accused and is now persecuted by his enemies for an unspecified crime that he did not commit. He has been sent into exile and compares himself to a leper whom people despise to touch.102 Job-like, he laments his birth and wishes to die; he despairs of finding either justice or mercy.103 Reason then enters the dialogue and urges the man not to give himself over to despair. She applies several remedies, some of which are reminiscent of those we have already seen in the Pastoral Rule and the ancient consolation literature: the man should consider the suffering of others, which in many cases is greater than his own;104 he should remember that adversity is simply part of mortal human life and that it has an end;105 he should understand that a Christian cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless he undergoes many tribulations (Acts 14:21);106 nor are a Christian’s present sufferings worth comparing to future glories (Romans 8:18);107 and the Christian’s suffering purges sin and thus prepares him for heaven.108 Unlike the Pastoral Rule, Isidore places great emphasis on the connection between sin and suffering. Reason tells the man that he has sinned and therefore deserves his present fate; in fact, he deserves much worse and will receive worse if he continues to murmur against God.109 Whatever suffering he experiences now is insignificant in comparison with the pains of hell, which never cease.110 Reason goes on to list in exhaustive fashion all of the man’s sins, arguing that he will stand utterly condemned at the Last Judgment. The man finally breaks and exclaims, “Woe is me! Woe is unhappy me! Woe is miserable me! I did not know that I was smitten because of my iniquity; I did not know that I was judged justly.”111 The man continues to despair, now because he cannot extricate himself from his bondage to sin. Reason counsels him to submit to the purifying effects of his suffering

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and to consider again the impending Last Judgment and pains of hell. She then tells him that his every hope for mercy rests on one thing: confession.112 He must reveal his sin to God and not despair of divine forgiveness, for such despair is the worst sin of all.113 The man follows Reason’s advice and confesses to God that there is no greater sin than his sin, that “all evils have come as a result of my sin,”114 and that he deserves to suffer much more. He fears the God of judgment greatly and pleads for mercy.115 Reason intervenes a final time, now in a more consoling fashion. She acknowledges the depth of his contrition and suffering, which have moved her to tears, and implores God to have mercy on him. She urges him not to return to his sins and to do good continually if he wishes to be saved.116 The Synonyma did not enjoy the same popularity as either The Consolation of Philosophy (in Christianized forms) or the Pastoral Rule, but it was still a well-known text in the later Middle Ages, including in the German lands.117 It demonstrates very well how medieval Christian works of consolation could make a great deal of sin, divine judgment, and hell and thus provides important counterpoint to the more cautious Pastoral Rule and the more cerebral (and pagan) Consolation of Philosophy. Still, Isidore was somewhat unusual in his nearly singular emphasis on suffering as punishment for sin.118 In his exhaustive study of middle-Latin works of consolation, Peter von Moos notes that suffering was never viewed exclusively as a punishment for sin;119 it was more frequently depicted as a sign of divine election that conferred many benefits, as we saw in Gregory’s Pastoral Rule.120 Peter Lombard did not reduce suffering to divine punishment for sin. In his Four Books of Sentences (ca. 1150), which became the standard textbook for theology in medieval universities,121 the theologian and (later) bishop of Paris addresses the matter of divinely sent flagella within the context of a discussion of penance for postbaptismal sin. Borrowing from Pseudo-Bede, Lombard lists five reasons for human beings to experience divine flagella: so the merit of the just may be increased through patience, as in case of Job; for protection of virtue lest pride grow, as in the case of the Apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7); for the correction of a sin, as in the case of Miriam when she became leprous (Numbers 12:10); for the glory of God, as in the case of the man born blind (John 9:3); or as the beginning of punishment for grievous sin that would be completed in hell, as in the case of Herod’s blasphemy (Acts 12:23).122 Von Moos’s comment about the many benefits that suffering was held to confer is further substantiated by an important work of consolation from the second half of the thirteenth century: the Cistercian Gerard of Liege’s

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Concerning the Twelve Benefits of Tribulation. Albert Auer observes of this work, “At the center of the theology of suffering stands the treatise, De duodecim utilitatibus tribulationum. [The recognition of ] its worth in the Middle Ages placed it among the most beloved works, and it drew a good portion of the medieval ascetic literature into its sphere of influence.”123 Like Gregory’s Pastoral Rule, the Twelve Benefits makes very little of suffering’s punitive nature. Gerard makes no claim to originality or innovation in his work, something that was generally frowned upon in such literature. He discusses several of the benefits of suffering that we have seen elsewhere but with some unique turns of phrase and some rather memorable images: suffering is a sign of divine favor; it purges away sin just as a wine press squeezes juice from grapes;124 it rescues one from worldly joys and loves that flatter and seduce the soul; it recalls one to true self-knowledge and knowledge of God by raising one’s eyes from earthly to heavenly realities (Gerard refers to adversities as love letters sent by Christ to his forgetful bride to help her recall the graces and benefits of their love);125 it allows one to pay off one’s debt to God for sin; and it causes one to seek solace from heaven alone, one’s true home. Gerard also entertains possible objections to divinely imposed tribulation, something we have not seen in earlier consolation literature. As he assures his readers that Christ will be with them in the midst of suffering, providing internal solace (Vulgate Psalm 90:15; Vulgate Psalm 33:19), Gerard pauses: “But perhaps you are saying, I sense well the present tribulations, but the company of God in my tribulation I do not sense. For if he would manifest the sweetness of his presence as he manifests the bitterness of tribulation, I would endure tribulation patiently and cheerfully. And perhaps you add that before the tribulation you were sensing the sweetness of God more than in the tribulation that has been imposed.”126 Gerard responds that God does not test a soul beyond what it can bear but multiplies virtue and grace as the suffering increases (1 Corinthians 10:13). And God infuses not only grace into the suffering soul but also internal consolation (2 Corinthians 1:5). However, the suffering Christian may not be able to sense or feel these infusions directly. Gerard concedes that they are not always perceptible to the suffering Christian; they must be received by a prepared heart, that is, a heart prepared by tribulation. But Gerard insists that the infusions are real nonetheless and that beyond these, there is the great benefit of having been liberated from the deceptions of the world.127 Gerard also entertains the objection that God need not send

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tribulation to Christians to make them mindful of him, as heavenly benefits would do just fine, especially for those who are upright in heart.128 To this, Gerard responds in Augustinian fashion that even the righteous can be drawn unduly to divine benefits and ignore their giver.129 This is what happened to Solomon, despite his wisdom, and this is why Job serves as a better example of how perfect knowledge of God comes only through tribulation: “tribulations led him [Job] to perfection, while [temporal] gifts truly led Solomon to foolishness and perdition.”130

Late Medieval Consolation The long history of extrabiblical Christian consolation that began with Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, and which included Gregory the Great, Boethius, and Isidore of Seville, reached its culmination (from the late medieval view of things) in two influential aids for pastoral care and lay piety that shared the same title: Consolation of Theology, one produced by Johannes von Dambach in 1366 and the other by Jean Gerson in 1418. Both works cite the pagan and Christian sources that we have examined thus far, and both continue to offer numerous causae for suffering.131 Job is especially important in Gerson’s work. The Consolation of Theology of Johannes von Dambach was one of the single most important works of consolation in late medieval Germany. Dambach came from a patrician family in the Alsace and entered a Dominican monastery in Strasbourg at the age of twenty. He studied theology in his monastery and then in Cologne, where the famous mystic Meister Eckhart was one of his teachers. Along with other talented students such as Johannes Tauler (also a patrician’s son from Strasbourg), Dambach was sent on to Paris for further theological study. At the request of Emperor Charles IV, Pope Clement VI allowed Dambach to be made master of theology in Montpellier (1347). From there, Dambach went to the emperor’s new university in Prague, where he taught theology. He later returned to the Dominican monastery in Strasbourg, only to be forced to leave the city because of papal interdict, part of the ongoing imperial-papal feud in the later Middle Ages. It was during this flight that he wrote the Consolation of Theology to provide solace for himself. He eventually returned to Strasbourg, where he spent the majority of the rest of his life serving his order by means of quill and ink. He died in 1372 at the age of eighty-four.132

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As the title of the work suggests, Dambach seeks to replace the wisdom of philosophy with the wisdom of theology, and in this regard, he continues to participate in the project first begun by Alcuin to Christianize Boethius. However, the most significant aspect of Dambach’s work is not its provision of new explanations or remedies for suffering or its theological sophistication. The consistent refrain that runs through this very long work is the rather traditional message that whatever form suffering takes, it is always good for the sufferer, as it ultimately comes from God and therefore must not be opposed or evaded. Time and again, Dambach asks, “Why are you disturbed about tribulation? Have you not considered that the eternal God intends your greatest good through tribulations?”133 (Johannes von Dambach drew directly on the Twelve Benefits in his Consolation of Theology.)134 It is the sheer scope of the Consolation of Theology that most impresses. Dambach’s work is really a summa that seeks to gather in one place all received wisdom on nearly every form of suffering imaginable. The Consolation of Theology is a very large work: 302 folio pages in an undated printed version from the press of Georg Reyser in Speier. (The earliest incunabulum comes from ca. 1470/75.)135 It is divided into fifteen books, each of which treats a different kind of suffering. Each book is further subdivided into numerous chapters, and each chapter is made up of considerationes, sometimes as many as twenty or more. Dambach treats a truly dizzying array of adversities: loss of mundane prosperity, loss of honor or reputation, private and public shame, sojourn in this vale of misery, bodily sickness, war, persecution, homelessness, exile, martyrdom, temptations of the flesh, various divine scourges, daily toil, difficulty in cultivating virtue, contrition and penance, the care of souls, an adulterous spouse, imprisonment, sterility, impotence, the death of friends and loved ones, fear of hell, fear of death, fear of predestination, loss of food or clothing, a rigid teacher, the demands of study, bodily deformity or loss of limbs through amputation, loss of memory and knowledge, loss of the sacraments through interdict, blocks to (monastic) devotion, and even shortness of stature, to name but a few. Dambach’s apparent goal in treating so many different kinds of adversity was to gather every imaginable form of misfortune under a Christian interpretive canopy so that priests and their flocks would employ only Christian—or Christianized—means of understanding and coping with afflictions of body and soul. Dambach intended his work for the educated cleric or layperson and seems to have had in mind especially the nobility, as he dedicates an

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entire book (VI) to their losses. (There is not a comparable book on burghers.) Auer notes that there were many works of late medieval consolation that were better in terms of style and content, but none was as popular as Dambach’s.136 No work on consolation was excerpted as frequently as his Consolation of Theology.137 The sheer size of the work no doubt contributed to this fact, as did the detailed table of contents. One finds a more engaging, if less expansive, treatment of suffering in Jean Gerson’s Consolation of Theology. A doctor consolatorius par excellence, Gerson almost certainly knew of Dambach’s Consolation of Theology,138 although he makes no specific reference to it in his own work by the same title. In 1395, Gerson had been elected chancellor of the University of Paris, which made him head of the theology faculty and honorary head of the university.139 He had assumed this role at the unusually young age of thirty-two, having received the doctorate in theology the year before. He held this chancellorship, along with several ecclesiastical posts, until his death in 1429. However, despite this position of influence and his great fame as a theologian, mystic, and reformer, he was no stranger to doubt, frustration, despair, and even exile. The immediate occasion for Gerson’s Consolation of Theology was the turmoil of the Great Schism and civil unrest in Paris. Gerson played a leading role at the Council of Constance, only to see his designs for healing the papal schism frustrated and his return to Paris rendered extremely risky by the Duke of Burgundy, who threatened to kill him. (In 1407, the Duke of Burgundy had assassinated the Duke of Orléans in the streets of Paris and later sought to defend his act as justifiable tyrannicide. Gerson consistently opposed him in this effort and narrowly escaped assassination himself in 1414, being forced to hide away in the vaults above the cathedral of Notre Dame. Gerson continued to oppose the Duke of Burgundy at the Council of Constance, thus incurring his wrath afresh.)140 Gerson did not dare to return to Paris and began a long sojourn in German-speaking lands. He first sought refuge at Rattenberg, a fortress near the border of Tyrol and Bavaria, and later at the great Benedictine abbey of Melk, also in Austria. He likely began the Consolation of Theology at the fortress and completed it at the abbey.141 His work would have an immense influence on fifteenth-century consolation literature in Germany.142 Similarly to the great works of consolation that preceded it, Gerson’s Consolation of Theology transcended the immediate circumstances of its author’s distress and treated broader themes of suffering and solace that could apply to all Christians. As Clyde Lee Miller explains, “No less than The

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Imitation of Christ it became a handbook for believers, a vade mecum encapsulating the Christian Scriptures and tradition.”143 Like Dambach, Gerson wished to Christianize Boethius. He replaces philosophy with theology and also cites frequently from both pagan and Christian sources. The work contains four books, each of which represents a one-day dialogue between Monicus and Volucer. The former represents youthful affective inquisitiveness, the latter cognitive intellect. Monicus also appears to stand for Gerson’s youngest brother, Jean the Celestine, who often refers to Gerson in the dialogue as the “wayfarer” (advena).144 Already in Book I, Monicus asks Volucer why Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy will not suffice to bring solace to the troubled wayfarer. Volucer responds, “Don’t be surprised, Monicus, if theology is placed before philosophy. For just as grace surpasses nature, a mistress her handmaid, a teacher her pupil, eternity time, insight reasoning, and the invisible surpasses the visible things, so theology goes beyond philosophy—not casting it aside, but taking it into service.”145 Later in Book I, Volucer argues that the distinctive “manner and art” of theology is to bring souls to wisdom through foolishness and salvation through the way of the cross. Volucer explains, “As the apostle says, ‘If any man among you seem to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise’ [1 Corinthians 3:18]. In no other way does the same theology wish to bring us through the worst despair about human beings to the highest hope in God and to lead us through the unthinkable and unbearable desolation to the firm consolation beyond.”146 Here, in a nutshell, is the argument of Gerson’s Consolation of Theology: divine consolation comes only to those who have been utterly desolated by God. (This is a message that would have a profound influence on the young Luther. See chapter 4.)147 In Book II, Volucer criticizes those who serve God only to gain prosperity and avoid adversity. This critique includes the “old law” (Old Testament), with its promises of blessing for the obedient and woe for the disobedient. It also includes contemporary efforts to encourage love of God through sermons and exhortations that promise temporal prosperity to the pious. In other words, Volucer is critical of the do-ut-des mentality that was so prevalent in popular piety. Finally, Volucer’s critique extends even to the Stoics, who taught that virtue is its own reward. Volucer argues, “People should be drawn to the toilsome works of virtue and kept from their pleasurable vices by something different and greater[,] whether as reward or punishment. Because philosophy cannot reach this, here philosophy is deficient in its consolation.”148 In Book III, Volucer defines this

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“something different and greater” as the love of God above all things (diligere deum super omnia) for God’s own sake. Similarly to Gerard of Lieges, Volucer argues that this kind of love can only be proven by adversity: Adversity, in fact, is the sole test whether anyone is a true lover during prosperity. God comes to you with gold, with silver, with health, with honors, with release from temptation within and without. You receive him, you give praise and thanks. But I wonder whether you love God’s gifts and not God. So the person who loves God and hopes in him for the sake of temporal advantage will despair and hate when the advantage is withdrawn. God comes unaccompanied by all these things, but with poverty, sickness, trouble. If you stand firm in love, in thanks, you manifest the perfect work of friendship toward God when you do not depart from loving him though pressed down by sorrow or want. For it is no fault to be sorrowful, but to do nothing wrong on account of sorrow is praise of the first order.149 Following early Christian precedent, Volucer concedes that philosophy also teaches the benefits of adversity, along with the importance of bearing it patiently. Philosophy encourages the cultivation of virtue and the avoidance of vice and insists that human happiness should be grounded on eternal and transcendent realities. However, echoing Cyprian and Ambrose, Volucer argues that philosophy nonetheless fails theology’s test because it knows nothing of the “eternal weight of glory” attested in Scripture (2 Corinthians 4:17–18), which is the true source of human happiness. Neither does philosophy know anything of the reality of hell, which is the soul’s greatest misery.150 It is an awareness of these two realities that must inform the Christian’s response to adversity. Volucer explains: We are accustomed to smile while boys are being beaten and are crying out because we have in mind, I suppose, the saying of the wise man, “You shall beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell” [Proverbs 23:14]. But we ourselves groan like grown-up little boys, we burn, we complain at the slightest blow from God. And we break off from it through impatience as soon as we can, as though God our Father is not seeking in a like way to free us from hell.

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Are you troubled? What do you think theology is going to persuade you to do? Will she say, “Serve God, honor his holy men and women, then you will prosper in this world and enjoy delights, riches, peace and fame at your wish?” On the contrary, as the wise man taught: “Son, when you come to the service of God, prepare your soul for temptation” [Ecclesiasticus 2:1]. So says the Apostle, “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution” [2 Timothy 3:12].151 Volucer insists that the Christian must fix his gaze on the God who has caused him adversity as a means of preparing him for heaven.152 This God is “the absolutely free ruler of nature,” who uses nature—sometimes through the agency of the devil153—to move the chosen toward salvation, employing the most drastic of means: “He forces those invited to enter the wedding feast, tearing the garment of one, breaking another’s bone, taking out this person’s eye, crippling another. He sows the ways of evil with thorns lest anyone walk through them to destruction.”154 The present life is ceaseless warfare and strife. The only proper response to the God who so afflicts in order to save is to cry out in Job-like faith to God alone, “Rip my clothing, drag me off at last as you wish, until I belong to you.”155 Theology finally enters the conversation at the end of Book IV and chastises the devil for lying to Adam and Eve about the result of eating the forbidden fruit: capital punishment.156 In light of this death penalty, human beings must set their love on God, who alone is eternal, and love their friends through him: “Thus God is not lost, thus you will always and everywhere possess friends and his [God’s] life, glory and riches. For the rest, no one has given up hope in you, good Jesus, because even when you are angry you are mindful of mercy. You bring peace after the storm.”157 Gerson’s Consolation of Theology has much more to say about the storm than about Christ’s peace, but praise of the latter and the sure hope that it signifies finally bring the text to its conclusion.158 Volucer responds to Theology’s brief speech, “Now as a short epilogue for her speech and our conversation, let us summarize a compendium of this consolation for all our troubles. Our purpose is to aspire with our whole heart, to lift our eyes to heaven and say, ‘God is the father of mercies and of all consolation. In his mercy we must hope, to his will we must conform, from him comes the virtue of patience, in him is peace of conscience.’”159 This compendium serves as a fitting synopsis not only of Gerson’s work but also of the tradition of Christian consolation that preceded and informed it.

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Conclusion Dambach and Gerson’s works of consolation sought to encourage a ministry of verbal solace in late medieval Germany that would augment and accompany the Latin church’s sacraments and sacramentals.160 Both assumed the presence of the latter ministry but also wished to supplement it with the riches of the ancient and medieval consolation literature. It seems that both had benefited greatly from this literature themselves. Dambach and Gerson were not alone in this effort; humanists such as Petrarch also sought to promote a ministry of verbal consolation that drew on earlier sources. In Petrarch’s case, these sources were largely ancient pagan works of Stoic consolation. His Remedies for Fortune Foul and Fair (1366), which draws deeply on such sources, was the most popular philosophical work of the Italian Renaissance.161 Petrarch and his fellow Italian humanist consolers went beyond Dambach and Gerson by seeking to recover a place not only for verbal solace in the Christian ministry of consolation but also for worldly or secular sorrow, that is, sadness caused by failure to attain one’s goals or desires in life, by disappointment with other human beings, or by distress over the life of one’s civitas and not simply by one’s sins.162 McClure has argued that humanists such as Petrarch were seeking to restore a balance between homo peccans and homo lugans in their works of consolation;163 they were attempting to counteract the emphasis on solace through sacramental confession and penance that had characterized the Latin church’s approach to consolation.164 Petrarch’s Remedies and its humanist message of consolation was not limited to Italy; both Latin and vernacular editions also appeared in Germany.165 The consolatory works of Dambach, Gerson, and Petrarch share an important common feature with the pastoral and consolatory works that we have explored in chapters 1 and 2. Viewed collectively, all of these works take a practical and ascetical approach to human adversity: suffering is an instrument that the sovereign and loving God uses to discipline his chosen ones so they may be fit to enter heaven. The appropriate response to this divine ascesis is to endure it patiently and thus, with the help of divine grace, to merit heaven through reducing poena and cultivating virtue, especially the love of God above all things. Time and again, these works urge patience on suffering Christians as the most important response to adversity and tribulation.166 Indeed, one of the central purposes of suffering (passio) is to produce patience (patientia): the passivity and loss of agency one experiences as one suffers is to shape one’s

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posture relative to God.167 Job is the model sufferer in this literature. With patience, tribulation becomes a divine gift that opens vast treasures of blessing and grace; without patience, adversity is simply punishment. One sees this perspective very clearly in a work of devotion by the well-known late medieval theologian Johannes von Paltz. In the Supplement to the Heavenly Mine (1504), he argues that patience is so highly valued in the divine economy that even if one were to live one’s whole life in sin, one could obtain remission of all debt and penalty and go immediately to heaven simply by accepting one’s death with patience.168 In many cases, this emphasis on patience promoted a kind of Christianized Stoicism that appears to have been widespread in late medieval Germany;169 the private letters of burghers are replete with it.170 However, as we saw in Ambrose and again in Gerson, the consolation literature could also contain a deeply existential and even affective element that sought to humanize the solace it offered. And on rare occasions, there was even a faint protest against the divine ordering of things. Job protested much more fiercely, but this was not the Job who was extolled in the Christian consolation literature. This honor fell to the Job who suffered patiently (chapters 1–2) and who repented in dust and ashes after the divine inquisition (chapters 38–42).

3

Suffering and Consolation in Late Medieval Mysticism works of consolation that advocated a practical and ascetical approach to suffering made up but a part of the consolation literature available in late medieval Germany. Devout secular and regular clergy who ministered to suffering Christians might have consulted yet another tradition of consolation that shared the concerns and convictions of the works we have examined in chapters 1 and 2 but also sought to go beyond them.1 Clearly, the most creative and also the most popular works of late medieval devotion and consolation in the German lands were those of mystics such as Mechthild of Magdeburg, Margaret Ebner, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and, especially, Henry Suso.2 Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom (1362/63) was “the most widely distributed and frequently read German manual of devotion during the one hundred and fifty years following its completion.”3 Mystical literature was especially abundant in Germany. As Bernard McGinn has observed, “No area of Late Medieval Europe was as prolific in the production of mystical literature as the German-speaking lands.”4 The majority of this literature was in the vernacular, which was an important new development in the history of Western mysticism.5 It would have been available not only to priests but also to devout laypeople who could read German, the majority of whom lived in towns and cities. Because a good portion of this literature began as vernacular sermons, the mystics’ message about suffering and consolation was able to reach those who had neither the means nor the ability to purchase and read mystical works; this message was also captured in numerous works of art.6 We should not posit too strict a division between works of consolation in late medieval Germany that took a practical/ascetical approach to suffering and those that took a more mystical one. Johannes von Dambach was affiliated with the Friends of God (gotesvriunde), a fourteenth-century movement of spiritual renewal that drew directly on the mysticism of

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Mechthild, Eckhart, and, especially, Suso and Tauler;7 and Jean Gerson was himself a (cautious) mystic.8 Neither Dambach nor Gerson discusses union with God in his Consolation of Theology, and thus, these works cannot be seen as examples of mystical consolation. But there were other works of ascetical consolation in late medieval Germany that regularly employed mystical language and concepts, even if union with God was not their central concern. The famous Franciscan preacher and mystic Marquard of Lindau refers frequently to the Friends of God in his catechism, The Book of the Ten Commandments (printed in 1483), emphasizing that what God seeks above all else is “a soul full of God in a body full of suffering” (Ein sel vol gotes in einem leibe vol leidens).9 Marquard’s treatise on Job is similarly replete with images and language borrowed from late medieval German mysticism.10 The mystics had a great deal to say about the role of suffering in the Christian life. In fact, they introduced a new spirituality of suffering into late medieval Germany that was just as novel and important for piety and the care of souls as was the relationship between suffering and poena. In the mystical devotional and consolation literature, suffering takes on new significance as a means of vital union with the Godhead.11 Adversity is not simply something to be endured patiently, even joyfully, although it is certainly still this; now it is viewed as the most noble thing on earth, the pinnacle of Christian discipleship, and the most reliable—indeed, the only—path to union with God. Esther Cohen has aptly referred to this attitude toward suffering as “philopassianism,” the desire to feel, express, and (self-) inflict as much pain or suffering as possible. She argues that it marks a novel and important development in Western attitudes toward pain that had resonances in legal and criminal proceedings and also in medicine—it was by no means limited to mystics.12 One sees this development very clearly in the late medieval writings known as Sayings or Teachings of the Masters (Meisterlehre or Meistersprüche), which originated from the circle around the fourteenth-century German mystic Meister Eckhart.13 As the anonymous author of The Twelve Masters at Paris (fourteenth century) observes, “In the same eternal love that the heavenly Father sent his only-begotten Son into suffering, in this same eternal love and no other, he sends all people suffering. If suffering were not the noblest thing that God can give in this life, he would have never sent his only-begotten Son into it. By means of suffering the saints overcame all their enemies, with suffering the saints have received the Kingdom of God.”14 Auer states that this emphasis on the nobility of suffering

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was a hallmark of the Meistersprüche; the authors of this literature reasoned that since Christ’s life consisted of nothing but suffering, it followed that the life of the Christian must be similarly replete with adversity.15 In order to understand this unique emphasis on passio, which clearly affected the care of souls, it is important to say a word about the larger devotional context that influenced late medieval German mysticism and was also significantly shaped by it.

Passion Piety On April 26, 1506, the Nuremberg patrician Michael Behaim wrote a letter to his fifteen-year-old son, Friedrich, who was living in Lyons as an apprentice. After giving thanks for news of his son’s continuing health, Michael advises him to be pious and well behaved, to protect himself from evil company, to please his master in every way, to be God-fearing, to attend church cheerfully, and, finally, to “have the Passion of Christ in your memory every day” (hab das Leiden cristi in deiner gedechtnuß alle tag)—if Friedrich follows this advice, things will go well him.16 Nothing could have more been more typical of the piety in the later Middle Ages than this final exhortation. It is a commonplace in historical scholarship today that late medieval piety and spirituality were deeply Passion- and cross-centered.17 As Berndt Hamm has argued, the Passion became the central norm in late medieval religious life, providing the meaning, solace, and certainty that late medieval souls (and society) needed as they faced the fears that gripped their uniquely anxious age.18 We have already seen the importance of this Passion devotion in Surgant’s instructions to dying Christians to place their suffering in Christ’s suffering and to meditate on his Passion. Never before had Christians become so singularly focused on the suffering of the Savior. As Ewert Cousins explains: By its very nature Christian spirituality focuses on Christ. Yet in different geographic regions and in different historical periods, Christians have grounded their spirituality on diverse aspects of the mystery of Christ. In the High Middle Ages there emerged in Western Europe a new emphasis on Christ’s humanity. Although present from the beginning, awareness of his humanity took on new dimensions: it functioned as a catalyst of a new devotion, bringing

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about a transformation of sensibility, which evoked a spectrum of human emotions, such as tender affection and compassion. It produced one of the most characteristic and widely used forms of Christian meditation. In the field of art it effected a shift from a stylized image of the victorious Savior to the agonizing, bleeding human Christ on the cross. In the late Middle Ages it culminated in an almost exclusive emphasis on Christ’s passion to the point of overshadowing his resurrection.19 As it unfolded from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, it differentiated further the Latin West from the Byzantine East and the Middle Ages from the preceding centuries. It set a tone to Western spirituality that has perdured, in many ways in many quarters, even to the present.20 While one can find precedents for late medieval Passion spirituality in the early Middle Ages21 and also in the Carolingian era,22 the real precursors to this devotion lie in two places: the monastic tradition of lectio divina (holy reading) and the prayers of Anselm of Canterbury that stress a deep longing to participate as fully as possible in the suffering of Christ.23 In one of his prayers to Christ, Anselm writes, “As much as I can, though not as much as I ought, I am mindful of your passion, your buffeting, your scourging, your cross, your wounds, how you were slain for me, how prepared for burial and buried.”24 He laments that he was not present at the actual Passion and Crucifixion and yearns to become an actor in the original events through meditative contemplation so that he can behold both the bitter suffering of the Savior and the deep compassion of the Virgin Mary, which he seeks to share and imitate.25 Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi were similarly important for the development of late medieval Passion piety, the former through a deeply affective devotion focused (at least in its initial stages) on the suffering humanity of Christ,26 the latter through an even more intense and radical devotion to the Savior’s human life and Passion, which culminated in reception of the stigmata, the ultimate sign of Francis’s resolve to imitate Christ’s poverty and suffering as literally as possible.27 It is no coincidence that the greatest works of Passion devotion in the thirteenth century were produced by Franciscans: Bonaventure’s Tree of Life and the pseudoBonaventuran works Mystical Grapevine and Meditations on the Life of Christ.28 The opening lines of the Tree of Life express very well the heart of Franciscan Passion piety:

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The true worshiper of God and disciple of Christ, who desires to conform perfectly to the Savior of all men crucified for him, should, above all, strive with an earnest endeavor of the soul to carry about continuously, both in his soul and in his flesh, the cross of Christ until he can truly feel in himself what the Apostle said above [“I have been crucified with Christ . . .” Galatians 2:19–20]. Moreover an affection and feeling of this kind is merited to be experienced in a vital way only by one who, not unmindful of the Lord’s passion nor ungrateful, contemplates the labor, suffering and love of Jesus crucified, with such vividness of memory, such sharpness of intellect and such charity of will that he can truly say with the bride: A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me; he will linger between my breasts [Canticles 1:12].29 Here we see the characteristic desire of this devotion to be conformed to Christ both internally and externally through a deeply affective and ongoing contemplation of the Passion. Bonaventure also shares Anselm’s desire to have been present at the Crucifixion and now through contemplation to experience the Virgin Mother’s compassion for her Son. O my God, good Jesus, although I am in every way without merit and unworthy, grant to me, who did not merit to be present at these events in the body, that I may ponder them faithfully in my mind

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and experience toward you, my God crucified and put to death for me, that feeling of compassion which your innocent mother and the penitent Magdalene experienced at the very hour of your passion.30 Other monastic orders also produced Passion literature. Two of the most important works of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the Life of Christ of Ludolf of Saxony, a Carthusian, and the Passion of Christ of Jordon of Quedlinburg, an Augustinian. Both were Germans.31 Like that of the Franciscan works that preceded and inspired them, the goal of these works, seen collectively, was to encourage a deeply subjective and affective participation in the suffering of Christ and his mother. The authors sought to achieve this goal by guiding their readers through meditations on Christ’s Passion, paying scrupulous attention to his every wound, insult, or sorrow: Jordan of Quedlinburg counted 5,475 wounds on the suffering Savior, while Ludolf of Saxony argued for 5,490.32 This meditation on the Passion was held to yield numerous fruits: a share in the merit that Christ achieved through his suffering and death and that Mary achieved through her compassion for her Son,33 which would reduce one’s stay in purgatory; the suppression of sin and cultivation of ongoing penitence; growth in Christian virtue, especially the imitation of Christ; and, most important, union with Christ. Mendicant friars helped to spread Passion piety throughout western Europe, not only by their writing but especially by their preaching.34 By all accounts, they were remarkably successful in doing so. As Cousin asserts: By the end of the thirteenth century, devotion to the humanity of Christ was solidly established in Western spirituality, and its focus was fixed on the passion of Christ. In the later Middle Ages it exfoliated in numerous popular practices, such as the Stations of the Cross, hymns devoted to the passion, meditation on the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, the imitation of Christ in humility and suffering, and an increasing emphasis in the liturgical cycle of those feasts that commemorate Christ’s suffering and death. This devotion spearheaded a revolution in art, becoming the focus for the shift toward a realistic depiction of Christ’s humanity, leading to the great pietàs of Michelangelo and the crucifixion scenes which dominated in late medieval and renaissance art.35

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Before we turn to consider the mystical “exfoliation” of this piety, we should first pause to consider some of the reasons for its genesis. One might be tempted to attribute the rise of a piety that focused on death, suffering, and pain to the influence of environmental factors such as plague, war, and famine. While there is no doubt that these disasters shaped the Passion piety of the later Middle Ages, they cannot be said to have caused it.36 As Francis Oakley has observed: although the impact of war and of the Black Death undoubtedly intensified the preoccupation with suffering and death and heightened the sense of tender pathos surrounding Christ’s passion . . . it certainly did not create them. That preoccupation and that sense had been growing ever since the emergence of a more inward and affective piety in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Nor did they disappear when the conditions of life improved.37 Esther Cohen agrees: A phenomenon so startlingly comprehensive and so unusual [as philopassianism] certainly requires an explanation. The simplest argument—namely, that an age afflicted with as many scourges as the later Middle Ages might naturally try to discover some virtue in its suffering—does not unfortunately hold in the face of chronology. For the roots of philopassianism are clearly discernible already in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, long before the plague, wars, famines, and rebellions of the fourteenth century. Furthermore, philopassianism is notoriously absent in the early Middle Ages, though exposure of European populations to pain and disease was certainly massive then too. Any comprehensive explanation must be far more complex.38 As we have seen, scholars agree that a key factor in the rise of Passion devotion was the emergence of an alternative image of Christ as the Man of Sorrows rather than as Pantokrator or Judge. Christ could certainly still be depicted as the impassible Lord, but from Anselm forward, there was a new emphasis on his passible humanity. This is especially true in art,39 where Christians displayed a sometimes morbid fascination with the wounded and broken body of the Savior.40 But what drove this change?

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We know that there were important developments in theology that contributed to the rise of devotion to the Passion. Debates about the nature and reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist helped shape this piety.41 So, too, did trends in soteriology. By the end of the thirteenth century, theologians had sketched the broad outlines of a theology of the Atonement that helped to spur the growth of devotion to the Passion.42 Following Peter Lombard’s lead in the Sentences, this Atonement theory drew on patristic, early medieval, and Scholastic sources. The result was an account of the work of Christ that continued to speak in terms of the Savior effecting ontological change and repair in human beings, along with the notion that he ransomed humanity from the devil by his suffering and death. But to these were added newer arguments that drew on Anselm’s Why God Became Human, according to which Christ rendered satisfaction for sin to God in humanity’s stead by his suffering and death, thus restoring God’s honor. (Anselm maintained that Christ’s death provided satisfaction for humanity’s guilt of sin though not for its penalty for sin. In an important move for the development of both penitential theology and Passion devotion, Peter Lombard argued that Christ’s work applied to both.)43 Abelard’s exemplarist theory of the Atonement also made its way into the definition of the work of Christ in the high Middle Ages: Christ’s Passion not only rendered satisfaction for sin, but it also elicited in the believer a response of love and desire to imitate Christ. The new theory of the Atonement—especially its Anselmian elements—directly influenced the development of the Latin church’s penitential theology, which, as we saw in chapter 1, taught that patient endurance of tribulation could render satisfaction for the penalty of sin. Passion piety offered Christians an ideal way of rendering this satisfaction and thereby reducing their time in purgatory. What better way could there be to make atonement for sin than by participating spiritually in the suffering of the Savior and also seeking to imitate his Passion? The fact that assigned penances became lighter in the later Middle Ages also contributed to a desire in many laypeople to do more penance,44 and again, Passion piety filled this need admirably. However, the desire to make satisfaction for sin was not the only motive for Passion piety (or for doing penance); Anselmian Atonement theory was hegemonic neither for Passion devotion nor for late medieval thought on the work of Christ.45 Theological developments contributed to the emergence and plausibility of Passion devotion, but they do not provide an exhaustive explanation of its genesis.

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Recently, Rachel Fulton has attempted such an exhaustive explanation. She has argued that the new emphasis on Christ’s suffering humanity in Western piety has to do with the apocalyptic expectations of medieval Christians, especially Benedictine monks. When Christ did not return on the millennial anniversary of his death (1033), as many expected, this created a crisis in Christendom. Fulton explains, “Just as in the first century after the crucifixion the authors of the New Testament and their contemporaries had to come to terms with the nonevent of the Parousia, so the generations surviving the millennial anniversaries of Christ’s birth and death had to come to terms with the nonevent of the Apocalypse.”46 In order to deal with this crisis, Christians turned to Passion devotion as part of an effort to experience the physical presence of the still absent and longed-for Lord and also to appease his wrath. Fulton argues that the reason the Virgin Mary became so important in this piety is that Christians resonated deeply with her sense of loss and disappointment. They found in her compassio a model for how to deal with these emotions and also for how to transcend the unbearable distance that separated them from their Savior and his blessed mother.47 While Fulton’s work has received much praise, few have found her argument fully persuasive.48 The connection between disappointed millennial expectations and the rise of Passion piety is an ingenious hypothesis but one that does not appear to be adequately supported by the relevant sources.49 We are still in need of a comprehensive explanation of the genesis of Passion devotion. Bernd Moeller once commented on the difficulty that historians face in seeking to provide fully satisfying explanations for great shifts in piety—in fact, he said it is impossible to do so in any final sense.50 This may well be true of the rise of Passion piety. We can be sure, though, as Oakley and Cohen have observed, that the disasters of the fourteenth century did not produce late medieval Passion piety, even if they greatly intensified it. Passion devotion provided Christians with a way of appeasing divine wrath, which was frequently, although not always, seen as the cause of plague and the like.51 Passion piety also provided a way for Christians to seek understanding, protection, and healing from such disasters in the wounds of Christ and under the protective mantle of Mary. As we saw in chapter 1, a common part of deathbed ritual in late medieval Europe was for the priest to hold a crucifix before the dying person in order to incite devotion to Christ and to assure the dying person of Christ’s mercy and grace. As death became a “ravaging monster,” Passion piety offered a meaningful way to cope with its ferocious attacks.52

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Passion Mysticism Late medieval German mystics such as Mechthild of Magdeburg, Margaret Ebner, and especially Henry Suso were practitioners of Passion piety par excellence; indeed, scholars refer to their spirituality as Passion mysticism.53 Even the Dominican Meister Eckhart, who lacks the deeply affective devotion to the Passion that one finds in his fellow Dominican Henry Suso, still has much to say about the cross, which he places in the center of both Christian spirituality and God’s very being.54 Similarly, Johannes Tauler—also a Dominican—speaks in his Sermons (1359) of the Christian’s need to imitate and internalize Christ’s suffering, even though he does not develop a Passion mysticism.55 Those who read the works of these mystics or who listened to their sermons (or who were ministered to by regular clergy who did both) heard a very powerful message about the role of suffering in the Christian life. In Suso’s popular Life of the Servant (1362/63),56 the first “auto-hagiography” in the German language,57 God says to the Servant (der diener), a stylized version of Suso,58 “‘Don’t you know that I am the gate through which all true friends of God [waren gotesfrúnd] must force their way if they are to achieve true blessedness? You must fight your way through by means of my suffering humanity [gelitnen menscheit] if you are really to come to my pure Godhead [blossen gotheit].’”59 The Servant takes this admonition to aggressive cross bearing quite literally: he affixes to his back a wooden cross with thirty iron nails hammered into it and wears it under his garment night and day for eight years, all in an effort to deepen his compassion for Christ’s sufferings.60 In the Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, where the human interlocutor is also called the Servant, Eternal Wisdom similarly explains to him: If you want to see me in my uncreated Godhead [ungewordenen gotheit], you should learn to know and love me here in my suffering humanity. This is the quickest way to eternal happiness. . . . No one can reach the heights of the divinity or unusual sweetness without first being drawn through the bitterness I experienced as man [miner menschlichen bitterkeit]. The higher one climbs without sharing the path of my humanity, the deeper one falls. My humanity is the path one takes; my suffering is the gate through which one must pass who will come to what you are seeking.61

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The Dominican nun Margaret Ebner passed through the same gate and cultivated such a deep sense of compassion for the Savior’s suffering that in time she could hardly bear to hear the Passion narrative—the vivid accounts of Christ’s pain threatened to overwhelm her admittedly fragile emotional and physical constitution.62 (Ebner lived in the convent at Maria Medingen, while Suso was active in Constance, Cologne, and Ulm. Tauler lived in both Strasbourg and Basel.) Suffering was not seen as a good in its own right by the mystics. In Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Flowing Light of the Godhead (ca. 1280),63 Lady Pain (Frau Pein), whom Christ wore as a garment next to his skin, addresses the Savior, saying, “Lord, I make many blessed and yet am not blessed myself, and I consume many a holy body and yet myself am evil, and I lead many to heaven and yet do not enter it myself.”64 Suffering qua suffering remains evil—according to Mechthild, it was born in the heart of the devil—but it becomes good by virtue of its association with Christ’s Passion.65 Mechthild, who was first a Beguine (in Magdeburg) and later a Cistercian nun (at Helfta), observes that just as Christ’s baptism in the waters of Jordon sanctified all water, so Christ’s suffering makes all suffering holy, provided it is willingly accepted.66 Still, the mystics treat Lady Pain with great reverence—they share deeply in the philopassianism of their age. As we saw in The Twelve Masters in Paris, suffering was noble, a sign of special blessedness.67 Margaret Ebner writes in her Revelations (Offenbarungen, ca. 1353) that after a number of years in the convent, “it was revealed to me with powerful, loving delight that I was to share in every sort of suffering that God endured because I had given my life over to Him at that time.”68 In Suso’s Life of the Servant, a pious friend learns through a vision of the Servant’s intense suffering and then asks the Creator, “‘Gentle God, how can you endure this great and bitter suffering of your intimate friend?’” to which God responds, “‘I have chosen him for myself, that through such suffering he be formed according to my onlybegotten Son.’”69 Conformity to Christ was but one purpose of suffering in late medieval German Passion mysticism. There were several other purposes, many of which can also be found in the works of consolation that took a more ascetical approach to adversity and tribulation. Suffering atones for the penalty of sin and thus appeases God’s wrath;70 it purifies from sin71 and thus acts as a form of this-worldly purgatory;72 it encourages growth in Christian virtue, especially love, and thus renders sinners more lovable to God;73 it drives human beings to seek God alone and his consolation, rather than the

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comfort offered by creatures;74 it leads one to true knowledge of oneself;75 and it fosters empathy and compassion for others who must endure tribulation.76 The mystics added new purposes for suffering to these and also discussed new forms of suffering that do not appear in the ascetical literature. We shall first discuss these new purposes and then the new forms. Suffering played a necessary role in preparing the way for mystical union with God—this is the mystics’ most distinctive contribution to medieval Christian thinking about the purposes of tribulation and adversity. As we have already seen in Suso, one could only reach the “pure Godhead” via the suffering humanity of the Savior.77 Suffering emptied the self of itself—at least of the sinful self—so one could receive God.78 It did this by accomplishing all of the purposes for adversity found in the ascetical literature. Suffering helped to prepare the deepest or highest part of the human soul, known as the grunt (ground), so that it could return to its grunt in God, to which the soul was ontologically linked. The Neoplatonic belief that human souls contain a “spark” of the divine was held by most medieval mystics. Similarly, the Neoplatonic motif of emanation and return abounds in their writings.79 McGinn uses the term “mysticism of the ground” to refer to late medieval German mysticism and distinguishes it from the mysticism of Bernard of Clairvaux, which he characterizes as a mysticism of properly ordered loves.80 This inward journey of the soul’s ground to the divine ground, and hence to union with God, required abgeschiedenheit (detachment) or gelassenheit (releasement)—the two terms are largely synonymous in the mystics—and suffering was crucial in this process.81 The soul needed to detach itself from all creaturely concerns and consolations so that it could repose in God alone. As Tauler explains, “Man must do his part and rise from everything that is not God, away from himself and all created things.”82 Suffering facilitated this detachment by showing one one’s nothingness and utter dependence on God. Suffering also enabled the internal letting go of the self that was so central to Gelassenheit, thus enabling one to sink into the divine abyss. It did so by helping one to achieve a sense of holy indifference to all things save God and God’s will. In this Christianized Stoicism, one was not to value consolation over suffering or even heaven over hell, only God’s will over self-will.83 Eckhart thus cites Seneca in his Book of Divine Consolation, who asks, “‘What is the best consolation in sorrow and misfortune?’” Seneca responds, “It is for a man to accept everything as if he had wished for it and had asked for it; for you would have wished for it, if you had known that everything happens by God’s will, with

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his will and in his will.”84 Eckhart approves of this dictum and on the next page asserts that “a good man’s will ought to be so wholly one and united with God’s will that he and God have only one will, though that should be for the man’s harm or even for his damnation.”85 A little later, Eckhart avers that a perfect Christian would wish to be deprived of God if this were God’s will, even for a thousand years or for all eternity.86 Thus, as least in the case of Eckhart and those whom he inspired, the final goal of the mystic was not union with God but conformity to the divine will, even if this meant having to forfeit the experience of God for which the soul so earnestly yearned. One was to become what Tauler called a gotlidenden mensch, that is, a person who put aside any notion or effort of agency relative to God and thus prepared himself for the divinely effected union with God, if God chose to allow it.87 Here the “beloved jewel” of Suso’s Servant (in Life of the Servant) is important as an icon of releasement. Suso relays how on one cold winter’s day, the miserable Servant sat in his cell, and an inner voice told him to look out his window in order to learn an important lesson. There he saw a dog running around with a doormat in its mouth that it tossed to and fro as it chewed it to pieces. Then the voice told the Servant that he would be treated thus by his brothers. (The Servant had just been informed by God that his self-imposed suffering had to give way to divinely imposed suffering, here in the form of persecution by others.) The Servant took the mat from the dog and kept it for many years as “his beloved jewel” (sin liebes kleined). Whenever he was tempted to complain about his mistreatment and become impatient, he would look at the doormat, remember the great value of such suffering, and remain silent.88 As Kieckhefer observes, “If there is a single image that captures the most distinctive emphases of fourteenth-century sanctity, it is Suso’s ragged mat, his memento pati.”89 Humility, passivity, suffering, and patience—these were the way to true releasement.90 Shortly before the doormat incident, Suso has the Servant receiving a vision that expresses even more clearly his understanding of releasement. A stately youth appears to the Servant and tells him that he wishes to lead him to the “highest school” and teach him the “highest art.” The youth defines this higher way as: a complete and perfect releasement from oneself [ein genzú, volkomnú gelassenheit sin selbs],91 so that a person becomes so utterly nothing, no matter how God treats him, either through himself or through other creatures, in joy or sorrow, that he strives continually

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to be in the state of going away from his “self,” to the extent that human frailty allows, and he aims alone at God’s praise and honor, just as dear Christ did with regard to his heavenly Father. The Servant is greatly pleased by what he hears and endeavors to embark upon this higher way.92 As the German mystics discussed the indispensable role of suffering in helping them achieve releasement, they were unanimous in saying that divinely inflicted suffering was more important than self-inflicted suffering, although the latter was also necessary. The Servant in Suso’s Life engages in the most extreme forms of bodily asceticism for some twenty-two years. In addition to the wooden cross that he bears on his back for eight years, the Servant also wears an undergarment made of hair, complete with thongs to which 150 brass nails are attached, each filed to a sharp point. The Servant regularly tightens this undergarment around himself so that the nails can press into his flesh. He also wears a hair shirt and engages in all manner of fasting, prayers, and watches. At night, vermin crawl all over his filthy and bleeding body and bite him as he tries to fall asleep. In order to have Christ always close to his heart, the Servant carves “IHS” into his chest. Then God reveals to him that he needs to put aside this severe mortification if he wants to reach his true goal of releasement. Self-made suffering, no matter how severe, cannot accomplish the goal of self-annihilation, because the self is still following its own designs and will.93 Suso writes, “And God made it clear to [the Servant] that such severity and all these different practices together were nothing more than a good beginning [ein gu(e)ter anvang] and a breaking of the undisciplined man within him. God instructed him that he must make further progress, but in a different manner, if he were to reach his goal.”94 This “different manner” is suffering at the hands of others, whether God or human beings or God through human beings.95 Self-discipline has its place, but it finally has to give way to discipline from Another. Before turning from the purposes of suffering to examine the forms of suffering that were distinctive to mystical consolation literature, we should first comment on a kind of suffering that was by no means unique to late medieval mysticism but which received new emphasis and meaning in this movement. The human body and its sufferings played an extremely important role in Passion mysticism, arguably more important than in any previous expression of Christian spirituality. To be sure, bodily asceticism had a very long history in Christian devotion, and in many cases, it

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was quite extreme. One has only to think of Saint Antony eating only one meal a day (at most) consisting of bread, salt, and water, or of Saint Benedict rolling in nettles and thorns to extinguish the lusts of the flesh, or of Celtic monks keeping their cross vigil while immersed in ice-cold water and reciting the Psalter. Viewed against this backdrop, the Servant’s self-mortification does not appear so extraordinary. However, there is something different—something new—about the purpose of mortification in Passion mysticism. In addition to disciplining the flesh and freeing the soul for contemplation of the divine, the mystic’s asceticism also sought to make of the human body an actual point of contact with Christ. As Caroline Walker Bynum has explained, the mortified human body was seen as “a means of access to the divine.”96 When the Servant in Suso’s Life punishes his body, he is not simply trying to subdue his flesh; he is also seeking to effect a kind of union between his body and Christ’s body.97 The Servant fashions the wooden cross for his back because of his “desire to bear on his body some sign of his heartfelt sympathy for the intense sufferings of his crucified Lord.”98 Margaret Ebner similarly wished for her whole body to take on the pains of Christ’s Passion.99 The mortification of the flesh did not serve an exclusively negative or purgative function; it also served a positive or unitive one. Here the precedent set by Saint Francis is important, most notably in his reception of the stigmata.100 Suso may have seen severe mortification of the flesh as “nothing more than a good beginning” and thus finally advocated for an internalization of the Passion,101 but he still insisted that such bodily suffering had its rightful place. Other mystics, especially female ones,102 were of the same opinion. Margaret Ebner accorded a highly significant role to her own severe and rather bizarre bodily afflictions in her mystical journey. Among other things, she suffered from bouts of prolonged silence when she was physically unable to speak and also bouts of uncontrolled shouting, laughing, and crying. Ebner writes, “I was determined, as far as possible, always to live according to the will of God. . . . In His mercy He helped me to do that by frequent severe illness since He was preparing me then for Himself.”103 Rather than seeking healing for her illnesses, she saw them as a gift that prepared her for union with Christ.104 Her experience of this union was also very “fleshy.” She records how she allegedly kissed the open and bleeding heart of Christ on the cross and nursed the infant Christ at her breast.105 Ebner and Suso clearly show that the late medieval mystic’s own bodily passion was intended to achieve a somatic union with the Passion of the Savior.

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The experience of this union represents one of the new and unexpected forms of suffering found in the mystical consolation literature. Suffering prepares the way for union with God in this literature, but it can also attend the experience of this union. The experience of God’s presence can bring deep pain and not simply bliss or peace. Mechthild writes of God wounding the devout soul by his divine kisses and inflicting pain on the devout body by the caresses of his hand. Mystics such as Mechthild reasoned that because neither the soul nor the body could bear the divine presence for long, the experience of union with God brought pain. God explains to Mechthild in The Flowing Light of the Godhead: No matter how softly I caress you, I inflict immense pain on your poor body. If I were to surrender myself to you continuously, as you desire, I would lose my delightful dwelling place on earth within you, For a thousand bodies cannot fully satisfy the longing of a soul in love. And so the higher the love, the holier the martyr.106 Margaret Ebner, who looked to Mechthild (in her writings) as a spiritual mother,107 spoke similarly of Christ’s presence causing her bodily pain. In such cases, Christ, “like a clever, knowledgeable lover” (ain kluoger wol wissender minner) would withdraw his presence to ease Margaret’s discomfort.108 More frequently, the mystics experienced suffering as a result of divine retreat. Reflection on the experience of divine absence and the suffering it causes constitutes one of the mystics’ most important contributions to the late medieval devotional literature. (This contribution would have a direct impact on Luther.) The pain of spiritual longing is a theme in much of the mystical literature. Mechthild writes powerfully of her experience of gotesvremedung (estrangement from God) and verworfenheit (divine rejection),109 lamenting bitterly when God would exclude her “forsaken soul” from his ecstatic love.110 Similarly, Suso’s Servant discusses his mother’s experience of divine retreat and how she lay in bed for twelve weeks pining for God.111 And Tauler, who read Mechthild,112 speaks in his Sermons of the utter despair that such divine absence engenders in the mystic: He is led along a very wild path, totally dark and foreign. On this road God takes away from him everything that he ever gave him. The person is left so much alone that he knows nothing of God, and

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he comes into such distress [gestrenge] that he is not sure if he was ever right, or if he ever had a God or not, even whether he [God] really exists or not. He is so strongly afflicted that the whole world seems too narrow for him. In such times, Tauler, following Mechthild, counsels, “Sit down and say, ‘Welcome, Bitter Affliction full of grace!’ [Got gru(e)sse dich, bittere bitterkeit vol aller gnaden].”113 This Job-like experience of utter God-forsakenness was the necessary precursor to mystical union in Tauler’s spiritual theology.114 As we have seen, such submission to and love of the divine will, no matter how seemingly harsh, was the central goal of much mysticism. But on occasion, the mystics could balk at and even protest God’s treatment of them, much as we have seen Gerard of Liege’s fictional interlocutor do in Concerning the Twelve Benefits of Tribulation. When Eternal Wisdom shows the Servant the kind of suffering that is required of those who truly wish to know him, the Servant pauses and asks, “Gentle Lord, I must say something. In your eternal wisdom could you find no other way to keep me and show me your love? Could you not spare yourself this great suffering and spare me having to share this bitter suffering? How very strange your judgments seem [Wie shinent dinú geriht so reht wunderlich]!” Eternal Wisdom then responds, “No one should try to probe the unfathomable abyss of my mysterious being, in which I ordain all things in my eternal foreknowledge. No one can grasp it. Here, both this and many other things were a possibility, and yet they will never happen. Still, you should know that in the present order that has flowed out (from God) there can be no better way.” Suso suggests that the reason for this “better way” is that God wished to show his love to humanity and to restore its joy after it had fallen from grace through pursuing improper pleasures. God took the divinely imposed penalties of suffering and death on himself and now wishes to share the benefits of this act with those who take up their cross and follow him.115 Further on in the Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, the Servant again raises an objection to God’s treatment of his “friends,” especially the way they are made to suffer both inwardly and outwardly as soon as they enter into the divine vrúntschaft.116 “Lord, this is exactly what people complain about. This is why they say that you have so few friends: because you let things go badly for them in this world.”117 Eternal Wisdom responds by saying that such a complaint comes from a sickly faith (krankes globen) that lacks understanding of both humanity’s true identity—a “mirror of divinity,” an “image of the Trinity,” and a “model of eternity”—and its current lamentable state

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in this “miserable valley.”118 Eternal Wisdom goes on to say that if one considers the pains of hell and the joys of heaven, which the Servant is permitted to glimpse, one must conclude that God sends suffering to his friends not out of neglect or spite but out of “loving tenderness” (von minneklicher zartheit) so they will be prepared for paradise.119 Eternal Wisdom later assures the Servant that “suffering is a short affliction and a long joy” (Liden ist ein kurzes leid und ein langes liep).120 As in The Twelve Benefits of Tribulation, the Servant’s queries are quickly answered—there is no sustained lament or protest, as in Job. The possibility of such a response probably did not occur to Suso. Still, the Servant’s queries have an edge to them that one does not find in Gerard of Liege— he indirectly accuses God of being a lousy friend. Sections such as these in Suso and Gerard of Liege, though rare and (too) quickly resolved, demonstrate an awareness that suffering could pose an obstacle to the spiritual progress of both the common Christian and the experienced mystic. The queries and complaints are certainly not of “biblical proportion,” but they are present nonetheless and were clearly part of the spiritual and pastoral experience that informed the ascetical and mystical writings of the later Middle Ages.121

Conclusion There was a truly impressive array of literary resources available to those members of the late medieval German clergy who wished to minister to suffering Christians through both rite and word. In addition to the pastoralia, there were numerous works of consolation that variously stressed ascetical or mystical approaches to suffering. We should not imagine that any one cleric had access to all of these latter works. Precious few parish libraries in late medieval Germany would have possessed even a representative sample of the works of devotion and consolation that we have examined; such libraries were only to be found in the empire’s large cities, such as the impressive collection of the St. Sebald Church in Nuremberg.122 Monastic libraries typically had much larger collections than parish libraries,123 and there monks (and nuns)124 who ministered to laypeople could find works of consolation.125 It is also quite likely that the remedies found in the consolation literature were passed on by word of mouth from senior to junior clerics during the latter’s apprenticeships, both in private consultation and via sermons.

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Taken as a whole, the medieval consolation literature set out to accomplish a very ambitious goal: to persuade human beings that suffering was good for them, indeed, that suffering was actually “sweet”—or that it produced desirable effects. This effort continued up through the eve of the Reformation. During the Advent season of 1516, Johannes von Staupitz preached a sermon in Nuremberg that sought to make this case.126 In the published version from 1517, the vicar general of the Observant Augustinians in the German lands asserts that the only way Christians can suffer fruitfully is to learn from the Passion of Christ (fruchtbarlich zu leiden wirdet allein aus dem leiden christi gelernt):127 Christ bore his suffering patiently, obediently, and willingly, and this is how Christians should bear theirs, especially because Christ did so for them and now grants them the privilege of imitating his Passion.128 If one bears one’s suffering in this way and figuratively places one’s cross (kreutz) under Christ’s cross (creutz), then one will experience a spiritual sussigkait (sweetness)129 that will prevent one from wishing to change or escape one’s current tribulation. After one has bitten through the “bitter shell of the nut of suffering,” one will discover that its core is very sweet and full of flavor.130 The sweetness or fruit of suffering consists of the virtues that it encourages: humility, obedience, and patience. (This is the “humility theology” that had such a strong influence on Luther.)131 According to Staupitz, suffering in this way merits eternal reward and provides much temporal solace,132 but it can only be accomplished by contemplating Christ’s Passion—human nature is utterly incapable of it.133 There is every indication that the insights into the nature and purposes of suffering found in Staupitz’s sermon, and more generally in the medieval ascetical and mystical consolation literature, had a profound influence on the actual care of suffering souls; it was by no means confined to either the university lecture hall or the monastery.134 Neither was it confined to the traditional (male) priest-layperson relationship. In 1507, Margaretha Kress, a nun in Nuremberg’s well-known St. Clare Convent—Caritas Pirckheimer was her abbess—wrote a series of letters to her sister-in-law, Catharina (Rieterin von Kornburg) Kreßin, seeking to console her on the death of her teenage daughter and her own subsequent illness. (The daughter was also named Catharina.)135 Margaretha, who was the sister of the patrician Caspar Kress, assures her sister-in-law that Christ is now leading young Catharina to his “all-glorious bridal bed” (aller zirlichsten praut pets), where she will experience “ever-increasing blessedness and eternal certitude” and will “enjoy and behold God eternally.” Echoing Seneca, Margaretha reminds

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her sister-in-law that she was going to have to let go of the child at some point (Du hest es doch etwenn mußen loßen), because the child was mortal, and she should do so now. Margaretha also assures the grieving mother that she and her fellow nuns have commended the matter to God and all the saints, especially the Virgin Mary, and they have placed the child in the five holy wounds of Christ, thus ensuring that the merit of Christ’s most holy suffering would benefit young Catharina.136 In another letter, Margaretha addresses her sister-in-law’s unspecified serious illness and urges her to receive it “from the well of all that is good,” God himself. Reminiscent of Margaret Ebner, Sister Kress tells Catharina (senior) that she is God’s “most highly beloved child” because he rarely leaves her without suffering. She is to offer her pain into the great and terrible pain that Christ suffered on Calvary and always keep his Passion before her eyes. Sister Kress says that if Catharina follows her advice and beholds how Christ suffered so patiently for her, she will be able to bear her own suffering patiently—and even if she cannot, she can offer Christ’s patience to the Father in her stead. Catharina must know that if she relates her passio to Christ’s Passion in this way, she will earn merit every moment (du verdinst all augen plick), and should she die, she will have greatly reduced her stay in purgatory. (Catharina lived until 1536.) Margaretha closes by commending her sister-in-law to the “wounded heart” of Jesus Christ and his loving mother, along with all the saints.137 Here we have evidence of an actual case of pastoral care that draws on many of the themes we have discussed in the consolation literature of the Middle Ages. The Passion of Christ figures prominently in the advice that Margaretha gives to her sister-in-law, and this advice includes not only the ascetic emphasis on patience but also the mystic’s stress on union with Christ, the divine bridegroom (albeit in the next life). An ancient Stoic remedy for grief is present, as is the specifically late medieval concern for reducing the poena for sin and thus the duration of one’s stay in purgatory. Because the medium of the pastoral care is a letter, the consolation here offered is exclusively verbal. Words were supposed to help Catharina understand and cope with her suffering; there is no mention of other rites or sacraments, although there is no reason to believe that Margaretha opposed this latter form of consolation. Finally, the consolation that Margaretha provides to her sister-in-law contains an extremely important soteriological assumption that informed the whole of ancient and medieval Christian consolation literature.

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In pre-Reformation Christianity, justification entailed a fundamental and gradual change of a person’s nature—sinfulness had to give way to righteousness if the person was to enter heaven.138 Suffering played a necessary and indispensable role in this righteous-making process; suffering was, quite literally, salvific.139 Despite the well-known and well-studied late medieval debates about the respective roles of divine agency and human agency in salvation,140 every theologian agreed on this basic point: one had to become righteous to enter heaven. Grace was essential to this process, and so was some measure of human contribution, no matter how minimal.141 Suffering was an important part of this human contribution. It helped to atone for the penalty for sin and also encouraged the humility that prepared the way for reception of grace. It conformed the viator to the pattern of Christ and therefore assisted in the viator’s spiritual and moral transformation. Suffering thus had a necessary and well-defined role in late medieval soteriology. Mechthild captures this role well. In The Flowing Light of the Godhead, she asserts that at the Last Judgment, Christ will hold up a “glorious scale before his Father. Upon it will lie his holy toil and his innocent suffering, and in it and next to it all the blameless torment, humiliation, and interior pain that was ever suffered by human beings for the love of Christ. Indeed, when the right side of the scale sinks, those rejoice the most who have much upon it.”142 In the remainder of this study, we will examine a pastoral theology and piety in which human suffering was no longer deemed salvific, that is, in which it could no longer contribute to such a scale. The doctrine of suffering that we have examined thus far remained largely unchanged in early modern Catholicism, although there were certainly fresh appropriations of it in the devotion of the faithful. Protestants, on the other hand, sought to bring about profound change in the traditional doctrine of suffering. Starting with this doctrine’s soteriological foundation and working their way up from there, they sought to effect a thoroughgoing reformation of suffering as part of their larger efforts to reform the church and society of their day. This effort began with Martin Luther.

4

Suffering and Salvation in the Early Luther a couple of generations ago, scholars viewed the Protestant Reformation as a story of how great men and their great ideas took sixteenth-century Europe by storm. For Protestant scholars, the chief great man was Martin Luther, and his chief great idea was justification by faith. Much as his most ardent supporters had done in the early years of the evangelical movement, Luther was depicted as an intellectual and spiritual Hercules.1 He was a mighty hero who rescued his fellow Germans (and all later Protestants) from the darkness and oppression of “popish” Christianity through his recovery and preaching of the gospel. Luther was the religious Everyman whose own spiritual struggles found deep resonance in the troubled consciences of his lay contemporaries, at least those who shared his desire for an authentically biblical Christianity. These earnest souls welcomed the Wittenberg reformer’s evangelical theology with hearts and minds that had been prepared by God himself; they were divinely compelled to believe Luther’s good news.2 One encounters this theologically confessional approach to Luther and the Protestant Reformation now and again today, but the vast majority of modern scholars take quite a different approach. Even those who believe that Luther was inspired by heaven are typically more modest in their claims about his overall greatness. There continues to be a thriving subfield of Reformation Studies dedicated to Luther and his theology, but the gravitational center of the field as a whole has moved decisively away from the “great man” approach to history. Today much attention is given to the role of laypeople in the Protestant Reformation, whether as temporal rulers who used the evangelical movement to promote their quest for political hegemony or as recalcitrant country folk who alternately opposed Protestantism with all their might or simply

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adapted it to fit within their own “superstitious” worldview. Even when a recent survey of Reformation Europe refers to Luther as a “big man,” this is not a return to an older confessional approach to the study of sixteenth-century Germany, for the author pays little attention to his theology; rather, it is an attempt to analyze the Protestant Reformation through the lens of cultural anthropology in order to show how Luther rose to power through the force of his personality and the manipulation of relationships with his colleagues and students.3 These changes in how most scholars approach Luther and the Protestant Reformation may be attributed to a number of factors, the most important of which are the rise of modern ecumenism, the advent of social-historical and cultural-anthropological approaches to the study of the past, and the effort to situate Luther more securely within the context of the late medieval theological tradition. The overall effect has been to historicize Luther, that is, to render him a man of his times whose overall significance must be assessed within a complicated network of historical forces and actors that shaped him as much as he shaped them. The overall effect on Reformation Studies has been to democratize the field—in terms of both subjects and those who study them—and to secularize it.4 It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I devote two chapters solely to Luther and his theology of suffering and consolation. My goal in doing so is not to turn back the hands of time on the clock of Reformation scholarship. I do not wish to suggest that Luther was the only reformer who thought deeply about suffering and consolation or that he was the only one who “got it right.” I also do not want to suggest that Luther was the only agent in the evangelical attempt to reform the pastoral care of suffering Christians, as if all other human beings involved in this effort were simply passive recipients of his ideas. As we will see in subsequent chapters, this was clearly not the case. Nevertheless, in the specific case of pastoral theology, one must acknowledge that Luther exercised a remarkably strong influence on his contemporaries, especially on the evangelical clergy.5 The extant editions of Luther’s writings on the subject of suffering and consolation far surpass those of other theologians in the early years of the evangelical movement, and the extant works of evangelical consolation from later decades quote the Wittenberg reformer more frequently than any other source, except Scripture. One of the main reasons for this fact is that so many leading evangelical pastors studied with Luther in Wittenberg and thus learned from the reformer himself the art of arts, at least in its broad outline.

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Luther became a kind of spiritual father to such men and then secured positions for his spiritual sons in churches throughout the German lands and beyond.6 When these sons and their colleagues authored evangelical pastoral and consolation literature of their own, they took Luther’s experience of suffering and solace as normative for the Christian life and thus endeavored to conform the pastoral care they urged on their contemporaries to the Wittenberger’s mold. (Whether they were warranted in doing so is a question we will examine in a later chapter.) Finally, the process by which Luther developed his evangelical approach to suffering is extremely well documented; we can almost trace his every step in the relevant sources. The same cannot be said for other reformers. These sources also reveal that suffering took on an importance in Luther’s theology that is unique among the leading theologians of the Protestant Reformation. For reasons of temperament, training, and theological conviction, Luther wrestled with suffering as no other reformer did, at least not in public and in print. The new evangelical pastoral theology that emerged from this wrestling exercised an influence on the cura animarum of Lutheranism that is without parallel in other expressions of early modern Christianity; Zwingli and Calvin simply did not have the same kind of impact on the pastoral care of Reformed Protestantism. As regards pastoral theology, Luther was indeed a “big man,” and not just through force of personality but also through depth of theological reflection and eloquence of expression. Many pastors found his account of suffering and consolation deeply persuasive. Therefore, in order to understand the evangelical effort to reform the pastoral care of suffering Christians, which is the task of this book, we must examine Luther, and owing to his importance, we must do so as carefully as possible.7 As we have just seen, one of the most important developments in the last couple of decades of Luther research has been the effort to situate Luther’s thought in the very diverse world of late medieval theology. Following the lead of the late Heiko Oberman, scholars have become increasingly aware of just how deeply rooted the reformer’s theology was in the late medieval tradition. This effort to contextualize Luther and especially his theology of salvation has enabled scholars to see more clearly than ever how the reformer drew on various themes within the late medieval theological tradition to challenge the tradition itself. Little in Luther’s theology was without precedent, but the unique way he combined traditional elements with his genuinely new insights—for example, alien righteousness—produced nothing

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short of a revolution in the Western Christian theological tradition. This was as much true for Luther’s view of suffering as it was for his understanding of salvation. In fact, as we will see, Luther’s new evangelical soteriology directly shaped his evangelical approach to suffering. His reformation of suffering went hand-in-hand with his reformation of soteriology. Scholars have studied these two subjects separately,8 but they have not paid adequate attention to the crucial connection that existed between them. Scholars have not shown with sufficient clarity how Luther responded to claims such as the one made by Mechthild of Magdeburg that human suffering could be added to the heavenly scales on which human salvation was weighed. The task of this chapter is to examine the connection between soteriology and suffering in Luther’s early theological development in order to provide this clarity and thereby to show why the reformation of attitudes toward suffering was so important to the monk-professor of Wittenberg.

The Pot of Moab Between the summer of 1513 and the fall of 1515,9 Luther gave a series of lectures on the Psalms (Dictata super Psalterium) in which he spoke frequently of suffering in the Christian life. Held at the University of Wittenberg, the lecture series is the first we have from the quill of the monk-professor. (Luther became an Augustinian monk in 1505 and a doctor of theology in 1512; he was in his early thirties when he gave these lectures.) The extant notes include a discourse (sermo) on Vulgate Psalm 59:10 (60:8) that is especially revealing of his attitude toward trials and tribulations at this early stage in his career.10 This discourse also reveals the deeply earnest version of Christianity that the young Luther espoused, having been shaped so significantly by the Passion-centered piety and spirituality of his day.11 Luther would remain earnest about his Christian faith throughout his life and would always retain a profound appreciation for the place of suffering in it, but he would also eventually reject important aspects of the theology and spirituality of his early years, in large part because he did not find in them adequate means for understanding and contending with his own tribulations. Luther would seek to reform attitudes toward suffering in radical ways but not at first and certainly not all at once. Luther began a spiritual journey in the Dictata that would take several years to complete.12 As we will see, there is much in these early lectures on the Psalms that sounds very traditional, especially when it comes to suffering. But

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there are also signs of new theological developments—or at least the beginnings of such developments—that would eventually lead Luther to challenge traditional teaching about the role of tribulation and adversity in the Christian life. Crucial among these new developments was a novel understanding of faith and its role in the Christian life.13 Already in the Dictata, faith (fides) has taken over the central place of love (caritas) in the traditional scheme of salvation. Medieval theologians had treated faith as a necessary if lesser stage in the process of salvation that had primarily to do with belief in revealed truth. As theologians came to emphasize that faith must be formed by love (fides caritate formata), faith as an exercise of intellect (intellectus) was placed in closer relationship to humility and hope as expressions of affection or desire (affectus), but the essentially cognitive nature of fides still remained. The young Luther rejected this view of faith largely because he rejected the soteriology on which it was based. He did not view salvation as a gradual process of grace-enabled growth in love that finally merited heaven; he did not believe that human beings possessed this kind of moral potential, even with divine help, because in his mind, human beings were morally impotent before God. These convictions are clearly evident in the Dictata, which eschew all forms of habitus theology. It is quite possible that Luther had already reached this position during his years as a monk in Erfurt (1505–1511).14 In his early lectures on the Psalms, Luther begins to articulate a new soteriology that contains a very different and much broader understanding of faith. For the Luther of the Dictata, faith includes intellectus and affectus, along with humility and hope.15 The monk-professor’s version of faith also claims to provide a new kind of certainty regarding one’s soteriological status that was not considered possible in late medieval theology. These theological developments, which drew on certain precedents in the late medieval tradition—especially the conviction that faith was an essentially receptive capacity oriented toward divine revelation—would have revolutionary implications for Luther’s view of suffering. In the discourse on Psalm 59, Luther identifies the world and all of its temptations, afflictions, and persecutions as the “pot of Moab,”16 a place of great testing and hardship into which God allowed Christians to be thrown and “cooked” for their own benefit and that of the saints, the angels, and Christ. Luther argues that just as wild game must be hunted, killed, slaughtered, and cooked before it can be fed to distinguished guests, so, too, must God’s saints endure a painful process of preparation before they are suitable for heavenly consumption. First, they are pursued

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“like wild beasts in the forests of sins” by preachers who pierce and divide them with “the javelins of the Word of God,” thereby rendering their bodily members dead to sin and alive to righteousness. Following this spiritual dismembering, the preachers prepare their quarry for the fiery trials that await them and finally submerge them into the pot of Moab until they are properly cooked, that is, rendered truly humble, the real goal of the whole process.17 Only then are the redeemed sinners fit to be served at the heavenly table, where the assembled guests feast on the joy of their repentance (Luke 15:10).18 Reminiscent of Dambach, Luther asks his student-auditors, “Why, then, do you try to run away from temptations and trials? For they are a sign that you are being prepared for glory and are being called to be a dish for all the saints, who will be refreshed by you in heaven.”19 Luther concludes that Christians can agree with the psalmist when he says, “Moab is the pot of my hope” (Moab olla spei mei). Without suffering in the pot of Moab, the Christian has no hope of being worthy of eternal life, for Luther sees this suffering as essential to the salvific process. As he observes, “The heavenly banquet guests do not eat raw and uncooked food.”20 Luther makes it clear that God the Father is the primary agent behind this suffering; God is the “mistress of the kitchen,” and Christ is his cook.21 As a good cook, Christ does not allow anyone to put out his fire but guards it and stokes it higher so that the steam—that is, the prayers and cries of the “flesh”—can rise upward to God. Indeed, Christ allows the ungodly to help him cook the saints, even treating them better than Christians, because “they must be left behind.”22 According to Luther, it is precisely this boiling and raging affliction that produces the hope of eternal life in Christians, for it strips them of all self-confidence and causes them to look to God alone for comfort and salvation. Thus, the pot of Moab is ultimately an expression of divine benevolence and love for Luther, because through it, God prepares the saints for heaven.23 In this way, suffering in the pot of Moab is necessary for salvation. As Luther observes, “it is the explicit statement of Sacred Scripture that one who is outside of tribulation is outside the condition and hope of salvation.”24 He therefore insists that Christians must embrace suffering, not shun it. Christians must simply submit, with joy, to being cooked by Christ in the pot of Moab. Elsewhere in the Dictata, Luther assures Christians that Christ also suffers with, through, and in them; Christ is in the pot with them.25 But it is still necessary for Christians to be cooked. According to Luther, the actual cooking, or suffering, can take several forms. He speaks

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variously of internal trials such as anguish over sin and fear of divine wrath and also of external tribulations such as persecution, reproach, poverty, fasting, chastity, patience, humiliation, and physical illness.26 Christians must take up each of these crosses and follow Christ to heaven. In keeping with late medieval tradition, Luther posits an essential link between suffering and salvation in the Dictata, although, significantly, he is silent about suffering as a means of penance. He argues that Christians must take up their cross because the salvation of their souls is at stake. But first, sinners must become Christians, that is, they must gain entry to the life of salvation. Here Luther accords suffering only a minimal role; for him, adversity and tribulation are more important as Christians seek to remain in salvation, for they elicit the same kind of salvific response that the Word called forth at the beginning of justification. As we have seen, in the Dictata, salvation begins when the Word of God confronts sinners with their complete lack of righteousness. Through the Word, God hunts and kills sinners by telling them that they are wretched transgressors who are justly condemned to eternal punishment. Later in the discourse on the pot of Moab, Luther explains that this hunt results in the justification of sinners.27 But before justification can take place, sinners must first respond to God in humilitas fidei—in the humility of faith.28 Sinners must “justify God”;29 that is, they have to agree with the Word’s verdict on them30 and come to see themselves as “vile and nothing, abominable and damnable” before the righteous God, the mark of true humility.31 Luther speaks of the sinner’s need to judge and condemn himself (accusatio sui),32 that is, to become truly contrite. When commenting on this self-judgment or contrition, Luther asserts: as long as we do not condemn, excommunicate, and loathe ourselves before God, so long we do not “rise” [cf. Psalm 1:5] and are justified. . . .There will not be, nor arise in us, the righteousness of God, unless our own righteousness falls and perishes utterly. We do not rise unless we who are standing badly have first fallen. Thus altogether the being, holiness, truth, goodness, life of God, etc., are not in us, unless in the presence of God we first become nothing, profane, lying, evil, dead. Otherwise the righteousness of God would be mocked, and Christ would have died in vain.33 Those who confess their lack of righteousness, that is, those who become humble, can then be justified by faith. (Luther clearly uses the language of

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justification by faith in the Dictata.)34 This self-accusation precedes justifying faith and is itself part of such faith, along with hope and trust in the divine promises of grace contained in the Word.35 God mercifully condescends to accept the sinner’s expression of humilitas fidei as sufficient for justification and then bestows justifying grace; that is, God no longer imputes sin to the believer but rather imputes Christ’s righteousness to him.36 This grace cannot be earned, it is not the reward for some meritorious work,37 because the sinner’s expression of the humility of faith can make no necessary claim on God’s mercy.38 Grace is a gift and serves as the necessary condition and source for all righteous works performed by human beings.39 Still, God’s justification of the sinner is conditional on the sinner’s expression of humilitas fidei. While some scholars have argued that this expression is also a gift of grace in the Dictata,40 Luther himself is not clear on the matter. As a number of scholars have noted, the frequently ambiguous way in which he employs the term humilitas fidei complicates the historian’s task considerably.41 Luther clearly says in the later Dictata that faith is a gift of grace and the foundation for all Christian virtues,42 but he does not state that either humility or the humility of faith is also a divine gift.43 Because of the close identification of faith and humility in the Dictata, Luther may have believed that humility, too, or humility as part of faith was a gift of grace, but there are problems with this interpretation. Luther can say that humility precedes grace44 and also that self-accusation must be distinguished from the gift of faith.45 (In such cases, faith would seem to amount to belief and hope in the message of the Word—i.e., the recognition of its truthfulness—but without the accompanying utter rejection of one’s own righteousness, which is humility.) Beyond this, Luther treats humility as a means of preparing for grace.46 One should not conclude that humility is a good work or even a virtue in the Dictata.47 It does not possess the kind of positive moral content that is associated with such ethical achievement. Humilitas is simply the sinner’s desperate cry (clamare) to God for salvation based on his recognition of his utter sinfulness and nothingness before his maker; it is the beggar’s sigh (gemitus) and plea for help as he holds out his empty hands to the one true giver of the universe.48 As we have seen, this confession of spiritual need is elicited by the Word;49 it is not in the power of the sinner to produce it without such divine initiative. However, it does seem to be within the sinner’s power to respond to the accusing message of the Word. The cry for salvation prepares the sinner to receive the gift of divine grace and thus constitutes the sinner’s obligatory

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if largely passive role in the divinely established covenant (pactum) between God and humanity. Luther’s theology of salvation in the Dictata was directly informed by the soteriology of the late medieval via moderna that he imbibed as a student at the universities of Erfurt and Wittenberg.50 This school believed that God had established a covenant with humanity as an act of sheer mercy in which God promised to grant salvation to human beings provided they meet certain minimal conditions. For Luther, these conditions were extremely minimal,51 much more so than for most adherents of the via moderna, but they still existed.52 Later Luther would reject even the minimal condition of self-accusation and the concomitant assumption that human beings could produce it of their own accord by doing what was in them (facere quod in se est) when confronted with God’s righteousness in the Word. This rejection would have important implications for his understanding of suffering in the Christian life. In the Dictata, after sinners are justified, God immediately subjects them to trials and tribulations. As Luther explains, “God first adorns and equips, He first justifies and makes alive, and then He quickly subjects to battle, so that strength may increase, which otherwise would quickly be consumed by rust and inactivity.”53 Luther maintains that justification necessarily precedes suffering, because only adversity endured in Christ can be fruitful, that is, redemptive.54 Luther also maintains that the progression from self-accusation to mercy to justification to tribulation to consolation is a continuous process.55 Owing to the strength of indwelling sin, Christians are always in need of being justified anew in the Dictata.56 Luther writes that the righteous in Christ are ever crying out for more mercy, saying in effect to God, “‘Justify me still more, and let Your mercy become my righteousness, so that I may again be better prepared for future evils.’”57 Suffering plays its most important role in this ongoing process of salvation. Luther compares the “scourges and crosses” that God places on Christians to the Word that shows them their sins. He writes of these tribulations, “When they come upon us, they are like the Word of the God who accuses and opposes our sin. Therefore they must be received with all fear and humility, and we must confess to Him, for He is righteous in His works.”58 Christians are supposed to receive suffering as God’s just punishment for their sins. As with the Word, the ultimate goal of such suffering is to produce the humilitas fidei that is essential to the ongoing and ever-deepening reception of divine righteousness.59 The one to whom the “cup of suffering” is given is supposed to say:

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“I see that if I want to hold fast to faith in Christ, to His Word and grace, it is necessary for me to be humbled exceedingly; yet, because this benefit and retribution of God pleases me more than this suffering displeases me, if this cup cannot pass away unless I drink it for the sake of His Word, well and good, the Lord’s will be done.”60 According to Luther, suffering mortifies the “old man” by persuading the Christian afresh of his wretchedness and nothingness before God, along with his subsequent ongoing need to receive all things, especially righteousness, from God. But suffering also performs a more positive function in the process of salvation, and here Luther draws directly on the ancient tradition of offering numerous causae for tribulation and adversity, although he presents one or two that we have not seen before. In his commentary on Vulgate Psalm 4:2 (4:1), Luther speaks of God using tribulation and hardship to cause an enlargement (dilatatio) of the Christian’s soul and thus to promote the growth of the “new man.” This enlargement takes three forms. First, suffering serves the purpose of instruction (eruditionis). Luther observes, “for in tribulation one learns many things which he did not know before; many things he already knew in theory he grasps more firmly through experience. And he understands Holy Scripture better than he would without trials.” Luther then adds, “I believe that only those with experience understand how broad this education is. Deeds and life [praxis] explain and understand the Scriptures, forms, and creatures.”61 Here Luther refers to his own well-documented experience of spiritual assaults or Anfechtungen and reveals the deeply autobiographical nature of his comments on suffering in the Dictata. Luther says that he knows by experience what it is to be cooked by God in the pot of Moab and to have one’s soul enlarged through divinely imposed suffering. For Luther, these assaults especially took the form of despair over his salvation as he contemplated the seemingly impossible demands of God—to love God and neighbor with no hint of self-interest—and the likelihood that he was not among the elect. First and foremost, these assaults meant a conscience deeply troubled by the condemnation it felt from the divine judge. But as we have seen, Luther could also extend his understanding of Anfechtungen to include all manner of suffering that God used to annihilate the old person and to prepare the new person for deeper reception of grace.62 Here Luther maintains that spiritual affliction teaches one to read Scripture properly, because, among other things, it conforms one to Christ, who is the subject of Scripture and the teacher of this “broad education.”63

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Second, suffering enlarges the Christian’s strength (virtutis), both moral and intellectual, by exercising capacities of knowledge, understanding, and memory, along with faith, hope, and love. Each of these grows stronger when faced with opposition. As Luther observes, “a bent palm tree springs up more strongly.” (The same image may be found in ancient pagan writings.)64 Finally, tribulation expands the soul by conveying to it the comfort and joy that the Holy Spirit gives to those who suffer. Here Luther quotes the Apostle Paul: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).65 Again, similarly to Dambach,66 Luther laments in the Dictata that in spite of all of these benefits to suffering, most people refuse to embrace it. He attributes this refusal to people’s lukewarm faith and preference for a purely external and easy piety, which includes indulgences. Luther charges: For surfeit [accidia] now reigns to such an extent that there is much worship of God everywhere, but it is only going through the motions, without love or spirit, and there are very few with any fervor. And all this happens because we think we are something and are doing enough. Consequently we try nothing, and we hold to no strong emotion, and we do much to ease the way to heaven, by means of indulgences, by means of easy doctrines, feeling that one sigh is enough. And here God properly chose the things that are not to destroy the things that are [1 Corinthians 1:28]. For one who from a sincere heart considers himself to be nothing without a doubt is fervent and hastens toward progress and that which is good.67 For Luther, indulgences and the like only hindered Christians from attaining this good. As we have seen, Luther’s goal in the Dictata was to urge his studentauditors toward what he considered to be true Christian righteousness. He did so by exhorting them to embrace their nothingness and impotence before God through an expression of the humilitas fidei. Luther wished to persuade his hearers that they needed to allow God alone to work in and through them68 and that this could only be accomplished if they willingly entered the pot of Moab and embraced the afflictions it held for them; there was no other path to heaven.

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Sawtheologen Before Luther had completed his lectures on the Psalms in the fall of 1515, he began to hold forth on the Epistle to the Romans in the spring of the same year. (He completed the Lectures on Romans in the fall of 1516.) Given the overlap between the two sets of lectures, it is not surprising that Luther’s comments on the role of suffering in the Christian life echo much of what we have seen in the Dictata. Divinely ordained suffering,69 whether physical or spiritual,70 plays a necessary and critical role in the ongoing process of justification71 by persuading Christians of their depravity and nothingness before God.72 Suffering produces humility, a theme that is similarly dominant in the Lectures on Romans.73 “The chief purpose of this letter,” Luther writes, “is to break down, to pluck up, and to destroy all wisdom and righteousness of the flesh.”74 Elsewhere he asserts that “the whole task of the apostle and his Lord is to humiliate the proud and to bring them to a realization of this condition, and teach them that they need grace, to destroy their own righteousness so that in humility they will seek Christ and confess that they are sinners and thus receive grace and be saved.”75 As in the Dictata, Luther can say that God will reckon sinners righteous if they have been humble,76 and he also characterizes the Christian’s duty of humility toward God and neighbor as “complete and perfect righteousness,” which all of Scripture teaches.77 Finally, Luther urges his listeners not to avoid tribulation but to “long for suffering” and to “seek it like a treasure.”78 For not only does suffering produce humility, but it also proves and reveals Christian virtue,79 keeps the sinful nature in check,80 and causes the Christian to love and worship God for God’s own sake and not just for his gifts.81 As in the Dictata, suffering enlarges the Christian’s soul, and therefore one must not seek escape from it in mere external religious observance; rather, one must embrace it.82 In sum, Luther continues to urge on his student-auditors the deeply earnest version of Christianity that we saw in the Dictata. Luther also reveals in Romans a distinct predilection for the via negativa that was similarly present in the Dictata. Luther praised negative theology in his lectures on the Psalms, referring to it as the “true Cabala” that was “altogether perfect.”83 His repeated emphasis on the need for human beings to become nothing through suffering so that they could be filled with God and his grace was directly influenced by his admiration for the “blessed Dionysius,”84 a fifth- or sixth-century theologian and mystic who had a significant influence on medieval mysticism.85 (Luther had no such

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praise for Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, which he read and quickly abandoned while in Erfurt, having found no solace in its pages.)86 This emphasis also manifested itself in Luther’s assault on Scholasticism in the Dictata and its alleged confidence in the ability of reason to see and understand God. According to Luther, only faith could “see” God, because God always chose to cloak himself in flesh and suffering, that is, the opposite of where humanity expected to find him.87 Faith not only assented to the truth of the condemning Word and believed its promises, but it also perceived the “wisdom of the cross of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:7–8), because it eschewed feeling and reason as means of access to God.88 Much of this is present in Romans and is especially apparent in Luther’s understanding of God himself. When commenting on the hidden and contrary nature of God’s self-revelation, Luther observes, “And universally our every assertion of anything good is hidden under the denial of it, so that faith may have its place in God, who is a negative essence and goodness and wisdom and righteousness, who cannot be possessed or touched except by the negation of all our affirmatives.”89 The person who is “negated” by this hidden God learns to be “indifferent to all things” (ad omnia esse indifferentem)90 and entirely subject to the divine will. Luther is thus a theologian of the via negativa in both the Dictata and Romans. But there are also important differences between Romans and the Dictata that would eventually lead to an important shift in Luther’s attitude toward suffering, even though this shift is not evident in Romans. These differences are soteriological. Faith is still frequently conceived of as a compound of humility and hope/trust in Romans, but the latter receive stronger emphasis91 and are also treated more frequently apart from faithas-humility.92 In such instances, Luther understands faith not as selfaccusation nor as intellectual assent to divine truth but as trust in the divine promises of blessing and salvation.93 The object of faith is the extra nos divine promise, which calls faith into existence. Faith “ratifies” (ratificat) the promise by “believing God in His every word,”94 which amounts to a confession that God and his Word are truthful and righteous.95 Humility follows from this faith as an in nobis confession of one’s sinfulness and nothingness before God.96 The believer is justified by faith, and this justification consists of God giving to the sinner the gift of “alien righteousness” (aliena iustitia),97 a term coined by Luther that refers to the covering and indwelling of the believer with Christ and his righteousness;98 the term also signals Luther’s utter rejection of traditional habitus theology and its emphasis on righteousness as a divinely infused quality of the soul

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that Christians can claim as their own. As in the later Dictata, faith is a gift in Romans,99 while the origin of humility remains unclear. Luther does not refer to humility as a gift, but he does make a number of statements that suggest that he was close to this position. His rejection of merit in salvation is stronger in Romans than in the Dictata. He asserts that “[God’s] love is the beginning [preuenit] of all good things in us” and that this love precedes the divine call to salvation,100 which presumably precedes the sinner’s response of faith and humility (although it may not create this response). Luther also completely rejects the soteriology of the via moderna, referring to those who treat human love of God as a merit congruent to salvation as Sawtheologen—pig theologians.101 Salvation is entirely in the hands of God, a fact that Luther underscores by stressing the thoroughgoing sinfulness of the entire human being (totus homo)102 and by insisting that predestination, not self-made righteousness, is what saves a person.103 Luther does not employ this new emphasis on alien righteousness consistently in Romans; he can still imagine cases in which preparation for grace by an act of humility is necessary.104 But the clear thrust of his thought is away from this position. Still, it would take him some time to work out the implications of this new soteriology for his understanding of suffering. If humility, like faith, is the result of God’s work and not human effort, and, more important, if in the economy of salvation, faith, understood as trust in the Word, becomes more important than faith-humility, understood as an act of self-accusation, then the great goal of the Christian life would be to strengthen faith—everything would have to be directed toward this end, including one’s understanding of the role of suffering in the Christian life. This is precisely where Luther is headed.

Pure and Solid Theology Luther’s theology in the Dictata and the Lectures on Romans was heavily influenced by his reading of figures such as Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Jean Gerson, and especially by his close relationship with his friend, mentor, and teacher Johannes von Staupitz.105 So many of the distinctive emphases of Luther’s so-called humility theology can be attributed to these sources and the way they influenced his reading of Scripture. These emphases included interiority, self-accusation, human nothingness, suffering, the limits of reason, the Passion of Christ (especially his wounds), and the priority of divine mercy and grace in salvation.106 However, it was another source that spoke to Luther’s own spiritual experience even more

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deeply than these and therefore became extremely important for his theology and view of suffering: fourteenth-century German mysticism.107 In the spring of 1516, while Luther was still lecturing on Romans, a fellow monk (Johannes Lang) gave him a copy of Tauler’s sermons. Luther was immediately taken by the mystic’s emphasis on suffering, self-denial, and passivity in the Christian life.108 That such a widely recognized authority on the spiritual life should have reached conclusions similar to his own about the nature and importance of Anfechtungen provided great encouragement to Luther.109 Staupitz had sought to console Luther in the midst of his spiritual trials and not without some success.110 But Tauler provided what Staupitz had not: a deeply honest and articulate description of the terrible depths of Anfechtungen, that is, of the experience of divine absence and wrath, along with the Christian’s own sense of utter despair in the face of them.111 As Berndt Hamm has observed, “Luther felt himself understood by Tauler.”112 In the Lectures on Romans, the young professor praises Tauler as one who “has shed more light than others on this matter [i.e., the endurance of divinely ordained afflictions] in the German language.”113 Luther had read other mystics, some of whom, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, made a lasting impression on him,114 while others, such as Pseudo-Dionysius and Bonaventure, proved less influential in the long run.115 As we have seen, Luther commended Dionysian negative theology in the Dictata, but in Romans, he began to move away from this kind of mysticism, because in his mind, it sought access to God apart from the incarnate and suffering Christ.116 God was still shrouded in darkness, and sinners still needed to be negated to reach him, but now this could only happen via the Word made flesh, and it required suffering in both spirit and body.117 Tauler understood all of this, which is why he appealed so deeply to Luther. In a letter to his friend George Spalatin, who had recently become a member of Elector Frederick the Wise’s chancellery, Luther praised Tauler’s sermons as “pure and solid theology” that had no parallel in either Latin or German.118 Luther included with his letter a copy of Tauler’s sermons and urged Spalatin to taste the sweetness of the Lord (Psalm 34: 8) in them.119 Luther had similarly high praise for the German Theology (Theologia Deutsch). He first came across a fragment of this fourteenth-century anonymous work in 1516 and commented that it was “in the style of the illuminating Doctor Tauler,” viewing it as a kind of a summary of his theology.120 Luther published the fragment with a brief preface in December 1516 (II)—his first publication—and then released the full text in 1518 (IX).121 In

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the preface to the latter edition, Luther asserted, “Next to the Bible and Saint Augustine no other book has come to my attention from which I have learned—and desired to learn—more concerning God, Christ, man, and what all things are.”122 We should stress that Luther’s relationship with mystics such as Tauler and the author of the German Theology was complicated: he drew much from them but also disagreed with them at crucial points. While Luther was sympathetic to Tauler’s treatment of Anfechtungen, he would finally seek to contend with his spiritual trials in a way that was quite different and, in some ways, diametrically opposed to the path taken by the fourteenth-century mystic. In short, where Tauler turned more deeply inward in hopes of experiencing the “birth of God” in the ground of his soul, Luther turned outward to Christ’s alien righteousness and the external Word.123 Already in 1516, Luther flatly rejected Tauler’s belief in the soul’s Grunt, insisting that human beings possessed no natural capacity that either linked them to God ontologically or enabled them to seek or please God of their own accord. Human beings had no natural soteriological potential; there was no spark of the divine within them.124 Luther was no mystic of the Grunt. The quest of the Godlike soul for an unmediated experience of the divine that culminated in union with God—the very heart of so much medieval mysticism—found little resonance in Luther and consistently elicited his criticism.125 Luther’s effort to “desacralize” the soul led him to reject the mystical ascent to the divine as both impossible and presumptuous.126 This meant that although Luther was drawn to the German mystics’ emphasis on suffering, he did not share their understanding of its final purpose or telos in the Christian life, union with the “nuda divinitas.”127 Still, Luther was deeply influenced by German mysticism, both in the mid-1510s and beyond, a fact attested by his ongoing praise for Tauler and his decision to prepare a second and fuller edition of the German Theology in 1518.128 Even his mature theology clearly bears traces of mysticism, although it is a mysticism that has undergone significant revision.129 These traces are not limited to the nonmystical aspects of Tauler’s (and Taulerlike) spirituality—that is, the nonscholastic or antispeculative method, the personal treatment of religion, the use of the vernacular, and the emphasis on passivity, self-denial, and suffering—as Ozment and Oberman have argued.130 They also include a consistent emphasis on union with Christ, although this union is understood in an uniquely evangelical way: it is always mediated by the Word, the cross, and faith; it always maintains the

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Creator-creature divide that was so central to Luther’s theology;131 and it is enabled by the Savior’s radical descent to sinners.132 Suffering would play an important role in nurturing this union in Luther’s future works.

Something out of Nothing In the spring (March/April) of 1517, Luther published The Seven Penitential Psalms, the first printed work to come from his own hand.133 Spalatin had asked Luther to publish the Dictata,134 but the latter chose instead to produce this vernacular work, which was intended for “coarse Saxons,” not “well-educated Nurembergers” (feingebildeten Nürnbergern).135 The book was quite popular, going through nine editions between 1517 and 1525. The Seven Penitential Psalms is important in that it signals Luther’s desire to reach beyond church and classroom in Wittenberg and to minister to the common folk, for whom Christian teaching could not be “prechewed” (vorgekäut) enough, even by his verbosity.136 In terms of Luther’s theology of suffering, the work is in many ways a simplified vernacular treatment of the themes we have seen in the (late) Dictata and Lectures on Romans. Luther explains to his readers why God afflicts them with foretastes of purgatory and hell in this life137 and then urges them to respond to such crosses with humility and faith,138 forsaking reason and self-righteousness at every turn. He also repeats something very important that he had said in Romans about divine righteousness: it refers not to God’s nature or character but to God’s generous gift that justifies the sinner through faith.139 Beyond this, Luther provides some important clarifications of the soteriology and theology of suffering that we have seen thus far. When commenting on Vulgate Psalm 37:22 (38:21)—“Do not forsake me, O Lord! O my God, be not far from me!”—Luther writes, “It is God’s nature to make something out of nothing; hence one who is not yet nothing [darumb wer noch nit nichts ist], out of him God cannot make anything.” The consistent emphasis in Luther’s early lectures on the need for human beings to become nothing before God—as in Gerson and Tauler, to feel themselves utterly God-forsaken—was directly informed by this conviction about the nature of God as a being who always creates (and re-creates) ex nihilo, an important part of negative theology. Luther continues, “Therefore God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life only to the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise. In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in

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grace.” The only way to become God’s “material” (materien) is to become nichts.140 This, in short, is what Luther advocated in the Dictata and the Lectures on Romans. The reason Luther advocated this self-annihilation is related to another essential characteristic of deity that he had already mentioned in the later Dictata: divine self-sufficiency. As Luther explained in his lecture on Vulgate Psalm 117 [118]: To every judgment of reason it is characteristic of divinity and fitting to be self-sufficient, to need nothing, and to impart benefits to others gratis. Therefore He also confounded and reproved all our righteousness, all goodness, all our wisdom altogether, and He wants us to acknowledge Him to be the true God and to confess ourselves to be unrighteous, evil, and foolish in everything that we did not receive from and [or] do not acknowledge having received from Him.141 Thus, God’s action of reducing sinners to nothing flowed logically and necessarily from his very nature as God, the self-sufficient divine giver. It did not flow from some misanthropic impulse; on this point, Luther is emphatic, both in the Dictata and in The Seven Penitential Psalms. Luther went on in the former work to address this issue squarely: Is He, then, good and fair in that He confounds and reproves and tramples upon all that is ours and offers and establishes only His own? He is the very best, indeed, because, as I have said, in this He proves Himself to be the true God, who wants to give His gifts to us and to be our God, to impart benefits to us, to want us for Himself, and not to take what is ours, not to have us as His benefactors and as gods, and not to have need of us. To impart benefits to another is divine. But He cannot be our God and give His goods to us unless He first teaches that He does not want our things and that our things are nothing before Him, as Is. 1:11 ff. tells us, so that, thus humbled, we might become capable and desirous of what is His. . . . If He would take anything of ours and not utterly repudiate it, then He would not be the true God nor good alone, because we, too, would contend with Him in benefits. But now He wants us to do nothing but receive and Himself to do nothing but give and thus be the true God.142

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For Luther, human beings had to learn that to seek to contribute anything to their salvation (aside from humility) was fundamentally to fail to understand who God was, the creator, and who human beings were, creatures.143 Although this learning entailed much suffering, Luther believed that it was ultimately an expression of God’s goodness, something Luther stresses in The Seven Penitential Psalms. Drawing on a well-known image in the Christian consolation literature, he argues that when God afflicts Christians, depriving them of his every strength and comfort, God acts as a “kindly father” whose chastisements are “ordered in a friendly way to be a blessed consolation,” provided Christians have the faith to see God’s goodness and friendship hidden under their opposite.144 Here Luther indicates what would become a central concern in his pastoral theology of suffering: to teach the common folk to embrace divinely appointed suffering and by faith to see in such crosses the grace of the hidden God who wished to enlarge their souls.

Clinging to the Word Luther continued to forge his new soteriology as he turned his attention to the Epistle to the Hebrews, undertaking a series of lectures on the book that lasted from the winter semester of 1517–18 to the summer semester of 1518.145 As a number of Reformation scholars have observed,146 the extant student notes we have from these lectures reveal some very important developments in his understanding of faith,147 which, as we will see, had a direct bearing on his theology of suffering. First, we should note that while humility and self-accusation remain an important part of Luther’s theology (as they did throughout his life),148 he continues to move away from his earlier position that suggested that human beings could produce them of their own accord in response to the condemning Word; he also continues to decouple them from faith-as-trust in the Word. Luther instructs his students in these lectures to despair of their self-made penitence and purification from sin, because, according to him, their forgiveness does not depend on these: it is Christ’s purification for sins (Hebrews 1:3) that produces their penitence, and the same purification has already forgiven them before they begin to repent.149 There is no question here of sinners responding to the Word (or suffering) by doing what is in them. As Luther put it in the Disputation against Scholastic Theology (late summer 1517, VI), which he prepared a number of months before he began to lecture on Hebrews, “On the part of man, however, nothing precedes grace except

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indisposition and even rebellion against grace.”150 Any salvific response to the Word (or suffering) must now be initiated and enabled by divine grace. In the Lectures on Romans, we saw Luther treat faith apart from humility and define it as trust in the divine promises of the Word. He continues along this trajectory in the Lectures on Hebrews, making even stronger statements about the importance of faith and its relationship to the Word. For Luther, faith is now a “clinging [adhesio] to the Word,” that is, a deep trust that causes the heart to become soft toward God and ultimately unites it with Christ, causing the believer to become like the Savior. As Luther explains: For this clinging is the very faith in the Word. Indeed, it is that tie of betrothal about which Hos. 2:20 says: “I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness,” according to the well-known statement in I Cor. 6:17: “He who clings to God is one spirit with Him.” . . . It follows as a corollary that faith in Christ is every virtue and that unbelief is every vice. . . . For through faith a man becomes like the Word of God, but the Word of God is the Son of God.151 Elsewhere in these lectures, Luther asserts, “Faith is the glue or the bond. The Word is on one side; the heart is on the other side. But through faith they become one spirit, just as man and wife become ‘one flesh’ (Gen. 2:24). Therefore it is true that the heart is combined with the Word through faith and that the Word is combined with the heart through the same faith.”152 So important is the gift of faith that Luther makes it the defining mark of the Christian:153 “For if you ask a Christian what the work is by which he becomes worthy of the name ‘Christian,’ he will be able to give absolutely no other answer than that it is the hearing of the Word of God, that is, faith. Therefore the ears alone are the organs of a Christian man, for he is justified and declared to be a Christian, not because of the works of any member but because of faith.”154 Faith as clinging to the Word, not as self-accusation, has thus become absolutely central to Luther’s understanding of true Christianity. Faith unites Christians to Christ, causes them to become like him, and comprises every virtue, so great is it in the sight of God.155 Faith is also the sole source of comfort for Christians as they contend with God’s “alien work” (i.e., divinely ordained tribulations).156 Luther asserts, “For since God takes away all our goods and our life through many tribulations, it is impossible for the heart to be calm

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and to bear this unless it clings to better goods, that is, is united with God through faith.”157 Because faith is so central to the Christian life, it has to be tested and proved through suffering, a theme that emerges more clearly in the Lectures on Hebrews than in previous works. Luther states that the primary purpose of the fear of death, judgment, and hell is to test faith.158 Similarly, the greatest trial that Christians face is the trial of faith, “against which the devil employs both his own strength and that of all men and things.”159 As Luther reached the end of his lectures on Hebrews (summer of 1518), he could declare that Abraham, the man of faith (11:8), “gave a supreme example of an evangelical life, because he left everything and followed the Lord. Preferring the Word of God to all else and loving it above all else, he was a stranger of his own accord and was subjected every hour to dangers of life and death.”160 Abraham clung to the Word by faith and willingly endured the suffering that both proved and followed from this faith. He was the ideal Christian for Luther as the monk-professor became caught up in the indulgence controversy (fall 1517–fall 1518).

Joy in Tribulations The indulgence controversy, which took place while Luther was still lecturing on Hebrews, catapulted him onto the public stage of early modern Christendom in a way that caught the monk-professor largely by surprise. In the midst of this conflict, Luther continued to work out the implications of his (by this point) radical soteriology. Most important among these implications was a decisive break with late medieval penitential theology, along with its consequences for how Christians were to view suffering.161 Ironically, the road to this break began with a very traditional concern: to warn Christians about the dangers of spiritual laxity and to exhort them to take up the cross and follow Christ through tribulations of every kind. As we have seen, many late medieval reformers and mystics shared this concern, and Luther himself had voiced it since the beginning of his professorial career.162 But the theological conclusions that he reached as he articulated this concern were anything but conventional. In the Ninety-Five Theses (October 1517, III), Luther assumes the traditional distinction between the debt of sin (culpa) and the penalty for sin (poena), but he also makes an important differentiation within the latter category that proved to be quite radical: he distinguishes between divinely imposed punishment for sin and its human (that is, papal or ecclesiastical)

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counterpart.163 He concedes that the pope has authority to forgive penalties but only those that the pope himself imposes in the form of works of satisfaction.164 According to Luther, the pope has no power to affect the divine penalty for sin that remains until human beings enter heaven. (This divine penalty consists of the true penitence that he refers to in thesis 1, namely, lifelong repentance and mortification of the flesh).165 Neither can the pope affect the condition of souls in purgatory: his ability to bind and loose sins ends when a person dies, a severe curtailment of papal authority.166 Departed souls are in God’s hands. Thus, for Luther, indulgences are simply a man-made form of release from man-made penalties that in no way provide forgiveness for divinely imposed penalties. As in the Dictata, Luther argues that the problem with indulgences is that they produce in those who obtain them false confidence and spiritual laxity.167 People trust in indulgences rather than in divine mercy and ignore Christ’s call to true repentance, believing that possession of an indulgence relieves them of the need to take up the cross.168 Echoing late medieval mystics and reformers such as Tauler and Gerson, Luther insists that suffering under the cross is the Christian’s lot and privilege. As he puts it in his final two theses, “Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their head, through penalties, death, and hell; and thus be confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace [Acts 14:22].”169 According to Luther, divinely ordained suffering is to be embraced and patiently endured, not avoided or rejected in favor of sacramental penances or indulgences. He maintains that there is no release from the divine penalty for sin in this life and insists that it is both dangerous and un-Christian to seek one. The monk-professor sounded much the same message in A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace (preached in October 1517; published in March 1518, XXIII),170 a vernacular work that had a far wider lay readership than the Latin and rather complicated Ninety-Five Theses, whose impact, though significant, was limited to humanists, theologians, and other elites. (The Theses were translated into German but did not enjoy a wide circulation in this form.)171 In A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace, Luther again makes a distinction between human and divine penalty for sin, insisting that indulgences have no impact on the latter, as only God can remit it.172 Luther also argues that God requires no penalty or satisfaction (peynn adder gnugthuung) for sin beyond sinners’ “heart-felt and true repentance [rew] or conversion,” along with their intention to take up the cross of Christ.173 Nothing more is required to receive the gift of divine forgiveness, and

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those who think differently, that is, those who think that they can atone for sin through works of satisfaction, are engaged in “a great error” (eyn großer yrthum).174 (Luther asserts in the Lectures on Hebrews that such repentance is produced in the Christian by Christ’s purification for sins, i.e., by grace.) Luther teaches in his sermon that Christians should seek to endure the tribulations sent by God, not because they render satisfaction for sin but because they contribute to Christians’ spiritual improvement, which he argues is God’s purpose in sending them.175 This was a radical break with late medieval penitential theology and its teaching about suffering; it had profound implications for how Luther understood the role of tribulation and adversity in the Christian life.176 Here Luther makes it abundantly clear that he will not allow suffering to be placed on Mechthild’s soteriological scales in order to tip them in the Christian’s favor. In fact, Luther never allowed this, not even in the Dictata, where suffering appears to have salvific value as a cause of self-accusation. From the beginning of his career as a professor of theology, Luther was silent on the issue of suffering as a work of satisfaction. This silence is no doubt owing to the fact that he was simply not interested in human merit and the role it might play in salvation; he was not interested in Mechthild’s scales, because in his mind, sinful humanity had nothing to place on them.177 In the Sermon on Indulgence and Grace, Luther criticizes certain “modern preachers” (newen prediger) who make a distinction between two kinds of penalties for sin: curative (medicativas) and satisfactory (satisfactorias). He rejects the latter category and places all divine poena in the former one. He insists that “all penalty, indeed, everything that God lays upon Christians is edifying [besserlich] for them and able to be borne by them.”178 Luther cites 1 Corinthians 10:13 in order to encourage his readers that God will not test them beyond what they can bear, arguing that they therefore have no need of indulgences to reduce punishment for sin.179 As in the Ninety-Five Theses, he maintains that the great failing of indulgences is that they cater to the human desire to avoid suffering and therefore rob human beings of its benefits. Indulgences have only been allowed on account of “immature and lazy Christians” who want to persist in their spiritual laxness.180 This critique of alleged spiritual laxity was an important recurring theme in Luther’s teaching, preaching, and writing from the early 1510s through the end of the indulgence controversy. He felt that a good deal of the popular piety of his day was a merely external piety that shunned divinely ordained suffering and its benefits: people venerated cross relics

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and the like but sought to escape from the divinely ordained crosses in their lives.181 The critique also continued after the indulgence controversy, growing more intense and radical with every passing year.182 Luther would eventually reject indulgences altogether, along with belief in relics and the cult of the saints,183 insisting that each was a superstitious means of escape from divinely imposed purgation. Luther would also argue that each was a means of escape from the divinely ordained means of consolation that he sought to articulate in the indulgence controversy. This consolation took the form of relief from a guilty conscience. In addition to separating divinely imposed penalty for sin from its human counterpart and urging his contemporaries to embrace the former for their spiritual improvement, Luther also sought to show during the indulgence controversy how the Latin church’s alleged obsession with manmade penalties and their remission had obscured from view the central importance of forgiveness of guilt.184 Because by this point, he placed little stock in ecclesiastical punishments and because he saw no way to escape divinely imposed penalties, Luther sought to focus his contemporaries’ attention on the remission of guilt. But there remained an important connection for him between divinely imposed penalties and the forgiveness of guilt: the only way to endure the former was to have assurance of the latter. As Luther argues in For the Investigating of Truth and the Consoling of Fearful Consciences (early summer 1518, III), “The remission of guilt calms the heart and takes away the greatest of all punishments, namely, the consciousness of sin.”185 Later in the same treatise, Luther asserts, “Where guilt and conscience have been forgiven there is no pain in punishment [nulla pena est in pena], but there is joy in tribulations.”186 (We saw Luther make a similar statement in the Lectures on Hebrews.) In comments like these on the forgiveness of guilt, there is a striking new emphasis on certainty of absolution that is less apparent in Luther’s earlier works,187 although this innovation is directly informed by the understanding of faith and divine promise that we have seen in both the Lectures on Romans and the Lectures on Hebrews. As Luther writes in For the Investigating of Truth, “Therefore it is certain that sins are loosed if you believe they have been loosed, because the promise of Christ the Savior [Matthew 16:19] is certain.”188 Luther thus bases peace for the troubled conscience (including his own) firmly and exclusively on faith in the promises of the Word, not on self-accusation and contrition.189 This newfound confidence had direct implications for Luther’s theology of suffering: armed with certainty of forgiveness and the peace it entailed, the believer could face divine penalties

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joyfully, knowing that they were not a means of rendering satisfaction for sin to the divine judge; rather, they were (and could only be) an opportunity to have one’s faith and love proved by one’s heavenly Father. One’s salvation was not at stake; one’s ongoing redemption from sin’s effects as a fruit of salvation was. This rejection of suffering as penance signaled a crucial break with late medieval penitential theology and much of the Latin Christian tradition. This break also had direct implications for Luther’s attitude toward purgatory. While he could assert in the Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses (draft February 1518; published August 1518, IV), “I am positive that there is a Purgatory” (Mihi certissimum est, purgatorium esse),190 his understanding of what took place in purgatory was quite different from much of the tradition that preceded him. As we have seen, he rejected the need for human beings to make satisfaction for sin, whether in this life or the next.191 Therefore, purgatory could not be a punitorium where one suffered the remaining punishment for sin; rather, it could only be a purgatorium where one was purged of self-love and caused to love the divine will.192 This was the “perfect spiritual health” that Luther believed was required of all those who were to enter heaven.193 Luther retained this modified view of purgatory for some time and did not finally reject the idea of a postmortem purification from sin until 1530.194 Luther also believed in the reality and necessity of premortem purgatory. In the Explanations, he writes movingly of his experience of utter Godforsakenness, which he interprets as a foretaste of the pains of purgatory and hell.195 He praises Tauler as one who understands this experience, thus providing evidence of his ongoing reliance on late medieval German mysticism.196 In keeping with his emphasis on the necessity of enduring the divine penalty for sin in this life, Luther argues that Christians should not flee such suffering; rather, they should embrace it and trust God, thereby finding peace and repose for their consciences.197 As with postmortem suffering, the goal of such experiences is to test faith and prove love, not to render satisfaction for sin. Luther was not the first theologian to interpret suffering as a this-worldly purgatory,198 but his rejection of notions of merit and satisfaction in connection with such experiences was unique and radical. Suffering Christians could no longer view their tribulation as a penance that, if patiently borne, could reduce their time in purgatory. Tribulation had now lost its place in the traditional economy of salvation. The indulgence controversy thus marked a crucial turning point in the development of Luther’s theology of suffering. Central to this development

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was a reformatio poenae—a reformation of penalty for sin. As we have seen, Luther posited a distinction between divine and human penalties for sin and stressed the importance of the former while he disparaged the latter. He also argued for a vital connection between the assurance of forgiveness of guilt and the Christian’s ability to embrace and endure the divine penalty for sin, a connection he underscored by insisting that believers could have certainty of forgiveness through faith in the promises of the Word. These assertions, in turn, were directly influenced by Luther’s theology of salvation, which by this point (fall 1518) left no room for human agency and thus no possibility (or need) of rendering satisfaction for sin.199 Luther took to a rather radical conclusion the emphasis on divine mercy and human passivity that is so apparent in the works of late medieval theologians such as Gerson, Paltz, and Staupitz200 and also in the late medieval ars moriendi literature; for Luther, sinners were utterly dead before God and therefore were incapable of exercising agency of any kind in their spiritual resurrection. Already in the early Dictata, Luther was convinced that human beings could not merit grace through some positive display of Christian virtue, but he also believed that sinners had to respond to grace with humilitas fidei in order to be justified. Over the course of the next several years, Luther experienced a number of “breakthroughs”—not just one—in his soteriology that continued into the winter of 1518–19, at which point the essential pieces of his new theology of salvation were all in place, though not necessarily fully developed or consistently employed.201 In the later Dictata, Luther began to move away from the soteriology of the via moderna by coming to the conclusion that faith was a gift, and therefore it was not something that human beings could produce of their own accord. He reiterated this position in the Lectures on Romans and also frequently treated faith as trust in the divine promises of the Word apart from faith-as-humility. In the same work, he developed two new concepts that caused him to break with via moderna soteriology entirely: alien righteousness and the complete bondage of the human will to sin. Humility remained important to his theology; it was not simply replaced by faith.202 But faith did come to take logical priority over humility and was seen as its source. This shift is quite clear in the Lectures on Hebrews. By the winter of 1518–19, that is, by the close of the indulgence controversy, Luther had come to believe that God neither expected nor required human beings to contribute to their salvation in any way; salvation was a gift that one received by placing one’s faith in the divine promises of the Word. This saving faith was itself a gift,

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provided via the Word, and it could be certain of forgiveness, because it was based on the promises of Almighty God, who could not lie. As in the Dictata, Luther continued to conceive of justification as an ongoing process,203 and it was here that suffering continued to play a decisive role. But suffering—or, rather, the Christian’s response to it—was no longer salvific, because the humility it elicited was no longer a human work but a divine one and because it could not atone for sin. Beyond this, Luther placed a new emphasis on suffering testing faith, owing to the centrality of fides in his account of the Christian life. Luther had thus traveled a considerable distance in his reformation of soteriology and suffering, but some of his most distinctive innovations still lay in the future.204

5

Suffering and the Theology of the Cross the indulgence controversy was an exceptionally generative period of time in Luther’s theological development. As we have seen, the conflict provided occasion for him to ponder the nature and limits of papal authority and also to identify and articulate the central points of disagreement between his emerging evangelical soteriology and traditional penitential theology and practice, all of which had important consequences for his understanding of the role of suffering in the Christian life. The indulgence controversy was also the seedbed for one of the distinctive and defining features of his evangelical theology, the theologia crucis (theology of the cross).1 In the midst of his growing conflict with ecclesiastical authorities, Luther reflected ever more deeply on the God who dealt with sinful human beings on the basis of alien righteousness and “alien faith.”2 He became increasingly convinced that this God’s whole manner of interacting with humanity was alien, that is, counterintuitive and paradoxical, an insight that he thought was sorely lacking in the Scholastic theology of his day. Already in the Dictata, Luther had spoken of the “alien work of God” (opus alienum dei) by which “He crucifies and kills so that He may revive and glorify.” Luther explained, “Thus He does a work that is foreign to Him so that He may do His own work (Is. 28:21)” (Sic alienum opus eius ab eo, ut faciat opus suum).3 God used suffering and affliction, which were foreign to his nature, to accomplish a goal that was proper to his nature: the salvation of human beings. Luther found confirmation of this insight in his subsequent reading of Tauler and used it to develop the theologia crucis. While the theology of the cross should not be reduced to a pastoral theology of suffering—it is rather a way of viewing the totality of God’s interactions with humankind based on the cross—suffering does figure prominently in it.4 As we will see in subsequent chapters, the theology of the cross would also directly shape the pastoral care offered by the clergy and laity who became enamored of Luther’s version of reformation.

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Luther coined the term theologia crucis,5 first using it in the Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses (draft February 1518; revised and published August 1518) and first employing it publicly at the Heidelberg Disputation (April 1518).6 The critique of popular piety in the Explanations that we noted in chapter 4 was directly informed by Luther’s distinction between the “theologian of glory” (Theologus gloriae) and the “theologian of the cross” (Theologus crucis). He argues in this treatise that the latter speak of the crucified and hidden God and willingly embrace the cross, while the former shun suffering, seeing it as an offense that the common folk are correct to avoid through relics, indulgences, and the like.7 In the theses that he prepared for the Heidelberg Disputation, the monk-professor asserts that theologians of glory rely on reason to seek God and on their own moral strength to carry out the divine law, while theologians of the cross rely on faith and grace, forsaking their own intellectual and moral agency at every turn. According to Luther, theologians of glory are faux theologians because they refuse to embrace God’s chosen means of selfrevelation: the cross and suffering. As he puts it in theses 19 and 20: That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have been made [quae facta sunt] [Romans 1:20].8 He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things [posteriora] of God seen through suffering and the cross.9 The reason for the divine recourse to self-revelation through suffering was obvious, at least from Luther’s perspective—it frustrated human attempts at self-deification. Following the Apostle Paul, Luther maintains in his theses that God revealed his invisible attributes in creation (Romans 1:20), but this only led to arrogance and pride, as human beings trusted in their own capacities to know and imitate the divine. Therefore, in order to crush human pride, God chose to reveal himself through Christ, in weakness, suffering, and the cross, the exact opposite of where humanity expected to find God. For this reason, Luther insists that true theologians must always begin their thinking about God from the folly of the cross, where God wishes to be found. Here the cross refers primarily to Christ’s Passion, but it also includes the believer’s suffering.10 As in the Dictata, Luther interprets Christians’ suffering as God’s alien work to strip them of all intellectual

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and moral pretense,11 in short, to reduce them to nothing.12 Luther maintains that Christians must be annihilated through suffering,13 which enables them to become “Christ’s action and instrument” (Christi operatio seu instrumentum), the goal of human existence.14 As the author of the German Theology put it, Christians were to imitate Christ’s humanity, which was simply a “house or a habitation for God” (ein hauß oder eyn wonung gottes).15 (Luther published his second and expanded edition of the German Theology just after the disputation in Heidelberg.) The crucial difference between the nascent theology of the cross of the Dictata and the mature theology of the cross of the Explanations and the Heidelberg Disputation is that in the later works, there is no room for human agency in producing humility, as Luther has come to believe in the complete bondage of the human will to sin,16 something he did not believe in the early lectures on the Psalms.17 In the Heidelberg Disputation, humility and fear of God are clearly the work of God, which is carried out through the law and suffering.18

His Friendly Heart This radical emphasis on divine agency and human passivity in Luther’s theology of the cross is evident in the numerous devotional works that he published for the common folk in the late 1510s and early 1520s and especially in his comments on suffering contained in them. It is important to stress that it was through such vernacular works of devotion that the majority of Germans came to know Luther, not through his university lecture courses and scholarly debates. In the minds of his contemporaries, at least those who were sympathetic to him, Luther was first and foremost a pastor who was deeply committed to the care of souls.19 One sees this emphasis on divine agency and human passivity very clearly in A Meditation on Christ’s Passion (April 1519),20 one of Luther’s most popular vernacular works (XXVII). In this printed sermon, he affirms the traditional practice of meditating on Christ’s suffering, but he also takes issue with much of the traditional motivation behind this practice. Luther argues that the proper motivation for contemplating Christ’s Passion is not avoidance of life’s trials or hatred of the Jews or even pity for Christ; rather, “They contemplate Christ’s passion aright who view it with a terror-stricken heart and a despairing conscience.”21 Meditation on the Passion serves the purpose that Luther attributed to the law in the Heidelberg Disputation: to convict the conscience of sin and sin’s dire consequences. He refers to

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Christ as “this earnest mirror” (dißer ernster spiegel)22 that shows human beings their wretchedness. Luther writes: We must give ourselves wholly to this matter, for the main benefit of Christ’s passion is that a person sees into his own true self and that he be terrified and crushed by this. Unless we seek that knowledge, we do not derive much benefit from Christ’s passion. The real and true work of Christ’s passion is to make a person conformable to Christ, so that we are martyred [gemartet werden] in conscience by our sins in like measure as Christ was pitiably martyred [gemartet wirt] in body and soul by our sins.23 Luther also compares meditation on Christ’s Passion to baptism, both of which provide new birth by “strangling the old Adam” (erwurget den alten Adam).24 But this mortification of the conscience is not in the Christian’s power; as in the Heidelberg Disputation, it is a work of God.25 The Christian is like an infant baptizand, utterly passive before God. Once the Christian becomes aware of his sins, Luther instructs him to cast them upon Christ, seeing in the Savior’s wounds and sufferings his own transgressions, which are overcome by Christ’s Resurrection. If the Christian cannot believe this miracle, Luther urges him to ask God for faith, as “this too rests entirely in the hands of God.”26 Again, God is the primary agent in the life of salvation. God makes possible proper contemplation of Christ’s Passion and then grants the faith that permits the Christian to receive the fruits of such contemplation. Luther concedes that there are measures that a Christian can take to receive the gift of faith more fully. These measures reveal both the strong emphasis that Luther placed on divine love in his soteriology and the central role that he accorded to faith in enabling the believer to experience this love. Luther counsels the penitent reader to refrain from further contemplation of Christ’s suffering and instead to meditate on “his friendly heart and how this heart beats with such love for you that it impels him to bear with pain your conscience and your sin. Then your heart will be filled with love for him, and the confidence of your faith will be strengthened.” Luther goes on to urge the reader to rise from Christ’s heart to God’s heart, the true source of the Savior’s love. “Thus you will find the divine and paternal heart, and, as Christ says, you will be drawn to the Father through him. . . . We know God aright when we grasp him not in his might or wisdom (for then he proves terrifying), but in his kindness and love. Then faith and confidence are able to exist, and then man is truly born anew in God.”27

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Luther concludes by making a distinction that was very important to his understanding of suffering. He observes that throughout his sermon, Christ’s Passion has served as a “sacrament” (sacrament), and now it must become an “example” (exempel) for the Christian.28 This distinction goes back to Augustine and does not appear in medieval Passion literature;29 Luther’s use of it in this context is unique and stems directly from his new soteriology.30 He explains, “Until now we regarded [Christ’s Passion] as a sacrament which is active in us while we are passive, but now we find that we too must be active, namely in the following.”31 Luther goes on to list numerous forms of suffering and temptation along with how one should bear them in imitation of Christ as one considers the true depth and severity of the Savior’s suffering. Luther’s point here is that Christians must first receive Christ’s Passion as a means of grace before they can regard it as a model to imitate. Christians cannot suffer with Christ before they have embraced the full benefits of Christ’s suffering for them; they cannot act like Christ until Christ has acted upon (and in) them.32 Luther still urges imitation of Christ and participation in his sufferings,33 but he thinks that the ability to do so depends on the indwelling Christ himself; there is no thought of human merit here, as in late medieval Passion piety.34

The Greatest Words in All of Scripture The conflict that began in the indulgence controversy grew more severe as Luther became increasingly convinced of the truth of his theology and as the papacy grew increasingly troubled by the same, especially as the rebellious monk-professor spread this theology abroad in vernacular pamphlets. In the midst of this heightening conflict, which would result in Luther being excommunicated and placed under the imperial ban, he embarked on a new set of lectures on the Psalms (Operationes in Psalmos, 1519–1521) in which he made some extremely important statements about suffering in the Christian life. The lectures were published in full in Latin (V) and in various parts in German, in the latter case appearing as smaller devotional works on the themes of hope (VI), faith (III), and the Passion of Christ (V).35 A number of scholars have noted the prominence of humility in the Operationes, providing compelling evidence for the continued importance of the concept in Luther’s theology.36 Human beings must still be reduced to nothing, that is, they must become utterly God-forsaken, in order to be justified. However, as we have seen in the Heidelberg Disputation and

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subsequent works, Luther now views humility as a divine rather than a human work; there is no association of merit with humility in the Operationes. God himself prepares human beings for the gift of faith through the gift of humility, and God accomplishes this alien work through the Word and suffering,37 something that applies to both the beginning of justification and its ongoing process.38 Of special interest for Luther’s understanding of tribulation in the Christian life are his comments on Christ’s suffering in the Operationes. The Wittenberg professor asserts that on the cross, Christ not only took on himself the penalty of human sin, but he also took on the effects of human sin—all of its effects. Luther maintains that Christ did not simply suffer death, but he also suffered the anxiety that the human conscience feels in the face of death, along with the fear that it experiences of being eternally damned and abandoned by God.39 Luther stresses that Christ actually experienced this anxiety; he was frightened and terrified in all of the ways that human beings are. When Christ cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Vulgate Psalm 21:2; Psalm 22:1a), he was actually telling the truth, for he had become a sinner and truly was abandoned by God. Luther asserts, “It is the truth [that this] happened in Christ, and it is not permitted to diminish or make void the manifest words of God by human temerity.”40 In the late medieval tradition, the Savior’s words of lament and dereliction on the cross had typically been attributed to Christ speaking in the person of the church (in persona ecclesiae) or to Christ referring to his body and the lower parts of his soul.41 Luther argues for a different interpretation in the Operationes. When the psalmist cries out to God, “Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” (Vulgate Psalm 21:2; Psalm 22:1b), Luther insists that Christ spoke these words in reference to his whole human self.42 Christ suffered in every part of his human person, experienced God-forsakenness in his entire human nature. Christ faced God the Father’s wrath and despaired in his conscience, just as the Christian does. Christ was afflicted in soul and body, just as the Christian is. Christ, too, experienced Anfechtungen, although to a degree that far outstripped anything known to the Christian. Thus, according to Luther, the Christian can find in Christ a source of empathy and hope in his or her own afflictions and God-forsakenness, clearly one of the driving concerns in the Wittenberg professor’s Christology. Luther was influenced by late medieval mysticism and Passion piety in his emphasis on the humanity and suffering of Christ, but he clearly went beyond both in the Operationes.

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As Eric Lienhard observes, “The way in which Luther describes the suffering of Christ on the cross certainly constitutes a break with tradition.”43 Luther later said of Vulgate Psalm 21:2 (Psalm 22:1a)—“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?—“Ich halte sie vor die grosten wordt in tota scriptura” (I regard them as the greatest words in all of Scripture).44 Luther stresses in the Operationes that in Christ, the God-forsaken sinner has a Savior who has taken on himself the full depths of human estrangement from God—and overcome it. In time, Luther would break with tradition again by involving God in human suffering in an unprecedented way.45 Although the Wittenberg professor shared the Christian tradition’s concern to protect the impassibility of God—that is, God’s freedom from being acted upon against his will—he did not believe one needed to distance God from suffering in order to do so. He argued that in Christ, God had willed for his deity to be united with human nature in such a way that the divine nature could be said truly to suffer.46 Luther would not fully work out his unique version of the communicatio idiomatum—that is, the communication of attributes between the human and divine natures of Christ—until the eucharistic controversy of the late 1520s,47 but the seeds of this Christology are present already in the Operationes in his comments on Christ’s suffering.48 Luther’s desire to relate Christ and (later) the divine nature to human suffering in new ways was motivated in part by his great reluctance to speculate about the unrevealed or hidden God, something that he thought only a theologian of glory did. As we have seen, Luther’s God was the revealed God, which for him meant Christ,49 especially Christ on the cross, an emphasis that goes back to Staupitz,50 among others. As Luther argued in the Heidelberg Disputation, “Now it is not sufficient for anyone, and it does him no good to recognize God in his glory and majesty, unless he recognizes him in the humility and shame of the cross. Thus God destroys the wisdom of the wise, as Isa. [45:15] says, ‘Truly, thou art a God who hidest thyself.’” Luther continued: So, also, in John 14[:8], where Philip spoke according to the theology of glory: “Show us the Father.” Christ forthwith set aside his flighty thought about seeking God elsewhere and led him to himself, saying, “Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father” [John 14:9]. For this reason true theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ, as it is also stated in John 10 [14:6]: “No one comes to the Father, but by me.” “I am the door” [John 10:9], and so forth.51

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As Moses had to content himself with seeing the “back” of God (Exodus 33:23), so Christians had to content themselves with seeing the crucified Christ—the posteriora of God.52 The only God available to human beings was the suffering God, the God who suffered with and for humanity. This meant that Christians had to look for God in suffering, both Christ’s and their own.53 Suffering was the cloak with which the hidden God concealed himself from the proud and revealed himself to the humble. Thus, Luther could declare in the Operationes, “the CROSS alone is our theology” (CRUX sola est nostra theologia). (Here Luther is contrasting his theology with that of Dionysian mystics who seek to find Christ in the darkness of nonbeing. Luther maintains that Christ, the soul’s lover, can only be found the sufferings of the cross, death, and hell.)54 In order to discern the God hidden in suffering, one needed faith. As Alister McGrath has observed, “the theology of the cross is a theology of faith, and of faith alone.”55 Only faith could discern the goodness of God concealed under its contrary, wrath and suffering. (We have seen Luther say the same in the Dictata, the Lectures on Hebrews, and For the Investigating of Truth and the Consoling of Fearful Consciences, although without explicit reference to the theology of the cross.)56 According to Luther, here, in the midst of tribulation, reason was of no value in finding God. The Wittenberg professor later maintained that if people relied on reason to assess God’s attitude toward them, they would inevitably wind up concluding either that God does not exist or that God is a cosmic misanthrope.57 Luther was not interested in the modern problem of theodicy—for him, humanity was on trial, not God58—but he was keenly aware of how difficult it was to believe that God was good in the midst of suffering and injustice. He readily acknowledged that Christians’ experience in the world consistently told them that God was against them or that God was not there. Faith said just the opposite; it was continually at odds with experience.59 It alone could see the good God cloaked in suffering; it alone could withstand the unceasing attempts of the devil to deceive the Christian into believing that God was full of wrath and vengeance, not grace and mercy.

The Window of Dim Faith In the Treatise on Good Works (June 1520, XVIII),60 Luther makes a direct connection between faith and the Christian’s sense of spiritual confidence in the midst of suffering. His comments are clearly influenced by the theology of the cross:

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It is an art to have a sure confidence in God when, at least as far as we can see or understand, he shows himself in wrath, and to expect better from him than we now know.61 Here God is hidden, as the bride says in the Song of Songs [2:9], “Behold there he stands behind our wall, gazing in through the windows.” That means he stands hidden among the sufferings which would separate us from him like a wall, indeed, like a wall of a fortress. And yet he looks upon me and does not forsake me. He stands there and is ready to help in grace, and through the window of dim faith [die fenster des tunckeln glaubens] he permits himself to be seen. And Jeremiah says in Lamentations 3[:32–33], “He casts men aside, but that is not the intention of his heart.”62 According to Luther, those who lack this “window of dim faith” despair of God’s goodness, seeing in their suffering only evidence of divine wrath. Those with faith remain confident of God’s favor in Christ and regard their sufferings as “the costliest treasures which no man can assess.”63 They can be sure that all they do from faith is well pleasing to God, despite appearances to the contrary. The faithless, on the other hand, build their sense of spiritual confidence on the shaky foundation of their own pious acts, which Luther argues can never provide Christians with the assurance of God’s favor that they need, especially in times of suffering, whether physical or spiritual. Here we see an additional aspect of Luther’s critique of popular piety: he felt that it robbed Christians of the spiritual security that he thought only faith could provide.64 Not only did indulgences and the veneration of relics dissuade Christians from embracing suffering, but these forms of traditional piety, along with various “good works” (e.g., confessing, fasting, establishing endowments, etc.), also failed the test of suffering— popular piety left Christians uncertain of God’s attitude toward them in adversity, because they could never know if they had done enough to render themselves pleasing to God. According to Luther, traditional devotion gave no lasting peace to troubled consciences, and he thought that this peace was absolutely necessary if Christians were to bear their suffering faithfully. The only source of this peace was faith in the promises of God’s mercy in the Word pro me.65 As we have seen, according to Luther, if one took God at his Word, one could be certain of divine forgiveness and thus face one’s afflictions with confidence.66 Because faith was the only means of access to this all-important confidence, its constant

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testing was absolutely necessary, something that Luther says even more clearly and urgently in his treatises and pamphlets from the late 1510s and early 1520s than in his earlier works.67 Luther makes an explicit connection between suffering and the testing of faith in the Sermons on the First Epistle of St. Peter (preached in 1522, published in 1523, IX).68 When commenting on the proving and refining of faith through fire in 1 Peter 1:7–8, Luther asserts, “Thus God has imposed the cross on all Christians to cleanse and purge them well, in order that faith may remain pure, just as the Word is, so that one adheres to the Word alone and relies on nothing else. For we really need such purging and affliction every day because of the coarse old Adam.”69 Later in the text, Luther says that suffering is necessary in the Christian life because it provides Christians with the opportunity to witness the full power of the gospel, which is always most potent when confronted with its opposite, death. Luther writes, “God lays a cross on all believers in order that they may taste and prove the power of God—the power which they have taken hold of through faith.”70 According to Luther, faith alone provides access to the power of the Resurrection at the beginning of the Christian life, throughout its course, and at its end. The medieval consolation tradition had also interpreted suffering as a test of faith, but this traditional causa took on a new primacy and importance in Luther’s theology, owing both to his rejection of other causae and especially to the centrality of faith in his conception of the Christian life.71 Faith did not simply allow the Christian to endure suffering. According to Luther, it also gave the Christian dominion over suffering. In The Freedom of the Christian (November 1520, XXXII),72 Luther asserts that by faith the Christian is made a king over suffering. Because of the Christian’s union with Christ by faith, the Christian is “so exalted over all things that, by virtue of a spiritual power, he is lord of all things without exception, so that nothing can do him any harm. As a matter of fact, all things are subject to him and are compelled to serve him in obtaining salvation.”73 According to Luther, this dominion is not earthly, and it provides no power to escape or avoid suffering. In fact, he says that Christians suffer even more than unbelievers as they follow the way of the cross. Luther explains, “The power of which we speak is spiritual. It rules in the midst of enemies and is powerful in the midst of oppression. This means nothing else than that ‘power is made perfect in weakness’ [1 Corinthians 2:9] and that in all things I can find profit toward salvation [Romans 8:28], so that the cross and death itself are compelled to serve me and to work together with me

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for my salvation.”74 Thus, according to Luther, the Christian had dominion over suffering, while the unbeliever was dominated by it, and one’s status as lord over suffering or its slave depended entirely on faith. This singular emphasis on faith made both Luther’s soteriology and his theology of suffering unique in the Christian tradition.75

They Do Not Know . . . Luther introduced a new doctrine of suffering into early modern Christianity, and this new doctrine was central to his larger effort to reform the church of his day. As we have seen, he wanted Christians to embrace suffering as a divine gift that mortified their sinful nature, conformed them to Christ, created empathy for fellow sufferers,76 and, especially, tested their faith. Luther wished to strip Christians of the means they had traditionally employed to understand and cope with suffering, largely because he thought that these means were essentially pagan in origin; that is, he believed that they relied on human reason to make sense of suffering and on human moral strength to appease or barter with God in the midst of it.77 The true Christian (Christianus) was what Luther later called a “Crosstian” (Crucianus), that is, a person who willingly took up the cross and suffered with Christ;78 like Job, Crosstians obediently submitted to divinely imposed suffering,79 even though it confounded their reason and threatened to shatter their window of dim faith. Crosstians did not regard their suffering as a kind of penance that they could perform to satisfy God’s justice and thus reduce their time in purgatory. Neither did they see it as preparation for rapturous union with the divine essence. And they most certainly did not seek escape from suffering through “superstitious” means of protection or healing. (While Luther held out the possibility of divine healing and even claimed to have witnessed instances of it on a few occasions, he was on the whole deeply skeptical toward such claims, especially when they included references to supernatural power that was supposedly available through various forms of traditional piety.)80 Crosstians did not seek out suffering, but when it came, they accepted it and were content to stand before God on the basis of faith alone. Crosstians trusted what the Word said about God, that he was good, rather than what reason and emotion concluded, that he was not.81 Luther understood that this approach to suffering left Christians in a potentially vulnerable situation that many would find objectionable. He understood that faith alone could produce its own kind of anxiety—this is

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why he referred to it as an “art” (kunst) (see above). In order to combat this anxiety, Luther made a number of recommendations to suffering Christians in both private letters and public sermons and pamphlets. He regularly urged people enduring personal afflictions to forsake solitude and seek out the company of other Christians who could console them with the Word82—and with beer.83 Luther thought that the devil was most lethal when left unchecked by the Word and allowed to tempt and assail a Christian who was isolated from others. Luther especially urged participation in the Lord’s Supper for those undergoing tribulation. In the Eucharist, one had visible signs of God’s favorable disposition toward believers.84 Luther also recommended a reformed version of private confession to those burdened by trials and afflictions.85 As we have seen, he emphasized again and again that the only way to escape despair and diabolical deception as one faced suffering was to be confident of the goodness of God pro me in the midst of the adversity.86 The source of this confidence was faith in the divine promise of forgiveness offered to sinners as a gift of sheer grace. In other words, it was the power of the keys, the “treasure of the church,” as the Wittenberg professor had dubbed this authority in the Ninety-Five Theses.87 For Luther, the most effective means of applying the benefits of this treasure to the individual Christian was through private confession.88 Indeed, this was the primary reason he wished to retain a modified version of the traditional practice—to offer relief to consciences plagued by Anfechtungen.89 For Luther, the most difficult divine punishment to bear was the consciousness of sin and the concomitant fear of death and judgment.90 Private confession provided both release from a guilty conscience and confidence of God’s goodness in the face of other divine chastisements.91 Owing in large part to Luther’s strong support for the rite, a reformed version of private confession would become a defining mark of Lutheran pastoral care in the early modern period (see chapter 7). As in pre-Reformation Christianity, private confession became an important occasion for a ministry of verbal consolation in Lutheranism, although the theological basis and actual content of the rite underwent significant change. Luther urged his new evangelical approach to suffering on his students and contemporaries because he thought it was true and because he thought it worked. Beyond simply functioning as a means of coping with adversity or a way of making sense of misfortune, this approach, Luther believed, enabled believers to welcome the efforts of God to transform them into true Christians, that is, into those who were united with Christ

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by faith and thus animated by Christ’s being and will. It is important not to miss the strong emphasis in Luther’s work on the dynamic nature of the Christian life.92 The reason he placed such a great emphasis on the necessity of suffering in the Christian life is that he saw it as the primary tool God used to promote growth in faith and Christ-likeness. As he observed in the Sermons on First Peter: It is characteristic of a Christian life to improve constantly and to become purer. When we come to faith through the preaching of the Gospel, we become pious [frum] and begin to be pure. But as long as we are still in the flesh, we never become completely pure. For this reason, God throws us right into the fire, that is, into suffering, disgrace, and misfortune. In this way we are purged more and more until we die. No works can do this for us. For how can an external work cleanse the heart inwardly? But when faith is tested in this way, all alloy and everything false must disappear. Then, when Christ is revealed, splendid honor, praise, and glory will follow.93 Luther still believes here that Christians must enter the pot of Moab, but now the most important purpose of such testing is the purification of the heart, and thus of faith and life, not the production of humility and self-accusation. The latter are still important and necessary—indeed, the purification of heart cannot take place without them—but Luther is now more interested in the proving of faith (as trust in the Word) and the growth in Christ-likeness that is to follow necessarily from it. Perhaps the greatest benefit of such purified faith was that it was supposed to provide one with superior insight into the will of God. Central to Luther’s efforts to reform attitudes toward suffering was the conviction that he understood the purposes of divinely ordained tribulation far better than his adversaries. Similarly to Cyprian, Luther argued that his theology was superior to that of his adversaries because it provided a better account of why suffering occurred and how one was to contend with it. Of course, Cyprian was arguing against non-Christians, but the comparison still holds, for Luther saw his opponents as thinly veiled pagans. Early on in the Operationes, Luther claims that in his day, the wisdom of the cross has been “hidden in a deep mystery.” The reason for this mystery or confusion, he insists, is that most people are ignorant of God and his ways when it comes to suffering. Luther asserts:

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they do not know, I say, what he does, what he wills, what he thinks, when he tempts us with tribulations. For they judge “just as horses or mules” [Vulgate Psalm 31:9; Psalm 32:9] according to that which is seen and sensed. But what is seen is nothing other than ignominy, helplessness, death, and all things that were manifest to us in the suffering of Christ. If you only look upon these things and do not discern the will of God in them, and bear [this will] and praise it, you will necessarily take offense at this cross, and seek refuge in yourself, where you will soon become an idolater and attribute to a creature the glory due to God.94 “They do not know. . .,” but Luther believed that he did. This claim of superior insight into the divine will and its purposes regarding suffering directly informed the reformation of Christianity that Luther proposed to his contemporaries and helps to account for why the reformation of suffering was so central to it. As we will see, some of Luther’s contemporaries found these dual reformations deeply appealing and came to place great stock in his assertion of superior theological vision; others doubted the acuity of this vision and proposed an alternative interpretation of suffering (and Christianity) in its place.

6

Early Evangelical Consolation Literature luther was the dominant voice in the early evangelical consolation literature, but he was not the only voice. Other evangelical reformers—both clerical and lay—had much to say about the role of suffering in the Christian life. Similarly to Luther, they were convinced that a reformation of attitudes toward suffering was central to the larger reformation of church and society that they believed God was accomplishing in their generation. But in comparison with Luther, the contribution of these reformers to the development of an evangelical approach to suffering and consolation has received relatively little scholarly attention. Many of these reformers had great admiration for Luther and gladly lent their voices and quills to his cause—or at least to their understanding of it.1 Other reformers showed less enthusiasm for Luther’s approach to suffering and as a matter of highest urgency sought to show their contemporaries where the Wittenberg reformer and those who shared his views erred. There was not a single evangelical view of suffering in the early years of the Protestant Reformation, just as there was not a single definition of evangelical Christianity. The task of this chapter is to examine the early evangelical consolation tradition (1519–1531) in order to highlight its defining themes and tensions and to determine the nature of its relationship to both Luther and pre-Reformation consolation.

An Exception in Zurich Before we proceed with this analysis, we should first note an important exception to the thesis that suffering was a central topic in the early evangelical movement. Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), the leading reformer in Zurich, had relatively little to say about the topic. Especially in comparison

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with Luther, his nearly exact contemporary, the lack of attention to suffering and consolation in his extant works is striking. The Zurich reformer did not completely neglect the themes of affliction and solace. Indeed, one of his most popular early works was a song about an outbreak of plague that ravaged Zurich and threatened his own life. In the Plague-song (1519, IX),2 Zwingli relates with great emotion and eloquence his own journey from despair to deepened faith as a result of his battle with the deadly pestilence. He attributes his recovery to the mercy of God and was thereafter deeply persuaded of his utter dependence on divine grace in all things, an insight that shaped his subsequent pastoral care and sense of mission. Zwingli believed that God had spared him so that he could bear the Word to his generation.3 Zwingli employed the traditional causae for suffering in his writings and, similarly to Luther, placed special stress on the proving of faith.4 The Zurich reformer also urged his contemporaries to bear divinely imposed crosses with patience and humility, especially as they prepared for the Lord’s Supper, which in his mind required that they sacrifice themselves to God, not that Christ be sacrificed afresh.5 In his pastoral manual The Shepherd (1524, II),6 which began as a sermon at the second Zurich Disputation (1523), Zwingli likewise exhorts pastors to deny themselves and to bear their crosses without complaint so that they will be moved to depend on God alone as they minister the Word to their flocks. True shepherds must take up the cross of persecution and be willing to offer their lives for the sake of the gospel.7 Suffering was not a penance for sin in Zwingli’s theology, something that both he and Luther thought detracted from the sufficiency of Christ’s work on the cross.8 Finally, Zwingli sought to console through sermons,9 and he also wrote letters of comfort to suffering communities and individuals, urging them to trust in God’s sovereignty and provident care in the midst of their tribulations, ever confident that God himself would console them directly by his Spirit.10 But the frequency of such comments and the number of works dedicated to the themes of suffering and consolation pale in comparison with Luther. Zwingli was not a major contributor to the tradition of Christian consolation literature. This fact cannot be attributed to Zwingli’s shorter life span, as Luther had already effected nothing short of a revolution in this tradition by 1531. Nor can it be attributed to his involvement in nearly endless, time-consuming theological debate, for Luther experienced the same. It also cannot be attributed to his setting in Zurich and the makeup of its inhabitants, as if Zurich’s burghers suffered less than their counterparts in

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Wittenberg. The difference must finally be attributed to Zwingli himself and to his theology. While he shared Luther’s desire to dissuade laypeople from “superstitious” means of understanding and coping with suffering, he was far less creative than the Wittenberg reformer in developing a new evangelical ersatz in their place. There is nothing like Luther’s theology of the cross in Zwingli’s works; suffering simply does not play a decisive role in his theology. One sees this very clearly in the Zurich reformer’s treatment of divine suffering. Zwingli neither allowed nor wanted God to participate in suffering in the way that Luther taught. This important difference stems from the Zurich reformer’s emphasis on the distinction between the human and divine natures of Christ and the Wittenberg reformer’s stress on a real communication of properties between them that includes suffering.11 Zwingli’s God does not suffer.12 Christ’s humanity, especially his suffering humanity, does not play the kind of central role in Zwingli’s theology that it does in Luther’s.13 The Zurich reformer’s Platonism, imbibed through his reading of Erasmus and Augustine, helps to account for this desire to separate the human and the divine in Christ (and in the Lord’s Supper), as does his emphasis on the utter freedom and sovereignty of God, especially God’s freedom from all creaturely influence and mediation.14 From Zwingli’s perspective, Luther’s Christology was deeply problematic: he thought it confined the infinite God to Christ’s humanity and threatened the very deity of the sovereign God by making him subject to suffering, an opinion shared by other early modern—and modern— theologians.15 There are also important differences in the two reformers’ treatments of human suffering. The Zurich reformer experienced spiritual and bodily tribulation, but the resources that meant so much to Luther appear to have lacked similar appeal for him: there is little evidence of influence from German mysticism in Zwingli’s thought, and thus, a whole vocabulary and spirituality of suffering was not available to him. Both men turned to Scripture for solace, but Zwingli also looked to pagans such as Seneca and was far more appreciative of their insights into the nature of God and the workings of divine providence than Luther.16 Providence, not Christ’s suffering humanity, is central to Zwingli’s theology; therefore, the patient and humble acceptance of divinely imposed suffering—which both reformers emphasize—has a different theological rationale in their respective systems of thought. The two reformers did not share the same cast of mind or spiritual experience—the desperate and ongoing struggle with

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Anfechtungen was Luther’s story, not Zwingli’s. Whereas Luther’s approach to pastoral care contained a strongly existential element, the Zurich reformer’s approach was more pedagogical in tone; above all else, he thought that his God-given task as prophet and shepherd was to teach and preach true doctrine and true practice.17 Thus, for reasons of training, temperament, and theological conviction, Zwingli had relatively little to say about how evangelical pastors and laypeople should respond to tribulation and affliction. His successors, on the other hand, had a great deal to say about these matters, but Zurich would have to wait until the 1530s and ’40s to hear their message.18

Lay Medicine Burghers in other parts of German-speaking Europe did not have to wait nearly so long for evangelical works of consolation to become available in their cities. Luther’s works flooded the market, but so did the pamphlets and treatises of other evangelical reformers, lay and clerical. It was a layperson who offered one of the earliest evangelical treatments of consolation to come from a quill other than Luther’s. Lazarus Spengler (1479–1534) was a lay leader of the evangelical movement in Nuremberg whom Luther credited with planting the new faith in the prominent imperial city.19 In the early 1530s, the Wittenberg reformer asserted, “Dr. Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg is the one who introduced the gospel into Nuremberg and he alone has caused it to remain there to today.”20 (Nuremberg was the first imperial city to adopt the Wittenberg version of reform and quickly became one of the most important strongholds of the new faith, especially in southern Germany.) Spengler was a native of Nuremberg, and his family belonged to the ehrbare or honorable class of families in the imperial city; his father served as secretary to the council of patricians who governed the influential polis. After attending a local Latin school and then studying for three semesters in the arts faculty of the University of Leipzig, Spengler returned to his home city in 1496 to follow in his recently deceased father’s footsteps, eventually becoming one of the two senior secretaries to the city council, a position he held from 1507 until his death in 1534. He became enamored of Luther’s teaching already in the late 1510s while participating in an elite circle of humanists in the imperial city that had access to the reformer’s work. Members of this group included some of the Nuremberg’s most famous sons, among them Albrecht Dürer, Willibald Pirckheimer, and Christoph Scheurl.

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Scheurl, who had been a professor of law at the University of Wittenberg, obtained a copy of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and shared them with his fellow humanists in Nuremberg, one of whom, Kaspar Nützel, translated them into German and had them published in the imperial city.21 Despite Spengler’s lack of formal theological training, he was an avid reader of theology and early on had been especially drawn to the works of Jerome.22 He soon came to adopt a more Augustinian theology as he read—or, better, devoured—the works of Luther and other evangelical theologians. Spengler met Luther in October 1518 as the reformer passed through Nuremberg on his way to and from the Diet of Augsburg. The council secretary authored the first lay evangelical pamphlet, the popular Apology for Luther’s Teaching (1519), which went through seven printings in just two years.23 Spengler argues in this work that Luther’s Christianity is based on Scripture, love of neighbor, and true inward piety, while his opponents promote a religion grounded on human teaching, mere external observance, and self-interest. This latter false Christianity produces anxious consciences because it insists that human beings have to please and placate the holy God through their own moral efforts; Luther’s Christianity, on the other hand, provides peace and comfort for the human soul because of its biblical stress on divine grace and faith— this was the central source of its appeal for Spengler. Luther’s faith simply made sense to the council secretary. He writes: This I know without doubt, that although I do not consider myself to be a highly-trained scholar, I have never had a teaching or sermon penetrate my mind so powerfully, and have never been able to grasp any more fully, or had any correspond so exactly to my understanding of the Christian order as the teaching and instruction of Luther and his followers.24 Spengler goes on to assert of the Wittenberg reformer that “the Almighty God . . . has awakened a Daniel in the midst of the folk in the person of Dr. Luther. [God has done this] to open our eyes to the blindness in which we have lain for a long time due to the deception of our theologians, and to take from us the fog and darkness of such indecency [unschicklikait].”25 Claims such as this contributed to Spengler’s being named on the papal bull that threatened Luther with excommunication. His pamphlet made its way into the hands of Luther’s opponent at the Leipzig Disputation, the Ingolstadt theologian Johannes Eck (1486–1543), who was outraged by the

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council secretary’s support for Luther and who therefore appended Spengler’s name to Exsurge Domine, which he helped to draft. Following two humiliating (and insincere) confessions of wrongdoing, Spengler was absolved, and his name was stricken from the bull. Nevertheless, he continued to publish pro-Luther pamphlets and hymns, including one against Exsurge Domine.26 In the summer of 1521, almost two years after he wrote the Apology for Luther’s Teaching, Spengler authored a short pamphlet entitled A Consoling Christian Instruction and Medicine in All Adversities, which was printed twice, once in Nuremberg and once in Augsburg.27 This was Spengler’s first work of consolation, and it represents one of the earliest efforts by an evangelical—whether lay or ordained—to contribute to this traditional genre. The council secretary had recently returned to Nuremberg from the Diet of Worms (January–May 1521), and he was deeply troubled by the threat its edict posed to Luther and his followers. Spengler was also troubled by the prospect of the Imperial Governing Council coming to Nuremberg in the fall of the same year, something that Emperor Charles V had ordered at the Diet of Worms. Spengler addressed the Consoling Christian Instruction to his sister, Margaretha, who had sought to console him via letter in his distress about the events at Worms. He tells Margaretha in his pamphlet that he is grateful for her encouragement, but he also informs her that he dare not rest in her human solace; rather, he must turn to God alone for comfort in this and every tribulation. (Spengler actually says very little about the immediate cause of his distress, choosing instead to address the topic of suffering in the Christian life more generally, as the title of his pamphlet suggests.) The council secretary’s account of divine consolation is in many ways quite traditional. He rehearses several themes and remedies that we have seen in the ancient and medieval Christian consolation literature.28 But there are also clear traces of Luther’s influence on Spengler’s thinking, especially in his comments on the role of faith in the Christian life. Faith alone makes one pleasing to God, and it alone unites one to God. Faith alone also allows one to survive tribulation, for it alone is able to cling to the divine promises of God’s goodness and mercy and thus renders the Christian largely indifferent to fortune and misfortune.29 Because it accomplishes so much, Spengler reasons that faith must be constantly tested and proved; therefore the Christian should welcome suffering. Thus, it appears that the council secretary found Luther’s emphasis on faith appealing; regarding suffering above all else as a test of faith helped

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him to render adversity meaningful and plausible to himself, and he wished to commend this view to others. But Spengler also goes beyond Luther in the explanations he gives for suffering and thereby demonstrates some of the tensions and misunderstandings that could exist between early evangelical works of consolation and the Wittenberg reformer. The council secretary maintains in the Consoling Christian Instruction that divinely sent tribulation provides Christians with an opportunity to be cleansed of past sin. He writes, “I know well that trial and tribulation are sent to us from God for our benefit, improvement, and salvation, and that sorrow of every kind, provided that the pain associated with it is received and endured in a proper faith and trust in God, purifies and washes away sin.”30 A few lines later, Spengler explains, “Some people are scourged by God through sickness, sorrow, adversity, and suffering so that the same burdens, ordained by God as a penance, can wash away and erase the stains of their sinful [and] punishable past life.”31 Spengler can also say that God abolishes the guilt of sin through suffering: “Although from the perspective of divine righteousness we are worthy of eternal punishment and torment, the good heavenly Father bears with us as poor and needy people, and refreshes us with the dew of his gratuitous mercy, sending us now this and now that suffering, pain, and adversity, so that he may cancel32 our sinful debts with them.”33 Despite the clear connection that Spengler here posits between suffering and the forgiveness of sin, we should be careful about labeling his view of consolation as “pre-Reformation.” His comments about faith make such a conclusion unwarranted, as does the fact that he nowhere discusses the need to atone for the remaining poena of sin through suffering, and he makes no mention of purgatory.34 Still, the traditional penitential language that he employs appears to have retained at least some of its traditional meaning; Christians must still bear their suffering patiently for their past sin and its debt to be washed away. This was not Luther’s position on suffering; we have seen him say just the opposite. In his widely distributed A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace, which was printed twice in Nuremberg,35 Luther argued that Christians should seek to endure the tribulations sent by God because they contributed to Christians’ spiritual improvement, not because they in any way rendered satisfaction for sin, something he considered to be “a great error” (eyn großer yrthum).36 The Wittenberg reformer maintained in this pamphlet that divine punishment is always curative (medicativas) in nature, never satisfactory (satisfactorias).37

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It is quite possible that Spengler had read this sermon, for he claimed in 1521 that he had carefully studied all of Luther’s published works—both Latin and German—up to that point.38 (In this, Spengler was quite unusual among burghers, most of whom learned about Luther through word of mouth39 or, if they could read, through Luther’s vernacular devotional works.)40 However, it seems clear enough that Luther’s argument about the nonpenitential and nonmeritorious nature of suffering escaped him, both in 1521, when he wrote the Christian Instruction, and in 1519, when he wrote his Apology for Luther’s Teaching and was subsequently listed on the bull Exsurge Domine. Because Luther’s position on suffering followed logically from his new evangelical soteriology, there is good reason to suspect that Spengler did not understand Luther’s theology of salvation in all its radicality.41 Spengler could envision some kind of minimal human contribution to the washing away of sin and its debt, where Luther allowed none. It would seem that Spengler had not grasped Luther as fully as he claimed in his Apology. At least on the matter of suffering and its salvific status, Spengler appears to have misunderstood Luther. The Luther whom Spengler so fervently supported and for whom he was willing to sacrifice so much was not the “real Luther”; that is, he was not the Luther we encounter in the extant works from this period, including rather uncomplicated vernacular works that appeared in Spengler’s own city. How may we account for Spengler’s “productive misunderstanding” of Luther, to use Bernd Moeller’s famous phrase?42 There are very good reasons for turning to Johannes von Staupitz or, rather, to Spengler’s great admiration for Luther’s mentor and friend.43 Staupitz was well known and much loved in Nuremberg, especially among the circle of humanists to which Spengler belonged. After Staupitz’s visits to the imperial city during Advent 1516 and Lent 1517, the circle adopted the name Sodalitas Staupitziana in order to express its admiration for his great learning and piety.44 The Lenten sermons that the vicar general preached in Nuremberg contain important statements about the role of suffering in the Christian life.45 In one sermon, Staupitz maintains that if a Christian bears his suffering patiently, it can act as “a penance and remission of his sins” (ain puß vnd ablegung seiner sunden) that reduces time in purgatory and thus hastens his journey to God.46 This is not the highest form of Christian suffering, according to the vicar general, but it is still a valid one.47 There is every reason to believe that Staupitz’s comments on suffering and penance directly informed Spengler’s view of suffering in the Consoling Christian Instruction: he knew Staupitz and had attended these sermons,

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even taking down notes on them, which are still extant—in fact, they are the only record we have of the homilies.48 Spengler was reading Luther through the lens of Staupitz, the source of much of the Wittenberg reformer’s humility theology,49 and it is clear that the vicar general allowed for considerations of merit within his Augustinian theology.50 While Spengler may not have been thoroughly “Staupitzian” in his theology of suffering—the vicar general’s explicit and positive reference to purgatory in his sermon and the lack of the same in Spengler’s pamphlets is significant—he clearly agreed with the idea that suffering could merit grace. But this important connection to Staupitz only raises a further question. Why did Spengler read Luther through the lens of his mentor? Why did he not see the crucial difference in the respective theologians’ understanding of suffering? One could respond by saying that as an untrained lay theologian, Spengler could not help but read the Wittenberg reformer in this way, for there had been no open disagreements or rifts between Luther and Staupitz, nothing to suggest that there were any substantive differences between the two men. They appeared to be proponents of the same broadly evangelical theology.51 There is certainly something to this explanation, but there is another, finally more important, reason for Spengler’s productive misunderstanding that has little to do with Staupitz and his relationship with Luther. The idea that suffering can atone for the penalty of sin is an extremely powerful notion, and it was deeply embedded in the late medieval religious imagination. As we have seen, the idea was present throughout the devotional and pastoral literature of the time, especially in works that dealt with sacramental confession, including the Sinner’s Mirror for Confession and Johannes von Freiburg’s Summa for Confessors, both of which were present in Nuremberg, the latter in the library of the church that Spengler attended.52 Suffering as penance made deep sense to late medieval Christians, perhaps especially to burghers, who were encouraged by the economic practices of their cities to operate with a ledger mentality53 and who had sought for centuries to use their reason and free will to please and placate the divine in hopes of securing material and spiritual blessing for themselves and their cities.54 Beyond this, viewing suffering as a divine summons to penance also enabled late medieval Christians to believe that despite appearances to the contrary, God was still good; adversity and tribulation were ultimately part of the good God’s loving plan to bring them to heaven. In this sense, suffering could be viewed as an expression of God’s benevolence; it could be viewed as a gift that, as Staupitz put it in his sermon,

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enabled the Christian “to come more quickly to God and without a long time of punishment in purgatory.”55 Spengler says something similar early on in the Consoling Christian Instruction, though without reference to purgatory: he asserts that the chief benefit of suffering in his own life has been to “make me, as I hope, closer to God” (mich, als ich hoffe, neher Got machen), and therefore, he has learned to receive it with thanksgiving.56 His productive misunderstanding of Luther may finally be attributed to his deep desire to grow nearer to God and his belief that suffering properly could help him do so by meriting forgiveness for his sin.57 Thus, it seems clear enough that although Spengler no longer accepted all of the theological assumptions that went along with the traditional suffering-as-penance idea, the idea itself was still appealing to him. Even as he was attracted to Luther’s creed and its emphasis on Scripture, grace, and faith, he still held on to the traditional notion that suffering was salvific. It seems rather likely that burghers farther down the socioeconomic ladder did the same, even as they embraced a version of Christianity that made the traditional view impossible. Similarly to Spengler, evangelical burghers likely struggled to decouple suffering and salvation in the way that Luther advocated,58 something that would have come as no surprise to the Wittenberg reformer, who readily conceded that his approach to suffering was an “art” (kunst) that was very difficult to master.59 It seems that Spengler eventually mastered this art—his misunderstanding of Luther was relatively short-lived. In the pamphlets that he authored from the summer of 1522 forward, there is no discussion of human merit or the need (or ability) to atone for past sins. The human will is now in bondage to sin and therefore has nothing to offer God.60 Now Christ alone washes away, purifies, and eradicates past sin and its debt through his suffering and blood, the benefits of which are received by the gift of faith.61 Suffering tests this faith,62 mortifies the old Adam,63 and helps the Christian achieve a state of holy indifference to all external conditions.64 Suffering is not a punishment for sin, at least not for the faithful Christian, an important theme that would recur throughout the evangelical consolation literature.65 In all of this, Spengler sounds much like Luther, especially when the council secretary adopts the language of the theologia crucis, arguing that suffering is the good God’s “alien work” (frembder werck) to accomplish the salvation of human beings.66 In 1529, Spengler authored another consolation pamphlet that expressed this more decidedly Luther-an approach to suffering: How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Affliction and Adversity, and

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Where He Should Seek the Proper Help and Medicine for the Same (II).67 Interestingly, Spengler makes reference to the Consoling Christian Instruction (1521), indicating no displeasure with its contents or any significant changes in his thinking about suffering and consolation in the intervening eight years.68 In one sense, Spengler was right: from the 1510s forward, he had maintained that the Christian must always have crosses in his life and that he must submit to them obediently and patiently so they could produce their good results. But Spengler’s understanding of these good results changed. They no longer included atoning for past sin and its debt—this concern has no place in the 1529 consolation pamphlet owing to its espousal of the theology of the cross.69

A Church Mother’s Consolation Lazarus Spengler was not the only lay advocate of the evangelical movement to write consolation pamphlets, nor was he the only one to adopt the language of the theology of the cross in such writings. References to the hidden God who reveals himself through the cross and suffering may be found in other lay pamphlets, even if the actual term theologia crucis/Theologie des Kreuzes may not. (The same is true of Luther’s writings.)70 Katharina Schütz Zell (1498–1562), wife of the Strasbourg reformer Matthias Zell (1477–1548), speaks of God’s “strange countenance” (seltzam anlit) in a 1524 letter of consolation that she wrote to evangelical women in Kentzingen who were suffering persecution at the hands of Catholic authorities.71 Schütz Zell was a native of Strasbourg who came from a wealthy artisan family and who had received a vernacular education. She was especially earnest about her spiritual life, having dedicated herself at the age of ten to the church, though to no monastic or semimonastic order. It was at this point that she became a self-proclaimed “church mother” (Kirchenmutter), a title she applied to herself throughout her life, both as a single (and celibate) Catholic Christian and as a married and later widowed evangelical Christian. Schütz Zell understood “church mother” to be an unofficial but divinely inspired office in the Christian church that obliged and allowed her to study, teach, and minister for the sake of this church and the gospel. She found precedents for this “office” in Luke 2:36–38, the story of Anna the prophetess, and in 1 Timothy 5:9–10, which provides guidelines about the conduct and ministry of widows.72

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As a young woman, Schütz Zell was plagued by doubts regarding her salvation, and she found relief for these inner struggles in evangelical theology.73 This theology was available in Strasbourg through sermons, lectures, and printed works from the early 1520s on, although the reformation of the city’s religious life, both its official confessional identity and patterns of devotion, was a protracted affair that took a number of decades to accomplish. Schütz Zell held Luther in high regard but never became a confessional Protestant, choosing instead to draw gratefully on a number of first-generation evangelical reformers, including Philipp Melanchthon, Wolfgang Capito, Martin Bucer, Johannes Bugenhagen, Huldrych Zwingli, and Caspar Schwenckfeld; she also drew on Catholic reformers such as Staupitz.74 With her husband, she was willing to keep fellowship with any Christian who held to the evangelical “solas”—Christ alone, Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone—and to the priesthood of all believers.75 Here we see the same kind of eclectic evangelicalism as in the early Spengler, although the degree of eclecticism was admittedly greater in Schütz Zell.76 Still, at least in terms of her view of suffering and consolation, she was closer to Wittenberg evangelicalism than to Zurich evangelicalism. As we have seen, Zwingli did not employ the language of the theology of the cross and authored very few works of consolation. Schütz Zell wrote her letter of consolation after a large number of male evangelical sympathizers from Kentzingen landed in Strasbourg, eighty of whom lodged with the Zells the first night. (Kentzingen was a small Alsatian city in Breisgau.) Catholic officials had expelled the city’s priest, Master Jacob Otter, for his evangelical leanings, and when 150 men accompanied him out of the city, they were denied reentry. The men subsequently went down the Rhine and sought refuge in the evangelical-friendly Strasbourg. After a few weeks, Schütz Zell became concerned about the men’s wives, having received news of evangelical books being burned and evangelical families being roughly treated.77 In To the Suffering Christ-believing Women of the Community of Kentzingen (1524, II),78 she urges the women to bear their suffering patiently and faithfully, knowing that they are being persecuted for Christ’s sake. Schütz Zell argues that their suffering is a gift that God gives only to his “mostbeloved children” (allerliebsten kynden), something that presents a “strange countenance” to unbelievers, who cannot understand why God would deal with his children in this way. Unbelievers would rather not belong to this apparently unloving Father than to receive such harsh treatment from his hand. (Here one is reminded of similar objections to God’s treatment of

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his “friends” in Henry Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom.) But according to Schütz Zell, those who hold fast to God’s Word and who view such situations through faith are assured of God’s good and loving purposes in suffering and persecution, namely, to turn his elect from the world and to teach them that they should depend on him alone “in a strong faith” (in einem stiffen glauben).79 Children of this world are like Hagar and Ishmael, to whom God, like Abraham, gives temporal goods, but not the blessed inheritance of Isaac, that is, eternal life (Genesis 21:8–21). Children of God are like Isaac, to whom God, again like Abraham, gives few temporal goods but instead leads to the sacrificial altar. Commenting on Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:1–19), Schütz Zell concedes, “from the world’s point of view that was truly an unfatherly thing to do.”80 But she maintains that Abraham knew that God would restore his son to him (Hebrews 11:19) and fulfill his promise of unending blessing for him, his descendants, and all nations. In the midst of their present suffering, the women in Kentzingen must have “a masculine Abrahamish soul” (ein ma[e]nnisch Abrahamisch gmu[e] t) and trust in God,81 regardless of the pain and adversity that come their way. Schütz Zell wishes that God would count her worthy to suffer with them, for she says that then she would be more joyful than if she were the emperor’s wife and allowed to sit in his presence. She is utterly convinced that such suffering is a sign of divine love; after all, she reasons, the Father dealt with his beloved Son in the same way, allowing him to reach such a point of despair that he could cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).82 Schütz Zell maintains that God has called the women in Kentzingen to be widows and that he will not test them beyond what they can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13). If their faith flags, this is not a cause for alarm, because “faith that is not assailed is no faith” (der glaub ist kein glaub der nitt angefochten würdt). She observes that Christ himself faltered when he considered the cup (i.e., the suffering) that the Father called him to drink (Matthew 26:39).83 The women must understand that God has not forgotten them, but, like the lover in the Song of Songs, he is now hiding behind the wall of suffering and one day will reveal himself and embrace his beloved (Song of Songs 2:9a).84 (We have seen Luther use the same image in the Treatise on Good Works.) There are interesting parallels between Schütz Zell’s piety and the spirituality that we examined in late medieval female mystics and nuns. An early religious awakening followed by a fervent commitment to the spiritual life is a common phenomenon in the lives of many female mystics,

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including Mechthild, who claimed to have been “greeted” by the Holy Spirit at age twelve and then went on to become a Beguine.85 Suffering as a sign of special divine favor is another commonplace, and one sees it especially in the Revelations of Margaret Ebner and in the advice that Sister Margaretha Kress gave to her sister-in-law in Nuremberg. Beyond this, suffering and consolation are frequently described in specifically feminine or maternal images in the devotional literature produced by late medieval women. One has only to think of Margaret Ebner nursing the Christ child at her breast, something she saw as a special grace and consolation in her distress over her unique spiritual experiences. There is nothing so striking and so somatic in Schütz Zell’s letter or her later writings, but she does frequently draw on such metaphors; Abraham is not the only image for God in her writings. In her letter to the women in Kentzingen, she cites John 14:18–19—“I will not abandon you as orphans, I am coming to you; a little while, and the world will not see me, but you will see me; because I live, you will also live”—and then observes, “These words are a reminder that He will not abandon you, nor forget you, as He also says in the prophet: ‘As little as a mother may forget her suckling child, so little may I forget you; and if she does forget her child, still I will not forget you’” (Isaiah 49:15).86 Such maternal images for God abound in her later writings.87 The important differences between Schütz Zell and her late medieval female predecessors include the following: the lack of reference to mystical union in her writings, along with the concomitant emphasis on Scripture rather than spiritual experience as the source of her authority as a devotional writer;88 a similar lack of reference to suffering as a means of penance; the nearly singular emphasis on suffering as a test of faith; and, of course, the fact that she was married and that she and her intended recipients had embraced a “heretical” version of the Christian faith and were therefore being persecuted by Catholic authorities. In many ways, Schütz Zell was an evangelical counterpart to the holy women of the past who combined the contemplative and active lives as they sought to take up the cross and follow their Lord. Unlike her forebears, Schütz Zell did so from within the context of marriage and domestic life rather than from within a monastic or semimonastic setting.

Pastors of the Cross Spengler’s and Schütz Zell’s use of theologia crucis language suggests that this language was widespread in the early years of the evangelical movement. We have seen that this language was not original to evangelical

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Christians but had its origins in late medieval German mysticism. Evangelical consolers employed this language especially when seeking to describe the subjective experience of seeming God-forsakenness in the midst of suffering. Frank description of spiritual despair and the “alien” ways of God that were believed to cause it became one of the hallmarks of much of the evangelical consolation literature, no doubt owing in large part to the precedent set by Luther. Many early evangelical consolers studied with Luther in Wittenberg, and while he was by no means the only source from whom these future pastors learned their theology, his own unique appropriation of German mysticism—especially its candid descriptions of Anfechtungen—shaped his students’ understanding of suffering and its spiritual treatment in profound ways. Through Luther, many evangelical consolers drew on mystical writings even if they did not read the mystics for themselves.89 As we turn to consider early evangelical pastors, we will see that many of them drew rather deeply on Luther’s theology of the cross in their devotional and consolatory writings. Luther was not the only evangelical pastor or theologian to speak of the hidden God’s self-revelation in the cross of Christ and Christians. At least in devotional writings, the theologia crucis was much more present and influential among Luther’s students and sympathizers than some scholars have allowed.90 Caspar Huberinus (1500–1553), one of the sixteenth century’s most influential devotional authors, provides an excellent example of an early evangelical consoler whose pastoral theology was shaped by the cross. He grew up in a small town outside of Augsburg and may have been a monk— though not a priest—before converting to the evangelical faith. Huberinus (or Huber) matriculated at the University of Wittenberg in 1522 and became a lifelong supporter of Luther. In 1525, he returned to Augsburg and married a former nun named Afra Seld. At first, he held no official church office in the imperial city, but in time, he became a deacon and later a parish pastor (Pfarrer), seeking throughout his tenure in Augsburg to promote Luther’s version of reform against supporters of Zwinglian and Anabaptist versions, each of which was present in Augsburg.91 (The Zwinglian version eventually won out over the Lutheran version in the late 1530s, but this was later reversed in the late 1550s owing to the Peace of Augsburg, which only recognized Catholics and Lutherans.) In 1529, Huberinus authored a work of consolation that established his reputation as a master evangelical consoler. How One Should Console and Speak to a Dying Person went through an astounding 125 editions between 1529 and

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1579, appearing in nearly a dozen languages, making it, along with Urbanus Rhegius’s Soul-Medicine for the Healthy and the Sick in These Dangerous Times (1529, CXXI), one of the two most frequently published devotional books of its kind by a German author in the sixteenth century. In the German lands alone, Huberinus’s work went through thirty-eight editions, while Rhegius’s is extant in sixty-four.92 Huberinus and Rhegius were colleagues in Augsburg in 1529, and both supported the Wittenberg theology, although, unlike Huberinus, Rhegius had not studied with Luther. As important as How One Should Console and Speak to a Dying Person was, an earlier work of consolation especially shows Huberinus to be a pastor of the cross. In A Short Excerpt of the Holy Scripture (1525, X),93 he addresses the internal suffering that believers experience when they fear that God has abandoned them because of their sins. In the foreword, he observes: The Almighty God always deals with his elect in this life in an strange [wunderlich]94 way. He frequently frightens them, removes the external signs of his grace, positions himself against them as if he will abandon them, be wrathful toward them, pay no more mind or attention to them, [and] give them over entirely to the world, death, and the devil, so that nothing but sheer gloom, heavy-heartedness, doubt, God’s severe wrath, and eternal punishment are visible to them.95 But according to Huberinus, God is still present and means all of this for good. Here he employs the image of the hidden bridegroom that we have already seen in Luther’s Sermon on Good Works and Katharina Schütz Zell’s letter to the women of Kentzingen. Huberinus writes, “The bridegroom stands behind the wall and looks upon the lamenting one [sicht zur klumsen hineyn],96 his most beloved bride, [and] teaches her to experience in reality that it is not possible for any person to help himself out of his need and fear, nor to console himself in the midst of great terror and distress.”97 God alone must be his source of help and consolation. Johannes Briesmann (1488–1549), who earned his doctorate of theology at the University of Wittenberg in 1522 and then, with the help of Luther, became the preacher in the cathedral of Königsberg (East Prussia),98 also addressed the experience of spiritual despair from the perspective of the theology of the cross. In A Few Consoling Sayings for Despondent and Weak Consciences (1525, XV), he writes about how difficult it can be for a Christian

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to endure delays in divine deliverance from suffering. In this situation, the Christian may well cry out in despair, “I cannot bear it any longer, it is beyond my ability to do so!” And this is precisely the point for Briesmann. He continues, “Exactly [recht also], it does not lie within your ability or within human power [to bear your suffering], rather God must do it, and he will do it, because he is faithful”99 God imposes the cross so that the Christian will come to the end of himself and then be ready to experience God’s fidelity. A Nuremberg preacher named Wenzeslaus Linck (1483–1547) also used the language of the theologia crucis in his How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Suffering (1528, III). Linck knew Luther very well, having studied and lived with his fellow Augustinian for a number of years in Wittenberg. He also knew Staupitz very well; similarly to Luther, Linck was shepherded through his education and early career by the Augustinian vicar general. Linck took his doctorate of theology at the University of Wittenberg in 1511, one year before Luther, and also served for a time as dean of the university’s theology faculty and prior of Augustinian monastery; Luther was his subprior. Linck visited Nuremberg in 1517 and was warmly received by the circle of humanists to which Lazarus Spengler belonged. In 1518, he accompanied Luther and Staupitz to the Heidelberg Disputation and was also in attendance at the Diet of Augsburg and the Leipzig Disputation. In 1520, he replaced Staupitz as vicar general of the Augustinian order, only to resign from this position and the order itself in 1523, after which he took up a preachership in Altenburg (Electoral Saxony). Linck also married in Altenberg; Luther performed the ceremony. In 1525, Linck and his family moved to Nuremberg, where he became preacher of the New Hospital Church and played an important role in the promotion of the evangelical movement in this imperial city.100 In his 1528 pamphlet, Linck argues that the experience of God-forsakenness is a normal part of the Christian life; it is simply the way of salvation. Like the crucified Christ, the Christian will cry out to God, “O God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).101 According to Linck, in contrast to reason, faith does not despair in the midst of this experience. He writes, “Faith always finds a hidden treasure in suffering. . . . God hides our salvation, life, and blessedness under the cross and completely offensive forms [gantz widerwertigen formen], so that the godless people will not recognize it and the pious elect will have occasion to exercise their faith. They see and feel wrath and suffering and nevertheless believe grace and joy [are present]; they thus yield to the will of God in His work.”102

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The early evangelical consolation literature is replete with such references to the cross and God’s alien ways of dealing with Christians. Readers and hearers of this literature were encouraged to learn something of the theologia crucis in order to understand the place of suffering in the divine economy. As Huberinus exhorted readers in his influential How One Should Console and Speak to a Dying Person, “learn well to recognize God’s manner and way, that when he wants to lead someone to heaven, he first leads him to hell.”103 What exactly were Christians to learn in the evangelical “school of the cross”? What did following this damning and resurrecting God entail as one suffered?

The Lessons of the Cross School: Prolegomena First, and most obvious, Christians were to learn that suffering was an expected part of Christian life. They were not to expect life to go better for them simply because they were among God’s elect; they were to expect the cross, a theme that we have seen throughout the Christian consolation literature. Johannes Brenz (1499–1570) expressed this anti-do-ut-des mentality very clearly in An Excerpt from the 8th Chapter of S. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans Dealing with Suffering and Divine Election (1528, V).104 Brenz was a preacher in Schwäbisch Hall who had been drawn to Luther after attending the Heidelberg Disputation (1518). (He was then a student at the University of Heidelberg.) Brenz would eventually become one of the most important Lutheran theologians of the early modern period, playing a decisive role in the spread and formal institutionalization of the evangelical movement in southern Germany. In his treatment of Romans 8, the Schwäbisch Hall preacher echoes Luther’s treatment of the pot of Moab, explaining that as soon as one puts one’s faith in Christ and begins to become pious,105 one encounters suffering and adversity, either from the old Adam or from the world. Brenz writes: piety, along with other goods from God, comes under its opposite [under dem widerspyl]. The whole world thinks that when a person is pious things will go better for him, but it is different with the Christian, for when he begins to be pious, things go badly for him. One promises him eternal life but death comes; one promises him health through faith but sickness comes; wealth is promised to him but he remains poor. In short, he is supposed to be blessed but there can be found on earth no one who is less blessed, in terms of external crosses.106

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According to Brenz, evangelical faith and piety provided no guarantee of temporal bliss, only assurances of the opposite, along with promises of divine grace in the midst of suffering. Brenz realized that this was a hard message and that it flew in the face of much contemporary piety. Therefore, similarly to Henry Suso, he sought to anticipate objections to it in his sermon. He cites a German proverb about the futility of hope that he can imagine someone using against him: “Hoping and waiting makes many a fool” (Hoffen und harren macht manchen narren).107 Brenz argues that hope only disappoints when one hopes in the wrong things, never when one hopes in the Word. But he realizes that this assertion will not satisfy some and therefore explores the objection further: “Now someone might say, ‘Yes, I would like to wait patiently under the cross for future goods, if only it were possible for me to do so. My cries and petitions do not help at all; God lets me petition my whole life and continues on with His tormenting and crucifying.’” The Antwort follows immediately. Yes, the Christian cannot endure great misfortune on his own, but then the Christian is not alone: Christ bears suffering with and in him, and the indwelling Holy Spirit intercedes with the Father for him (Romans 8: 26–27). The Christian’s petitions may well not help at all, because they are based on the Christian’s own understanding of what is good for him. But the Spirit’s intercessions and sighs within him are always heard, even if he is not conscious of them himself.108 Brenz concedes that this consolation is entirely a matter of faith. Another lesson that was basic to the early evangelical cross school was that the cross included all manner of divinely imposed suffering. In keeping with a long-standing Christian tradition, most early evangelical consolers advocated an expansive definition of the cross; Christian suffering was not limited to persecution for the sake of the gospel but extended to all manner of physical and spiritual adversity in this life. Sebaldus Heyden (1499–1561), rector of the St. Sebald school in Nuremberg,109 provided a helpful definition of the cross that expresses very well the opinion of many early evangelical consolers. He writes in his How One Should Console Himself in All Manner of Necessity (1531, II): Here one must understand that the cross refers to everything that is opposed to and may be painful to our fleshly desires and the old Adam, such as the loss of temporal goods, degradation of honor, bodily sickness, poverty, hunger, thirst, cold, heat, persecution on account of the gospel, [and] temporal death. Whichever of these we

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take up, that is, whatever befalls us, we should suffer willingly and patiently if we want to be true disciples of Christ.110 Here we see the traditional desire to “baptize” every kind of human suffering in order to bring it within the Christian fold and in this way to give it meaning and purpose. This baptism was also supposed to provide hope of divine deliverance: the God who sent suffering could also remove it. Learning to embrace the cross in its many forms was an old lesson; this part of the early evangelical cross-school instruction was thoroughly traditional. Less traditional—and fully in keeping with Luther’s theology— was the effort to dissuade suffering Christians from seeking protection and healing in the saints and traditional piety.111 In the spring of 1523, Johannes Brenz preached a sermon on the saints that depicted them and their cult as essentially pagan in nature. The Schwäbisch Hall reformer argues in his Sermon on the Saints (III) that when faced with adversity, the common folk all too frequently place their faith in the saints rather than in God and thus engage in idolatry.112 Brenz charges that simple Christians ask things of the saints that the saints never would have asked for themselves—otherwise they would not be saints. Here the Schwäbisch Hall reformer provides a list of saints and their alleged protective or healing abilities for various persons in various perilous situations. Brenz writes, “All of this gives the appearance as if through the power of the saints we wanted to cast off from ourselves the cross that God has laid upon us, which the saints themselves always desire, and when it comes, embrace, because they must become like Christ their Lord, both in conduct of life and in the cross or death.”113 According to Brenz, the practice of invoking the saints for purposes of protection and healing has its origins in pagan polytheism, and he maintains that Christians behave as pagans when they engage in it. “O heathendom!” (O haydenschafft!), the Schwäbisch Hall preacher exclaims.114 He insists that Christians honor the departed best by emulating their faith and lives and by ministering to the saints who are still among them. True sainthood means bearing the cross: “Believing in Christ means taking the cross upon yourself and following after Christ.”115 Caspar Huberinus was similarly critical of recourse to the saints in the midst of suffering. In A Short Excerpt of the Holy Scripture, the Augsburg cleric argues that a despairing Christian must call out to God alone for help “and not a single time [nicht eyn eyniges mal] to a dead saint.”116 And what of people’s experience of miraculous saintly intervention or even of the possibility that God would respond to a prayer for help by acting

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through a saint—questions that must have been posed many times by traditionalists from all walks of life? Huberinus responds, “You say that you can plainly see the example [of saintly intervention], but you have no promise with it, no word bound to it, therefore you are uncertain whether it comes from God or not. But here [i.e., in Scripture, and specifically in Psalm 31:17, ‘Lord, do not let me be put to shame, for I call upon You’] you have many examples of calling upon God, and in addition to this you also have the word, the consoling promise; therefore it is better to hope in God than in human beings.”117 Hope in God alone was the surest and safest means of dealing with suffering. According to evangelicals such as Huberinus, the existence and activity of the saints could not be proven from Scripture, and therefore, invoking them was dubious at best and idolatrous at worst. In addition to this, evangelical consolers worried that saints might well be demons in disguise, an opinion that appears frequently in their works of consolation and instruction.118 What kind of divine help did evangelical consolers teach their contemporaries to expect? Promises of such assistance abound in this literature; the consolers firmly believed that God would help, albeit in God’s own manner and timing. Most assumed that this help would be internal and spiritual in nature, rather than external and physical. In this sense, the early evangelical consolation literature was like the late medieval ars moriendi literature, which, as we have seen, also cautioned against setting too much hope on miraculous healing of physical ailments. This literature shared Luther’s skepticism about miraculous cures. Still, evangelical works of consolation did encourage—or at least allow—prayers for physical relief and healing. In his influential Soul-Medicine for the Healthy and the Sick in These Dangerous Times, Urbanus Rhegius maintains that it is fine for a sick person to pray for healing as long as he has confessed his sins to God and is prepared to submit himself to God’s will, come what may. Here Rhegius cites a passage that had long been a favorite among Christian consolers, Sirach 38:9: “Son, do not neglect yourself in your sickness, rather ask of the Lord and He will heal you.”119 The Augsburg preacher says that God will either remove sickness from the one who confesses his sin and asks for help, or God will make it serve the Christian’s spiritual good.120 Other consolers make very little of the possibility of healing or deliverance. In A Few Consoling Sayings for Despondent Weak Consciences, Johannes Briesmann asserts that God helps suffering Christians by giving them hope in the midst of adversity, not by taking away the adversity itself: “Therefore God removes a person from evil, not evil from the

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person” (Also reysset Gott den menschen vom vbel/nicht das vbel von dem menschen).121 Caspar Huberinus warns about the dangers of insisting on tangible healing or relief from suffering. In A Short Excerpt of the Holy Scripture, he argues that the old Adam wants to be able to determine the timing and content of divine consolation and also wants to be able to see or somehow sense it: Sinful human nature is still so weak and powerless that it always wants to have something visible before its eyes so that it may impertinently expect help from God, and when it does not feel the same, it holds God for an enemy who only wants to be angry with it and [who wants] to take away every grace and good from it.122 The Augsburg cleric thinks that this kind of insistence on tangible and immediate divine consolation only leads to frustration and despair, for such a demand invariably goes unmet, and the Christian concludes that God is against him. Huberinus assures his readers that the merciful God will console the suffering Christian; he will respond favorably to the intercessions of Christ, his beloved Son, and send the Holy Spirit into the heart of the despairing Christian to bring the Christian hope and peace, which will enable the afflicted one to face future suffering.123 But this only happens in conformity with God’s “strange” (wunderlich) way of dealing with Christians, in which he withdraws his presence and causes them to doubt and despair before he reveals himself again as their loving bridegroom and only source of hope and comfort. The premium placed on cross bearing and suffering in the theology of the cross caused evangelical consolers who adopted this theology to say relatively little about deliverance from the cross, at least in this life. The early evangelical consolation literature focuses more on what to do when one is bearing one’s cross and divine help seems far away or long delayed.

The Lessons of the Cross School: Suffering’s Benefits (and Nonbenefits) The most important lesson to be learned about suffering was that it was good for the Christian. In keeping with the ancient and medieval Christian consolation tradition, evangelical consolers emphasized the benefits of suffering and regularly employed the traditional causae for adversity in

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the Christian life: it conformed one to Christ, caused one to yearn for the next life, reproved sin, signaled that one was a child of God, brought glory to God, and so on. But, like Luther (and Zwingli), evangelical consolers rejected the traditional view that suffering presented an opportunity to do penance for the remaining penalty of sin. Huberinus stresses this point in his How One Should Console and Speak to a Dying Person: Finally, you must never and in no respect trust in this your sickness, as if you wanted to hope that God would look upon your pains and through them be gracious to you and forgive you your sins. Simply nothing will come of this, because there is no other payment, no other satisfaction for your sin than the singular suffering and death of Jesus Christ, your Savior. God the Lord also looks upon nothing else, nothing else pleases him than his beloved Son, because the same is the Lamb of God, who takes upon himself the sin of the world. He is also the only sufficient sacrifice for the sin of the world.124 Suffering would not atone for sin; this was not one of its benefits. The evangelical emphasis on the all-sufficient nature of Christ’s atonement had a very important corollary: suffering could not be interpreted as punishment for sin, at least not where the faithful Christian was concerned. The unfaithful Christian and the non-Christian were different cases entirely; here suffering was always punishment for sin.125 Christ took upon himself the full poena for sin; therefore, there was no remaining or leftover punishment for those who were in Christ. We have already briefly seen Lazarus Spengler make this point. He may well have learned it from Johannes Brenz: Spengler’s treatment of this topic in How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Affliction and Adversity bears striking parallels to Brenz’s discussion of it in his published sermon, The Cause of Fortune and Misfortune (1527, VI).126 Brenz seeks to refute the argument that evangelical Christians are to blame for misfortune in German lands and also the claim that evangelical Christians cannot be the only true Christians, because they suffer like everyone else. The Schwäbisch Hall preacher compares the attempt to blame evangelicals for misfortune to the Roman effort to find in early Christianity a scapegoat for the woes of the empire. Then as now, according to Brenz, the cause of misfortune is idolatry and sin, an argument that Augustine had already made in the City of God. Why do evangelicals

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suffer? According to Brenz, it is not because they are being punished for sin, something that only happens to those who live under the law, not to those who believe the gospel: “therefore God does not send [them] misfortune as a punishment for sin . . . but as a cross. Because Christ has come, he has turned away sins from believers and washed and purified them through his blood. Thus, God lays the cross on each Christian for no other reason than he laid it upon his Son Jesus Christ.”127 Christ was innocent and therefore did not deserve to be punished, yet the Father placed the cross on him; through faith in Christ evangelical Christians are also not guilty of sin, and yet they, too, suffer, not to atone for the sins of the world but in order to have their faith tested and proved. Brenz continues: God sends a Christian misfortune not as a punishment but as a proving of faith [bewerung des glaubens]. Although “if God were to look upon sin” [cf. Psalm 130:3] no one would survive, [yet] in the gospel he does not see sin in the believer who has been freed from the law, as he does with those under the law who have not yet been saved by Christ. Rather, he beholds his Son Jesus Christ whom he finds in the Christian’s heart. The torment that may befall the person who by faith bears Christ, the eternal Word of God, has been sent not because of guilt (as the whole book of Job attests), but only to prove and test him, and also to show divine power, so that everyone can clearly see how God can preserve his own in the midst of misery, fear, necessity, and also in death, so that they do not fall to the ground.128 Here Brenz shows how evangelical soteriology had a profound influence on the way many early evangelical consolers interpreted suffering: justification by faith changed the way its advocates understood the role of affliction and misfortune in the Christian life. While this soteriology could accommodate a number of the traditional ways of interpreting adversity in the Christian life, it also flatly rejected others, most notably, suffering as penance for sin. This meant that evangelical pastors had to develop new arguments about the benefits of suffering in the Christian life; they had to develop new ways of making sense of suffering, of rendering it plausible to themselves and their contemporaries. The traditional explanations that they still accepted were not sufficient to provide this plausibility, at least not without important new emphases and modifications.

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The Chief Benefit: The Proving of Faith Many early evangelical consolers responded to this challenge as Luther did—by presenting suffering first and foremost as a test of faith. We have already seen both lay and clerical consolers stress the importance of faith: one needed the faith of Abraham to find meaning in apparent absurdity and cruelty (Katharina Schütz Zell); only faith could behold the loving bridegroom hiding behind the wall of suffering (Schütz Zell and Caspar Huberinus); and only faith could find spiritual treasure concealed in adversity (Wenzeslaus Linck). Therefore, faith needed to be constantly tested and strengthened (Lazarus Spengler and Johannes Brenz). This was the single most important function of suffering. Faith did not need to be perfect in order to please God; we saw this in Katharina Schütz Zell. Even as early evangelical consolers placed unprecedented emphasis on the role of faith in the Christian life, especially in suffering, they also made great allowances for weak or struggling faith. Urbanus Rhegius addresses this topic in his influential Soul-Medicine for the Healthy and the Sick in These Dangerous Times. He asserts that weak faith is still faith—the important thing is the desire to have faith, not the possession of perfect faith. According to Rhegius, the Christian will always be able to exclaim with the father of the epileptic boy in Mark 9:24, “I believe, Lord, come to help my unbelief” (Ich gelaub, Herr, komb zu[o] hilf meinem ungelauben). The Augsburg preacher writes, “These two things are not so far from each other, believing in Christ and earnestly desiring to believe. . . . Therefore believe firmly in Christ, or at least desire to believe in him. Do not bemoan your lack of faith and your doubt before him; you are a pious and blessed child of God, who not in vain placed our weakness on his beloved Son Christ.”129 Even regret at not having faith is taken as a sign that some glimmer of faith remains. Rhegius interprets this regret and desire for stronger faith as the poverty of spirit that Jesus commended in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–6).130 Here one can see an important continuity with late medieval pastoral care or, better, a continuity within a discontinuity. Although Rhegius and his fellow evangelical pastors rejected late medieval penitential theology, the treatment of faith in the Soul-Medicine bears a certain similarity to traditional discussions of sorrow for sin. Late medieval theologians had held that perfect sorrow for sin (contrition) was unattainable for most Christians in this life; the important thing was to desire to be contrite and to regret that one was not—this is what it meant to be poor in spirit. Most late medieval theologians

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were content with imperfect sorrow for sin (attrition), and they believed that God was, too. He would look with mercy on those who did their best, and even doing one’s best required grace, at least according to most theologians.131 Evangelical theologians were not interested in assessing degrees of faith and then assigning merit to them. This is an important difference with the late medieval treatment of sorrow for sin, which was so central to preReformation Christianity. Faith merited nothing, for it was a gift. But at the level of the care of souls, Catholic and evangelical consolers could make use of similar pastoral language and strategies to encourage the faint-hearted. The object of evangelical faith was the Word or, more specifically, the divine promises of mercy, goodness, and salvation recorded in Scripture. The early evangelical consolation literature is full of consoling sayings from the Bible. With very few exceptions, Scripture is the only directly cited or quoted source in this literature. We know that Lazarus Spengler was influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux and that both Spengler and Katharina Schütz Zell were familiar with Staupitz, as was Wenzeslaus Linck, but on the whole, this literature bears little evidence of intentional borrowing from ancient or late medieval sources.132 This is not to say that university-trained theologians were ignorant of such sources, only that they do not cite them in their works of consolation. Luther’s theology of the cross is present in much of this literature, but Luther himself is not— only Spengler quotes him directly. (Luther did provide forewords for two of Huberinus’s works.)133 There is evidence that evangelical consolers were reading one another’s work, as Spengler’s apparent borrowing from Brenz attests, but again, there are no direction citations or quotations.134 Scripture is the primary and nearly exclusive source for the early evangelical consolation literature. In some cases, the authors provide page after page of quotations from Scripture with very little commentary.135 They believed that the power to console lay in the Word; therefore, the consolers’ goal was to bring the Word to suffering Christians and suffering Christians to the Word. As Johann Briesmann argues in A Few Consoling Sayings for Despondent and Weak Consciences, “it is not possible to revive a disconsolate soul unless this happens through God’s word and work.”136 According to the Königsberg preacher, the only way to survive trials and tribulations is to hide God’s Word in one’s heart so that one can return to the consoling sayings of Scripture in the midst of suffering and hold to them by faith.137 (See chapter 10 for further discussion.) The purpose of his pamphlet and many others was to facilitate this hiding of God’s Word in his readers’ hearts and thereby to prepare them to deal with suffering.138

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Suffering tested and improved faith’s clinging to the divine promises of Scripture. It did this by driving Christians beyond their human abilities to understand and cope with suffering so that they utterly despaired of all human help, especially their own. As we have already seen, the consolers believed that the Holy Spirit would then apply the assurances of the Word to despondent Christians, calling forth faith in its promises, which would provide inner peace and confidence. This experience of deliverance from despair also sharpened believers’ understanding of the Word. The Word gave them hope in the midst of the cross, and the cross helped them to grasp the true power and meaning of the Word. As Huberinus argues in Concerning the Wrath and Goodness of God (1529, XXII): God sends you a cross so that the Word of God may also be pressed into your heart and not always remain stuck to your tongue. [The cross] seasons for you his Holy Word so that it begins to taste good to you and thus comes into your heart. You can deal with it properly when you know how to bear and use it. It is not possible for someone to understand the Word of God properly and thus to know how to deal with it unless it has first been pressed into his heart by the cross and suffering. This noble treasure, the Holy Word of God, must always be used with earnestness, otherwise it soon rusts and becomes unappealing [vngeschmach].139 Luther had argued much the same thing in the Dictata. Also similarly to Luther, evangelical consolers could posit a very close relationship between the Word and Christ. As Johannes Brenz writes in his How the Wood of the Cross Should Be Hewn and Most Easily Taken Hold Of (1527, V),140 “The one who now sees the gracious word of God in his cross sees also the Son of God.”141 The Schwäbisch Hall preacher says that the suffering Christian is to focus not on his cross but “on the Son of God (on the Word)” so that he can bear it well.142 When the suffering Christian places his faith in the promises of Scripture, he is also placing his faith in Christ, and he thus lives into the union between himself and Christ that Brenz attributes to faith in his printed sermon on Romans 8.143 Early evangelical consolers made much of this faith-effected union between Christ and Christians in the midst of suffering.144 Christ did not simply suffer for Christians; he also suffered with and in them, something that Christian consolers had taught for centuries, although with a different understanding of faith’s role in this union. Brenz makes this traditional

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point in his Romans 8 sermon. The Schwäbisch Hall preacher asserts that when Christ called out to Saul (later Paul) from heaven, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me” (Acts 9:4), “He gives us to understand that the suffering of believers is his own suffering.”145 And since Christ suffers with Christians, they can be sure that they will overcome all adversity, because Christ has overcome the world. Michael Keller (Cellarius) (ca. 1490–1548), an evangelical preacher in Augsburg’s Franciscan monastery and colleague of Rhegius and Huberinus, also addressed the close bond between Christ and the Christian in suffering. Although he had sharp disagreements with his Wittenbergleaning colleagues in Augsburg and elsewhere on the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper and the legitimacy of images in worship— he was a stout defender of Zwingli146—Keller was in full agreement with “Lutherans” about the fact of Christ’s presence in the Christian’s suffering. Reflecting on Christ’s statement in Matthew 25:36, “I was sick and you visited me,” Keller writes in his Two Consoling Instructions for Use When Visiting the Sick and the Dying (1531, II): See, my brother or sister what a great relic you have become because Christ himself in these words takes on your [sickness] so completely, and he says that he suffers in you and is sick in you. Since he says, “I was sick,” you hear that he takes on your sickness as if he were himself sick. Who then would not want to be sick with Christ himself? Who would not with most humble obedience endure weakness with Christ?147 Keller does not specify exactly how Christ takes on the believer’s sickness, whether it is his divine or human nature that does so. What is clear is that despite the Christological concerns that divided “Zwinglians” and “Lutherans” at this point—one hesitates to use these labels at such an early stage in the evangelical movement—both evangelical parties could agree with the ancient and medieval Christian tradition that Christ was present in the suffering of Christians, taking their tribulations on himself and helping Christians to bear and overcome them with faith and patience. Important differences would develop between “Lutherans” and “Zwinglians” with regard to the practical care of sick and suffering Christians (see chapter 7) but not on this crucial matter of Christ’s co-suffering with Christians. The result of the testing of faith through suffering was to be a stronger trust in God’s promises of salvation and a deeper experience of the consolation that God offered the Christian through the Word. One of the most

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important fruits of this cross-tested faith was a certain inner stability that could not be disturbed by the changes and chances of this life or by the assaults of the devil and the world. We have already briefly seen this evangelical Stoicism in the consolatory writings of Lazarus Spengler, a feature that almost certainly made them more appealing to his fellow burghers.148 Other evangelical consolers also urged a kind of baptized apatheia on their listeners and readers. Johannes Agricola (1494?–1566), a preacher in Eisleben who had both studied with Luther in Wittenberg and served as his secretary at the Leipzig Disputation,149 explained in a consolatory pamphlet based on Vulgate Psalm 90 (Psalm 91) (1526, III) that when God provides relief to suffering Christians, this teaches them to “remain still [stille halten] in suffering and death, and to let the weather roll over them as they wait upon God.” The one who “sits in the shelter of the Most High” (Vulgate Psalm 90:1; Psalm 91:1) is completely abandoned to God and God’s will and simply “sits still” (Er sitzet still), trusting in God’s unseen protection and thus never losing his inner consolation.150 The specific kind of suffering that Agricola has in mind in his pamphlet is persecution for the sake of the (evangelical) gospel. He is trying to persuade the rulers of Mansfeld to resist Catholic attempts to turn them from the evangelical faith, an effort that would be repeated time and again by evangelical consolers eager to shore up the faith of their political rulers who faced imperial and papal opposition.151 The Eisleben preacher argues that God has allowed the gospel to shine forth more clearly in the present day than in any time since the apostles.152 As in the apostolic age, so, too, now the forces of darkness oppose it, which is the sure sign that the evangelical gospel is the true gospel. Here we see another aspect of the evangelical attempt to render suffering plausible by interpreting it as a test of faith: suffering not only proved faith, in the sense of strengthening trust in the Word, but it also proved faith, in the sense of demonstrating that the evangelical faith was the true faith. Agricola assures the rulers of Mansfeld that God will rescue them from the “hunters snare” (i.e., the assaults of the devil and Catholic clergy) and the “deadly pestilence” (i.e., false teaching) (Vulgate Psalm 90:3; Psalm 91:3) if they have faith in the true faith.153

Purgation and Purification as Benefits of Suffering Suffering was first and foremost a test of faith for evangelicals; but it was also more than this. As early evangelical consolers sought to establish new plausibility for the presence of suffering in the Christian life, many followed Luther in placing a strong emphasis on the purifying effects of

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adversity and tribulation. In his How One Should Console and Speak to a Dying Person, Caspar Huberinus refers to God’s practice of casting the elect into the hell of despair as “the true purgatory through which God leads his beloved saints and proves them like gold in fire.”154 The Augsburg preacher also uses the image of Christ’s bride being stripped of all old clothing—that is, sin—so that she can be presented “as a pure and beautiful bride” to her bridegroom (Ephesians 5: 26–27).155 According to Huberinus, suffering helps the Christian become more like Christ; it helps the new Adam put the old Adam to death in their daily mortal struggle, primarily by opposing the latter’s sinful self-will.156 Many early evangelical consolers shared Luther’s interest in the gradual growth of the Christian in actual righteousness, although, like him, they were always quite sober in their expectations of how much moral or spiritual progress one could make in this life. One’s salvation did not depend on this growth, in the sense of meriting divine grace and atoning for sin, but one still had to walk the way of the cross to arrive safely in heaven, because the evangelical God wanted Christians to be holy, and suffering was the most effective means of achieving this goal. Cross bearing was not salvific, but it was redemptive; it promoted the gradual liberation from sin that God desired and expected in the life of believers. God himself nurtured this process by his Spirit in this life and completed it in the next life. There was a real drama in the spiritual life of evangelical Christians: God promised them heaven as a gift, but they had to remain in the way of the cross to receive it. If they fell out of this way, especially if they renounced (evangelical) faith, they could forfeit the gift. Even as evangelical consolers stressed that salvation was a gift of grace received by faith, itself a gift, they also emphasized the importance and necessity of taking up the cross and following Christ through suffering to glory. The devil, the old Adam, and the world could rob Christians of faith and thus deprive them of salvation—they could lose heaven, a possibility that is clearly assumed in the sources. (See chapter 8 for further discussion.) In How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Suffering, Wenzeslaus Linck displays great interest in the purification (außfegen) of believers and describes how Christ encourages it each day by sending them crosses and suffering.157 According to Linck, this purification entails dying to sin and living more deeply in Christ. In other words, as the Nuremberg preacher explains in another pamphlet, it means daily fulfilling one’s baptismal covenant.158 Urbanus Rhegius was similarly interested in the sanctification of Christians. In his Letter of Consolation to All the Christians in

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Hildesheim Who Suffer Scorn and Persecution for the Sake of the Gospel (1531, V), the Augsburg preacher asserts that Christians must be conformed (gleichformig) to Christ;159 that is, they must be proved by the cross (durchs Creutz probiert) before they can enter glory with Christ. Rhegius writes, “God calls you now through the gospel because he wants to make you pious and blessed and to separate you from the sinful world, so that you may become vessels of honor.”160 Christians must receive this high calling with thanks and understand that if God is to make them pious (from), “He must first remove and extinguish the sin in you” (so muss er yhe die su[e]nd ynn euch vortzehen vnd aussleschen). Cross bearing causes pain (weh) to the old Adam, who must be put to death if the Christian is to “become a new creation in Christ, as baptism shows us [Romans 6: 4]. . . . Because the one who is to have been born of the water and Spirit must become a new person, [he must] take off the old [person], die to this world and sin, [and] in true releasement [gelassenheit] remove himself from this world and follow after Christ.”161

Radical Suffering Despite the emphasis on cross bearing and conformity to Christ in the early evangelical consolation literature, there were some members of the evangelical movement who found the approach to suffering advocated by Luther and Zwingli and their sympathizers to be completely inadequate. In the eyes of these so-called radicals, Luther and Zwingli were tepid Christians who did not know what it truly meant to renounce the world and follow after the crucified Lord. Of the many differences that would emerge between evangelical reformers such as Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (1486–1541), Thomas Müntzer (b. before 1491–1525), and Conrad Grebel (ca. 1498–1526), and figures such as Luther and Zwingli, one of the most important concerned the role of suffering in the Christian life. In September 1524, the Zurich humanist Conrad Grebel wrote two letters to the Allstedt reformer Thomas Müntzer in which he directly attacked both Zwingli and Luther’s understanding of suffering.162 (Allstedt was a small town in Thuringia that belonged to Electoral Saxony.) Grebel, a patrician’s son, initially supported Zwingli, but then, along with a handful of others, he parted company with the Zurich reformer when he decided to accommodate the city council’s desire to proceed slowly in the abolition of the mass and sacred images. Grebel objected to this toleration of allegedly unbiblical practices and also to the alliance that Zwingli

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sought with temporal authorities, something for which Grebel could find no support in Scripture. In time, the Zurich humanist and his circle would also object to Zwingli’s and Luther’s support for infant baptism and to the Wittenberg reformer’s belief in the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. In his letters to Müntzer, Grebel compares Zwingli and Luther to their Catholic predecessors who have fallen from the true faith because of their alleged reliance on human doctrines and ceremonies, rather than on the teaching, way of life, and rites clearly specified in Scripture. Grebel adopts an uncompromising hermeneutic that allows only those beliefs and practices for which there are specific scriptural warrants; all that is not explicitly commanded in Scripture is forbidden to the true Christian.163 According to Grebel, the result of this evangelical accommodation to the world is an effete Christianity. The Zurich humanist charges that “today everybody wants to be saved by a make-believe faith [glichsendem glouben], without faith’s fruits, without the baptism of trial and testing.”164 Grebel concedes that he and his circle used to be participants “in this same error,” but when they read Scripture for themselves, they soon saw “the great and damaging deficiencies of our shepherds and of ourselves.” Grebel blames the suppression of God’s Word and its admixture with human teaching on one thing: “false forbearance” (das faltsch schonen).165 Reformers in both Zurich and Wittenberg tolerate what should not be tolerated—superstition and idolatry—and thus lead their followers astray. They preach a “sinful sweet Christ” (ein sündigen süssen Chr’um [Christum]) whom the majority find appealing, because he demands so little and gives so much.166 But the true Christ demands a great deal—actual imitation of his own earthly life, which was characterized by suffering and opposition. This is what Grebel means by a “baptism of trial and testing”—persecution for the sake of the gospel, not simply inner spiritual struggles or outer bodily affliction owing to sickness and the like. His definition of cross bearing in this letter is not nearly as expansive as that of the evangelical consolers we have considered thus far, even those who deal specifically with persecution. For Grebel, as for much of the Anabaptist tradition that drew inspiration from him, Christian suffering meant first and foremost enduring persecution for the gospel.167 The true Christian had to imitate Christ’s suffering and participate in it; he had to be willing to die for his faith.168 Accordingly, the true church was the “suffering church,” and Grebel and his followers saw it as their God-given task to call Christians back to this church of the martyrs, which they believed had been lost in post-Constantinian Christianity.169

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Grebel is generally respectful toward Müntzer in his letters, but he is certainly not obsequious; he seeks to engage the Allstedt reformer in a brotherly conversation.170 The Zurich humanist says that he has heard that Müntzer advocates the use of the sword to defend the gospel, and therefore, he exhorts the Allstedt reformer not to persist in this unbiblical position. Grebel notes that Christ sought neither to defend nor to advance the gospel by means of the sword; rather, he was a victim of the sword. This is the pattern for Christ’s followers: “True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anxiety, distress, affliction, persecution, suffering, and death. They must pass through the probation of fire, and reach the fatherland of eternal rest, not by slaying their bodily [enemies] but by mortifying their spiritual enemies.”171 Grebel says that he and his circle have already begun to experience such persecution at the hands of the Zurich shepherds. He predicts that this suffering will only intensify in the future and urges Müntzer to stand fast as he faces the same kind of opposition in Germany: Christ must suffer still more in his members, but he will strengthen and preserve them steadfast to the end. God give you and us grace, for our shepherds are so furious and enraged against us that they rail at us in public from the pulpit, calling us knaves and Satans turned into angels of light [Satanas in angelos lucis conversos]. In time we will also see persecution come upon us through them, therefore entreat God for us.172 Grebel’s prophecy came true; he would go on to become an itinerant evangelist for his version of Christianity and would eventually be imprisoned— though not executed—for his faith. Grebel had seen in Thomas Müntzer a kindred spirit who could help his fledgling group of disaffected evangelicals chart a course for the future. Although he disagreed with the Allstedt reformer’s position on recourse to the temporal sword to defend the faithful (and also on his use of chants in worship), he had found much in Müntzer’s writings that pleased him, especially Müntzer’s opposition to the “sweet” Christ of Luther and his ilk. Grebel had read Müntzer’s On Fictitious Faith (1524, II),173 in which the Allstedt reformer accused Luther and his followers of preaching an easy gospel with “honey-sweet words” (honigsußen worten), rather than calling Christians to follow the “bitter Christ” (den bittern Cristum).174 Both Grebel

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and Müntzer wanted a bitter Christianity;175 Grebel borrowed the distinction between the sweet and bitter Christ from the Allstedt reformer.176 Müntzer, who had been ordained to the priesthood after studying theology at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder, was present in Wittenberg in the late 1510s, where he continued his humanist and theological studies and got to know Karlstadt and Luther. From there, he journeyed far and wide, including a stay in Zwickau and Prague, eventually winding up in Allstedt, where he served at the Church of St. John.177 Early on, Müntzer had been attracted to Luther’s call for reform, but he soon parted company with the Wittenberg reformer, whose version of Christianity he found too lax, too quietistic, and too bound to the external word of Scripture. Müntzer advocated a Christianity that received direct revelation from the Spirit and which fought for social and economic revolution. He was later put to death for his involvement in the German Peasants’ War. Drawing on late medieval German mysticism, among other sources, Müntzer developed a Spiritualist version of Christianity that was highly apocalyptic in nature.178 Grebel did not share Müntzer’s Spiritualist tendencies, being more influenced by Erasmian humanism than by German mysticism. He also did not approve of Müntzer’s violent apocalypticism.179 In On Fictitious Faith, Müntzer charges Luther with having a completely mistaken and inadequate understanding of faith.180 Yes, one must believe the Word, but the crucial question for Müntzer is how one arrives at this faith. According to the Allstedt reformer, true faith is a rare and hard thing that only comes at the end of a long and arduous process that includes much God-imposed suffering and travail; it is not a gift that one receives at the beginning of the Christian life that is then deepened over time by various forms of adversity. He insists that one cannot truly hear the Word of God and hold fast to it until one has been purged of many spiritual impurities.181 Thus, for Müntzer, faith is the end of the Christian life, not its beginning. He argues that one cannot face adversity in faith until one actually possesses true faith, which only comes through inward and outward suffering.182 Müntzer asserts, “You elect brother, look at the sixteenth chapter of Matthew through and through in all its words. There you will find that no one is able to believe in Christ unless he is first made like him.”183 As we have seen, for Luther, Christ first had to become a means of grace for the Christian, a sacramentum, before Christ could become a model to be emulated, an exemplum. Christ became this means of grace through faith. Müntzer’s belief in the immanence of God within the human soul, along with his insistence on the necessity of experiencing

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the bitter Christ in order to receive the comfort and salvation of the sweet Christ, made him a more faithful disciple of the German mystics than was Luther. Müntzer’s adoption of Tauler and the German Theology was more wholesale than Luther’s, especially in his willingness to ascribe to suffering a salvific status.184 As we have seen, Luther parted company with the mystics and the entire medieval tradition on this crucial point. The early south German and Austrian Anabaptist movement followed Müntzer in this appropriation of late medieval German mysticism.185 Müntzer never received Grebel’s letters. He had already left Allstedt for Mühlhausen (in Thuringia)—and soon the “Revolt of the Common Man”—by the time Grebel penned his two missives. But Grebel and his circle were able to establish contact with another potential kindred spirit, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, one of the most prolific authors of the early evangelical movement.186 Grebel had wanted to learn from Müntzer if he and Karlstadt were like-minded, and then a member of Grebel’s circle, Andreas Castelberger, had written to the exiled Saxon reformer, who visited the Zurich “radicals” in October 1524. Karlstadt knew Luther very well. After earning his doctorate of theology at the University of Wittenberg in 1510, Karlstadt had served as the archdeacon of the All Saints collegiate church in Wittenberg, where Elector Frederick the Wise’s famous relic collection was housed. The archdeacon position included teaching duties in the theology faculty of the university, and Karlstadt soon became dean of this faculty; it was he who awarded Luther his doctorate in theology in 1512. Karlstadt was sympathetic to Luther’s criticisms of the traditional church and had defended them against Johannes Eck at the Leipzig Disputation (1519). Karlstadt was also named on the bull threatening Luther with excommunication (Exsurge Domine, 1520), and when he, like Luther, refused to recant, he was cut off from the Latin church. While Luther was in hiding at the Wartburg after the Diet of Worms (1521), Karlstadt took over the reins of the evangelical movement in Wittenberg and pushed for a fast-paced reform that included the abolition of private confession as a necessary precursor to the Lord’s Supper and the destruction of religious images. Luther objected to both of these. When he returned from the Wartburg, he sought to slow the pace of reform in Wittenberg, fearing the creation of a new legalism that would burden human consciences. Karlstadt subsequently renounced his academic degrees and positions, adopted the simple dress of a peasant, and asked to be referred to as “Brother Andy.” In May 1523, he became pastor of Orlamünde, a small town in Thuringia, but was later forced to leave by Frederick the Wise and

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Duke George of Saxony. Luther had persuaded them that Karlstadt, like Müntzer, had become a dangerous sectarian radical.187 Both Grebel and Luther were partially correct in their belief that Karlstadt and Müntzer were like-minded. The two men were united in their opposition to the slow pace of Luther’s reform; both men took exception to his argument that change must occur slowly lest the weak in conscience suffer offense. For them, this was another example of the false forbearance that Grebel had decried in Zurich.188 Karlstadt and Müntzer also objected to Luther’s support for infant baptism and to his belief in the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Furthermore, like Müntzer, Karlstadt was deeply attracted to late medieval German mysticism, but he stopped well short of Müntzer’s hyper-spiritualism and violent apocalypticism.189 He did not participate in the German Peasants’ War. In terms of Karlstadt’s theology of suffering, the primary difference with Luther stemmed from his emphasis on spiritual regeneration—not justification—and the means he advocated to reach this end: self-mortification and Gelassenheit.190 Karlstadt authored two treatises on Gelassenheit.191 In a 1525 treatise against Luther, he writes, “Often I accuse Christendom because many preachers do not proclaim the mortification of life sufficiently. I also point out that some mortification precedes faith, some and that the best comes with faith and some follows.”192 While Karlstadt rejected the mystical divine spark within the human soul,193 his version of the Christian life was deeply influenced by Tauler and the German Theology, especially in their treatment of suffering.194 In his works on Gelassenheit, Karlstadt maintains that God-imposed suffering prepares the way for grace and can also—as in Spengler—wash away sin if it is borne patiently; suffering is salvific.195 It annihilates the sinful self. He also insists in these treatises that God is the sole agent in this process of mortification.196 Nevertheless, Luther still accused him of advocating works-righteousness. As with Müntzer, Luther thought that Karlstadt had put the soteriological cart before the horse: one could not mortify the flesh and bear the cross until one had Christ in one’s heart through faith, and this only happened through the hearing of the gospel.197 Luther also accused Karlstadt of rejecting the tribulation that God sent his way in favor of his own self-imposed suffering, yet another form of works-righteousness. Karlstadt also rejected this charge: I know fully well that we must not desire any change in the cross that befalls us. If I look for a change or an end to the divine rod, I

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have my conscience and God as judge over me. . . . But who is not aware of the fact that God the Lord has fully forbidden and taken from us his self-appointed and chosen mortification and service? . . . I also specifically pointed out to my brothers in Orlamünde that hidden danger of a self-appointed cross and, by contrast, the precious benefits that come from acceptance of the tribulation that may befall one, and I directed them to exercise themselves in this.198 Karlstadt’s self-defense fell on deaf ears. The charge of works-righteousness through self-mortification and self-made crosses would become standard fare among magisterial evangelicals as they sought to distance their version of reform from that of the “radicals.”199 One consequence of this development is that consolers who looked to Wittenberg for inspiration became very hesitant about drawing on late medieval German mysticism in their works. Despite Luther’s ongoing praise for at least certain elements of this older literature, mysticism soon became associated with radicals and sectarians and therefore found no place in “mainline” evangelical consolation for several decades. Karlstadt eventually left Saxony altogether—interestingly, after living with Luther during the Peasants’ War— and returned for a time to Zurich and then finally moved to Basel, where he served as pastor of the university church and also as professor of Hebrew and dean of the university. He died of plague in Basel in 1541.

Conclusion The early evangelical consolation literature was addressed to Christians facing many different kinds of suffering: persecution, sickness, spiritual despair, drought, pestilence, and so on. Some works focused on just one form of suffering, while others sought to speak to all manner of adversity. Owing to the expansive definition of the cross and suffering that most evangelicals accepted—the “radicals” excepted—the basic explanatory framework and the recommended spiritual remedies were largely consistent from one work to another. Some works, such as Rhegius’s Soul-Medicine and Huberinus’s How One Should Console and Speak to a Dying Person, were extremely popular and were published by printers all over Germany (and elsewhere) throughout the sixteenth century. Others, such as Linck’s How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Suffering or Keller’s Two Consoling Instructions for Use When Visiting the Sick and the Dying, enjoyed

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more modest success and were printed in a single city with subsequent editions appearing within a span of a few years. Most works were directed to a general literate audience and sought to equip both laity and clergy to offer evangelical consolation to suffering Christians. But a few were specifically intended for clerical use. The Nuremberg preacher Wenzeslaus Linck produced such a work in 1529: How One May Console the Sick Christianly through the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Articles of the Faith, Together with the Use of the Sacrament, Upon Which Christianity Itself Stands (V).200 Linck provides the actual words that a pastor can use when ministering to the sick, including a form for confession and absolution in which the pastor and those gathered around the sickbed are to speak the words of forgiveness together.201 Luther’s colleague and close friend in Wittenberg, Johannes Bugenhagen (1485–1558), also produced a work of consolation that included guidelines for the clergy: Instruction for Those Who Lie in Sicknesses and the Danger of Death (1527, V). Similarly to Linck, he discusses the importance of the Lord’s Supper and confession for the suffering Christian, but here the pastor administers absolution by himself.202 The appearance of these two works in the late 1520s and early 1530s signals that leaders of the magisterial evangelical movement were becoming increasingly aware of the need to train sympathetic clergy in the essentials of evangelical pastoral care. Although the future of the movement was by no means secure at this point, its advocates had seen it make impressive headway in many cities, which only strengthened their belief that God wanted it to survive. If the movement was to do so, it would need to engage in a massive effort to retrain, recruit, and reeducate pastors. Urbanus Rhegius published the Soul-Medicine at least in part because there were not enough “servants of the gospel” available to minister to sick and suffering Christians; he wanted to help laypeople learn the basics of evangelical pastoral care for themselves.203 Soon he and other leaders of the evangelical movement would seek to remedy this situation.

7

Pastoral Care of the Sick and Suffering in the Evangelical Church Ordinances as the evangelical movement spread throughout the German lands, it gained formal legal recognition in a number of cities and territories. One of the reformers’ top priorities in these evangelical strongholds was to educate the common clergy in the essentials of the new faith and its distinctive pastoral care. As we have seen, the reformers believed that recruitment and training of pastors were essential to the ongoing survival of the evangelical movement, for they knew that the common clergy had the most direct contact with the lay hearts and minds that they wished to re-Christianize.1 One of the most important means that Protestant reformers used to train common pastors for this missionary activity was church ordinances (Kirchenordnungen). Church ordinances were printed guides for worship, belief, and behavior that evangelical reformers and rulers produced to replace existing episcopal, synodal, and papal legislation, along with the late medieval pastoralia.2 They were an attempt on the part of Protestant leaders to effect a comprehensive reform of Christianity within their lands, not only in terms of worship and doctrine but also in terms of ecclesiastical structures, education (both of the clergy and the laity), moral discipline, ministry to the poor, and pastoral care. The church ordinances treated all of these issues, and in this respect, they constituted a new genre, a new kind of summa, as there was nothing quite like them in the later Middle Ages, certainly not in terms of scope; they sought to gather in one place what had previously been scattered in many. Early on, there was interest in producing a single evangelical church ordinance (as in the case of Philipp of Hesse), but such efforts soon went the way of every other attempt at centralization in early modern Germany; by the end of the sixteenth century, there were literally

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hundreds of church ordinances. Scholars have attempted to group them into families that share a common “ancestor” or original source, usually authored by one of the leading reformers (e.g., Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, Johannes Aurifaber [Vratislaviensis], Johannes Brenz, Andreas Osiander, Martin Bucer, Urbanus Rhegius, Veit Dietrich, Jacob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, or Johannes a Lasco). It has been customary to set the number of families at five,3 although recent research has challenged this number and the methods used to arrive at it. There clearly were filial connections among the church ordinances, but these relationships appear to have been more complicated than previously realized.4 Further research is required before we can fully understand this complexity. Whatever their interrelations, we know that church ordinances had the force of law, being issued in the name of local princes or city magistrates, who financed their production and provided for their distribution.5 Much of the previous work on the church ordinances has fallen under the general rubric of confessionalization. Scholars have emphasized their importance in the eventual hegemony of temporal rulers over the Protestant church and the concomitant promotion of confessional uniformity, moral discipline, and a reinvigorated patriarchalism.6 By way of contrast, relatively little has been made of the stipulations regarding pastoral care in the church ordinances. This is unfortunate, because the church ordinances are one of our most valuable sources for determining the nature of early modern Protestant pastoral care, at least at a prescriptive level. They are one of the few sources that temporal authorities required the parish clergy to possess. (The other sources usually included a hymnal, a postil, and a catechism—see chapter 8.)7 The growing literature on the early modern Protestant clergy includes several important treatments of the education and social location of evangelical pastors, along with examinations of Protestant preaching and the ongoing struggle of pastors to contend with a resurgent anticlericalism, especially in rural districts.8 Insofar as this literature discusses pastoral care, it treats it as an example of social discipline that the laity largely rejected. It is clearly the case that the evangelical clergy experienced great difficulty in seeking to re-Christianize the common folk. But the scholarly fascination with social discipline has meant that relatively little attention has been given to the clergy’s ministry of consolation. The church ordinances are an ideal source for examining this topic. As in the case of priests in the later Middle Ages, it is likely that the evangelical clergy learned pastoral care through an informal apprentice system—there were no courses devoted to

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the cura animarum at the university level.9 Beyond this, recent scholarship has emphasized—perhaps overemphasized—the lack of formal theological education among a significant percentage of evangelical pastors well into the late sixteenth century.10 It is therefore reasonable to assume that the clergy looked to the church ordinances as a primary source of guidance when they sought to minister to parishioners who suffered in body or soul. At least, this is what the framers of the church ordinances hoped, as did the temporal rulers who required local pastors to possess and follow them. Unlike the late medieval pastoralia, the church ordinances have a lot to say about suffering, a fact that is quite significant. The framers’ decision to give the topic so much attention in their church ordinances constitutes an important new development in the pastoral care literature of Western Christendom. The regular inclusion of specific treatments of suffering in a pastoral care literature that the common clergy was required by law to possess was an invention of the Protestant Reformation. Why this new development? In the first place, this development is indicative of a change in Latin Christendom regarding what was expected of the clergy and the pastoral care they provided. This change predated the Protestant Reformation and also received further encouragement from it. Owing in large part to the duty of hearing and responding to annual private confessions and to the increasing demand of burghers for good sermons, at least a portion of late medieval parish priests were required by both the church and the (urban) laity to offer a ministry of verbal consolation to their flocks. As we have seen, the traditional ministry of ritual consolation, while still important, no longer sufficed, especially in the towns and cities. Those entrusted with the care of souls needed to be able to console laypeople with words, along with sacraments and sacramentals. The evangelical church ordinances reflected these expectations and also increased them, now applying them to a new situation: the common clergy’s ministry to suffering Christians. The evangelical pastor had to know what to say to parishioners who suffered in body or soul; simply administering the Lord’s Supper to them was no longer adequate, although it still figured prominently in Lutheran ministry to the sick and the suffering, as did private absolution. More was expected of pastors in the church ordinances, even more than was required of late medieval priests. One sees these heightened expectations very clearly in the church ordinances. The inclusion of specific treatments of suffering in the evangelical church ordinances also reflects the framers’ desire to combat “pagan” approaches to misfortune. The attempt to reform popular attitudes toward

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suffering was part of a larger effort to re-Christianize Europe along lines that were more identifiably biblical, at least according to evangelical lights. The authors of the church ordinances believed that if they could change the way people dealt with suffering, they would have gone a long way toward making Europe more Christian. As we have seen, there was nothing new about this endeavor. The effort to curtail recourse to non-Christian means of coping with suffering reached back centuries. The assault on superstition was clearly not a uniquely Protestant concern.11 However, as we have also seen, evangelical reformers expanded this assault to include much of Catholic piety (e.g., invocation of saints, recourse to relics, use of various sacramentals, etc.), which they saw as similarly pagan in origin. The framers of the church ordinances viewed the pastoral care of the sick and suffering as a prime opportunity to root out a whole host of pagan and quasi-pagan beliefs and practices, which they believed had flourished in Christendom for some time. Pastoral care of the suffering presented an excellent opportunity to evangelize and catechize the common folk, whom the reformers considered to be nominally Christian at best. Therefore, the authors of the church ordinances thought it was extremely important to provide the new evangelical clergy with a clear statement of the (magisterial) Protestant approach to suffering that they could readily employ in the care of suffering souls. The need for such instruction was acute, because evangelical reformers sought to deprive the laity of many of the means they had traditionally used to understand and cope with suffering—and yet suffering remained, of course. The reformers needed to provide some satisfying evangelical ersatz if their movement was to make any headway at all with the laity. Thus, much was at stake in this unprecedented effort to reform attitudes toward suffering, from the evangelical point of view, the very future of their movement itself.

Ministry to the Sick and Dying The framers’ comments on suffering are sprinkled throughout the church ordinances but are especially concentrated in two places: the sections on ministering to the sick and dying and the stand-alone sections devoted specifically to the theme of adversity.12 The vast majority of church ordinances contain the former, while fewer include the latter.13 Many of the sections on ministry to the sick and dying are rather brief. They simply exhort pastors to fulfill their obligation to visit the infirm and then call on

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them to explain the evangelical view of suffering to their flocks,14 in many cases providing instructions on how to confess, absolve, and communicate sick people. But other sections are more detailed and provide pastors with specific guidelines for ministering to members of their flocks who suffer in body or soul. As Claudia Resch has shown, these more detailed sections had an important “normativizing” influence on the pastoral care of the sick and suffering in the Protestant Reformation. They drew on earlier works of consolation and established official expectations for what the evangelical cura animarum was supposed to entail. As Resch also notes, these expectations varied little from church ordinance to church ordinance.15 Among the more noteworthy treatments of ministry to the sick and dying is the section entitled “How one should advise and console sick people” in the 1539 Church Ordinance of Duke Heinrich of Saxony,16 which was authored by the Wittenberg reformers Justus Jonas (1493–1555) and Caspar Crucinger (1504–1548).17 This section was adopted in full or in part by several other important church ordinances, thus making it one of the most influential treatments of the topic in the church ordinance literature.18 The section opens by instructing pastors to say the following to a sick person: Dear friend, because our Lord God has visited you with weakness of your body, you should know [several things] so that you may surrender it to God’s will. First, that such illness of our bodies is sent to us by God the Lord for no other reason than sin alone, and that original sin, which we have inherited from Adam, brings with it death and all that belongs to the dominion of death, such as bodily infirmity, illness, misery, distress, etc. If we had remained without sin, death would not have been able to do anything to us, much less any kind of illness.19 After establishing the basic point that bodily suffering is a punishment from God for original sin and its fruit, the church ordinance goes on to say that Christians need not despair, because the gospel teaches that “Christ, God’s Son, makes us free and loose from sin, if we believe in his promise.” Pastors are to tell sick people that liberation from sin occurs in two ways: Christ purifies human hearts and consciences through the gospel and sacraments, and then the purification of fallen human nature takes place. The ordinance clearly states that the sin in human nature must be “destroyed,”

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and Christians must finally be perfected in godly righteousness and purity so they may live with God eternally.20 Similar to what we saw in the early evangelical consolation literature, here God accomplishes this gradual process of cleansing by sending sickness and death. God does this not out of wrath, as if he wished to destroy Christians, but “out of great grace, because he wishes to move us in this life to true repentance and faith, and ultimately to set us free from all the sin in which we are still stuck, and from all misfortune, both bodily and spiritual.”21 The ordinance then cites two passages from Scripture to underscore this latter point: 1 Corinthians 11:32 (“If we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we will not be damned with this world”) and Romans 8:28 and 35 (“All things must serve the best for those who love God. . . . Nothing can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus, be it fire, sword, hunger, death, or life”). The church ordinance goes on to stress that because of the death and Resurrection of Christ, the ailing Christian may be absolutely certain that all of his sins have been completely removed and eternally destroyed by Christ. This means that “before the face of God there exists no reason for wrath or damnation for believers, rather, only grace, consolation, life, and salvation, because our dear Lord God now sees you not as an evil, damned sinner who was born from Adam, but as a completely justified and holy beloved child in Christ” (sintemal unser lieber herr gott dich nu in seinen augen hat, nicht als ein bösen verdampten sünder von Adam geborn, sonder als ein ganz gerechtes und heiliges liebes kind in Christo). The source of the believer’s confidence in this new life before God is the knowledge that Christ bore his sins and endured God’s wrath on account of them by dying on the cross. The suffering believer is thus to console himself with such grace and know that sin, judgment, death, and hell have nothing more to do with him, because Christ, the Lamb of God, carries them (John 1:29) and has overcome and eternally destroyed them in himself. Therefore, the Christian may confidently commend himself to God, his heavenly Father, provided he believes the good news.22 Following this instruction in the care of suffering souls, which includes private absolution, the church ordinance provides a brief form for communicating the sick person. One can see in these instructions on the pastoral care of the sick several of the key themes that we have already encountered in the early evangelical consolation literature, especially the influence of justification by faith on the Protestant understanding of suffering—there is the same decoupling of suffering and salvation. The goal of the church ordinances was to explain these themes in a way that made sense to simple pastors.

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One can also see in these instructions much that was already present in traditional Christianity. A good deal of what Jonas and Crucinger have to say echoes themes already well established in late medieval Christianity: the sovereignty of God over sickness and suffering; the connection between sin and misfortune; the connection between spiritual health and physical health; the salutary aspects of divinely imposed suffering, including the purification of sinful human nature; the belief that suffering was a divine gift that the Christian was to receive humbly and gratefully; and the recourse to private confession and the Eucharist as sources of consolation in the face of sickness and impending death. Other evangelical church ordinances drew on similarly traditional themes in their instructions to pastors on ministering to the sick and suffering. But the authors of the church ordinances did not always mean the same thing as their late medieval forebears when they employed these and other traditional themes. For example, when the framers counseled private confession, they had in mind not the sacrament of penance but the new evangelical version of the practice that Luther valued so highly.23 Evangelical private confession (Beichte) did not require the traditional enumeration of sins and performance of assigned penances—there were no penances of any kind in the new rite, including divinely imposed suffering. Nor was there the traditional concern with assessing degrees of contrition for sin. In the new evangelical rite, an examination of the confessant’s knowledge of the Protestant faith (Glaubensverhör) took the place of the examination of conscience, which now fell largely to confessants to undertake on their own. Once confessants had acknowledged their general sinfulness, they were free to confess or not confess whatever specific sins they had committed. If they felt that they needed help from their pastor in believing that God forgave them a specific sin, they were to mention it, but if they did not require this help, the confession of general sinfulness would suffice. The emphasis of the rite was on instruction and consolation. Confessors set before confessants the divine promises of forgiveness found in Scripture, which confessants were to receive by faith. Like the sacrament of penance, evangelical private confession (eventually) became a mandatory prerequisite to participating in the Lord’s Supper. However, its status as a sacrament remained undecided throughout the Reformation period. This version of private confession was a regular part of the ministry to the sick and dying enjoined by evangelical church ordinances, at least those that looked primarily to Wittenberg for inspiration. This provision

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marks an important difference not only between Lutheran and Catholic cura animarum but also between Lutheran and Reformed pastoral care. While church ordinances from sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Basel could allow private confession on a voluntary basis,24 most Reformed church ordinances in German-speaking Europe did not. (There was a similar concern to restrict use of the Lord’s Supper for fear of a return to the alleged superstitions and abuses of the old faith.) For example, church ordinances from the Electoral Palatinate that were commissioned by the Lutheran ruler Otto Heinrich contain private confession in their treatments of ministry to the sick and dying,25 while ordinances that appeared in the early 1560s under Otto Heinrich’s successor, Friedrich III, a staunch Calvinist who sought to turn the Electoral Palatinate to the Reformed faith, make no mention of the practice.26 Similarly to Lutheran ordinances, the Calvinist guide for worship and belief states that illness and impending death frequently tempt Christians to despair of God’s goodness and that it is therefore important to console such troubled souls with evangelical soteriology. But in the Reformed ordinance, the sick and the suffering are to grasp the divine promises of God’s goodness and grace by faith without the distraction (and assistance) of human rites such as private absolution. Clerical and lay consolers are to offer the sick and dying solace from Scripture and the Heidelberg Catechism, but no one is authorized to declare to them that their sins are forgiven, and no one may offer them tangible confirmation of divine mercy in bread and wine. At least in the ministry of consolation, the Reformed God was believed to work apart from such creaturely means. Another Kirchenordnung that contained an important treatment of the clergy’s ministry to the sick and the dying was the 1540 Brandenburg Church Ordinance. Its principal author was Jacob Stratner (d. 1550), who was the court preacher in Berlin. The ordinance was sent to Wittenberg for comment, where Luther, Melanchthon, and Jonas approved its contents.27 The Brandenburg ordinance adopted Jonas and Cruciger’s section on ministry to the sick and dying and added to it a rather lengthy discussion of how pastors should prepare their parishioners to deal with times of adversity. Drawing on a familiar theme in late medieval ars moriendi literature (which sections like this one were trying to supplant), the ordinance urges pastors to remind the laity of the uncertainty of the hour of death and the ferocity of the devil. Christians must prepare themselves in times of health and peace lest they be overcome in times of adversity and assault. But their preparation takes on a uniquely evangelical character.

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Christians are to be outfitted with “spiritual weapons,” namely, the Word and especially the consoling sayings from Scripture that speak of the grace of Christ, a theme that was already present in the early evangelical consolation literature. Christians are to close up such sayings in their hearts, think of them frequently, and then turn to them for comfort and strength in their hour of need. Believers are also to participate regularly in private confession and the Lord’s Supper.28 According to Stratner, to postpone such preparation for suffering is to risk eternal loss, for he argues that the lessons of the law and the gospel cannot be quickly learned at death’s door and even require considerable effort for the committed Christian and pastor to master.29 This preparation also helped laypeople minister to one another, a theme that recurs in the church ordinance literature, and was similarly present in the late medieval ars moriendi.30 Although the authors of the ordinances were engaged in an effort to provide well-trained clergy for Protestant churches, they realized that the clergy would never be able to respond to every pastoral need; therefore, they regularly made provisions for laypeople to console the sick and dying when necessary. In fact, some church ordinances specifically charge pastors with training laypeople for such situations.31 Stratner includes an interesting and somewhat unusual provision along these lines in his 1540 ordinance. In the absence of a pastor, he authorizes laypeople to recite the words of eucharistic institution, although they are not to consecrate and administer Communion. The sick person is to feed on the Word by faith and thus enjoy the Lord’s Supper spiritually (geistlich geniessen).32 Stratner’s ordinance explicitly promotes the evangelical re-Christianization campaign, seeking to abolish alleged popish idolatry. It prohibits monks from tending to the sick, lest they “lead the people away from Christ and to their superstition” and thus deliver them to the devil.33 The ordinance also reveals something of the spirit in which evangelical pastors were to carry out this campaign with their suffering parishioners. The Berlin preacher writes that when a pastor attends to a Christian who is suffering in body and who is deficient in faith, he is not to approach him and those gathered around him with an obstinate spirit (stürrigem gemüte), as some clergymen do. As Stratner puts it, “this is not the time to frighten, but to console” (denn da ist nicht die zeit des schreckens, sondern tröstens).34 To be sure, the pastor must not overlook sin and should remind the suffering Christian of how seriously God takes human transgression. But

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this is only to prepare the way for grace and thus to ensure that the person does not die in doubt. Nuremberg’s well-known preacher Veit Dietrich (1506–1549) also provided an important treatment of pastoral care for the sick and dying in his church ordinance, the influential 1543 Liturgy Booklet for Pastors in the Countryside.35 Dietrich had especially close ties to Luther, having served as the reformer’s personal secretary in Wittenberg during his years of study at the Leucorea. Dietrich lived in Luther’s home, the former Black Cloister, and provided early transcriptions of the Table Talk (Tischreden), along with an edition of Luther’s Hauspostille after moving to Nuremberg.36 As is true of the Saxon and Brandenburg ordinances, Dietrich’s section on ministering to the sick contains many traditional elements, including the belief that suffering comes from God as a punishment for sin and that spiritual health affects bodily health. He states that the only way to achieve lasting well-being, both in this life and in the next, is to deal with sin. Dietrich reveals a sterner side of the evangelical approach to suffering when he urges pastors to press sick people to confess their sinfulness—though not their specific sins—to them. The pastor is to say, “What do you answer me? Do you acknowledge that you are a poor sinner and have spent your days in both intending and doing much evil against God, his Word, and your own conscience? Does this cause you sorrow in your heart so that you wish you had not done it, and that if God should grant you further life do you resolve not to do it any longer, but to follow God’s Word and will more dutifully?”37 Here the sick person is simply to answer Ja. The discussion of consolation then follows. The pastor is to comfort the afflicted person with the gospel, assuring him that he has a merciful God who has sent his Son to die for his sins. Provided the sick person professes faith in this good news, the ordinance instructs the pastor to absolve him in the name of the triune God. The sinner can now be certain of forgiveness and eternal life and may surrender himself to the hands of God, trusting the divine will, come what may. As we saw in the early evangelical consolation literature and also in Jonas and Cruciger’s ordinance, sickness and death have now taken on new meaning. As Dietrich explains, “if sickness and death follow, they are no longer a sickness owing to sin [sündekrankheit] or a death resulting from wrath [zorntod]; rather, everything is together an encouragement for us to come to that end that Christ merited for us with his suffering and death, that is, eternal life.”38 The pastor is to explain to the sick Christian that God has desired to help his children become surer of these promises

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by confirming them in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The administration of the latter immediately follows in both kinds, and Dietrich uses this occasion to lambaste the papists for depriving sick people of the cup of Christ’s blood, something he sees as essential to consolation and to the church’s obedience to its Lord. Dietrich includes an additional instruction on consoling sick people that he says can be used if time and opportunity permit. It is especially intended for use by “inexperienced pastors” (ungeübten pfarrherr). He again emphasizes God’s mercy in sending his Son to die for sin and then urges pastors to remind the sick that they have prayed every day in the Lord’s Prayer for the will of this merciful God to be done on earth as in heaven. Dietrich anticipates opposition to this latter point. The sick person may protest, “Is it God’s will then that I lie here so miserably sick and suffer such pain? How can he be so unmerciful that he does not help me? It is impossible for me to hold out any longer.”39 The pastor is then to inform the sick person of what God had in mind (im sinn hat) by sending this illness: God wishes to remind the Christian of the Christian’s sinful nature; to hinder sins of the flesh through bodily confinement to bed; to cause the Christian to oppose sin and to call upon God for help and consolation to this end; to move the Christian to earnest, heartfelt prayer; to prevent inordinate love for this life and to promote a longing for heaven; and to avert further punishment, both in this life and in the next Dietrich concedes that it is “frightening to hear” (schröcklich zu hören) that God sends sickness as a punishment for sin, but the Nuremberg preacher does not shrink from this assertion. However, he does urge pastors to explain to sick people that such punishment is “not the punishment of a executioner intended to take away life. . . . It is the punishment of a father, who punishes his child so that it may protect itself from evil in the future and remain in the favor and good graces of the father, and so that the father will not be moved to further wrath and worse punishments.”40 Dietrich readily acknowledges that none of this makes sense to human reason, but he maintains that one should follow the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, not of the flesh. The Spirit teaches that sickness, suffering, and affliction are best for Christians because they prevent them from undergoing suffering and damnation in the next life. As in Jonas and Cruciger’s ordinance, Dietrich avoids the traditional argument that Christians can receive remission of the penalty of sin through the patient endurance of suffering and thus merit heaven. Christ alone provides access to heaven through his work on the cross, the benefits

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of which are to be received through faith—considerations of human merit, including the acquiring of divine merit through good works, have no place in Dietrich’s ordinance. The Nuremberg preacher maintains that God uses suffering to move Christians to daily repentance, prayer, and faith, so that they do not become entrapped in the devil’s snare and fall away from salvation.41 This suffering does not earn heaven but keeps Christians on the path toward heaven and is finally richly rewarded once they reach heaven.42 Suffering and even death are thus to be seen simply as the means through which Christians are set free from their sinful bodies and prepared for eternal life and joy. Armed with the knowledge that suffering produces many good things in a Christian’s life and that its ultimate cause, sin, has been removed in Christ, believers are to receive it obediently and even thankfully. As the framers of the church ordinances sought to encourage this obedience and gratitude, they paid special attention to the internal struggles of conscience that could attend afflictions of the body. The ordinances frequently observe that physical illness can provide occasion for one to dwell on themes of sin, death, and damnation and thus pose a challenge to one’s faith in the goodness, power, and mercy of God. As a matter of highest priority, pastors are instructed to ask sick people if, in addition to their physical maladies, they are suffering from doubt or despair. Johannes Brenz observes in his 1543 Church Ordinance for Schwäbisch Hall, “Although bodily illness is not always fatal and many recover from illness through God’s grace, nevertheless, because of sin, sickness has such a nature that it burdens not only the body, but also the soul, and drives into the conscience the fear of death and eternal damnation.”43 The 1569 Braunschweig and Lüneburg Church Ordinance, authored by Jacob Andreae (1528–1590) and Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586), similarly instructs pastors to “console the sick not only against the pains and weakness of the flesh, but also against all manner of internal assaults of the heart. These two pieces are both necessary when ministering to the sick, so that they may learn to expect good from God and thereby be moved to peace and patience more easily.”44 In such comments, one clearly sees the ultimate concern of Lutheran pastoral care: to provide relief to troubled consciences. This concern was not unique to the Wittenberg Reformation; the late medieval clergy shared it, too, as may be clearly seen in the literature on sacramental confession. In fact, there are direct parallels between the instructions given to late medieval confessors and those provided to evangelical pastors in the

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church ordinances. One striking feature of the sections on ministering to the sick and dying is how they employ language and images from late medieval confession manuals to instruct evangelical clergy in the care of suffering souls. The church ordinances can exhort evangelical pastors to immerse themselves in the Scriptures so they can be like “an understanding doctor” who knows how to apply the appropriate medicine to the appropriate wound.45 This provision echoes the wording of Canon 21 from the Fourth Lateran Council, which, as we have seen, informed and motivated much of the late medieval literature on confession. Given that an important part of the overall evangelical agenda was to reform and expand pastoral care and given that pastoral care was focused especially on sacramental confession in the later Middle Ages, we should not be surprised to find the framers of the church ordinances using similar images for the evangelical version of the care of souls. Both the evangelical pastor and his Catholic counterpart were to be skilled physicians of suffering souls. The difference between the two may be seen in the remedy that each was to offer to troubled consciences. Both sought to console through assurances of divine grace, but whereas the Catholic priest offered sacerdotal absolution that typically required (and allowed) some measure of human response or cooperation for its efficacy, the evangelical pastor offered the promise of unconditional forgiveness in Christ contained in the Word and received by faith alone. (The Catholic priest could also console suffering souls with assurances of saintly intercession, while the evangelical pastor simply offered the prayers of the church militant.) In other words, the remedy that Luther found for his troubled conscience is taken as normative and universally applicable to the suffering faithful.

How to Understand Suffering In addition to the sections in the church ordinances that deal with the practical pastoral care of the sick and dying, there are also more theologically elaborate sections that seek to teach pastors how to think about suffering and its place in the Christian life. Bearing titles such as “Concerning Tribulation” or “Concerning the Cross and Suffering” or “Why Has the Christian Church Been Placed under the Cross?” these stand-alone sections underscore the importance that framers of the church ordinances attached to the proposed “reformation of suffering.” Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) was the first evangelical reformer to include a specific treatment of suffering in a church ordinance; he did so in his enormously

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influential 1528 Instructions for the Visitors.46 One of the most important reformers to adopt Melanchthon’s brief treatment of suffering was Nuremberg’s famous (and infamous) preacher Andreas Osiander (1498–1552), who provided a similar statement about adversity in his 1528 Articles of Doctrine, which he, similarly to Melanchthon, had drawn up for a church visitation.47 Osiander developed this brief outline on suffering in the Christian life into what was arguably the most significant treatment of the topic in the church ordinance literature. The treatment appears in the influential 1533 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance in a section entitled “Concerning the Cross and Suffering.”48 (Johannes Brenz assisted Osiander in writing the church ordinance, but the section on suffering was the work of Osiander alone.)49 The Nuremberg reformer opens the section of the church ordinance on the cross by observing that wherever the gospel is preached and people seek to live accordingly, suffering will follow, because Satan cannot bear either and opposes both with all his might.50 There was nothing new about the idea that Satan opposed the church and caused suffering and persecution, but reformers such as Osiander believed that such demonic activity had greatly increased since Luther’s discovery of the gospel. The devil opposed evangelical Christians with unprecedented fury, because he knew that they alone possessed the weapon that would cause his doom. In light of this heightened demonic resistance, Osiander argues that “it is absolutely necessary for the servants of the Word dutifully to instruct, console, and strengthen their people so that they will be able to know what to do in the midst of suffering and learn to overcome it with patience.”51 Confirming modern scholars’ assertions about the fierce resistance that evangelical pastors could experience when seeking to re-Christianize the common folk, Osiander complains that one hears many blasphemous and superstitious things from those who suffer, especially from “simple peasants” (einfeltigen paursvolck). He writes, “When one tells them that suffering comes from God, they respond, ‘Yeah right! It comes from the devil and not from God’ [Ja wol, es kumbt vom teuffel und nicht von Gott]. When one consoles them, saying that God disciplines those whom he loves [Hebrews 12:6], they respond, ‘Well, then I wish that he did not love me so much’ [Ey, so wolt ich gern, das er mich nicht so lieb hette].”52 And when such people experience adversity or misfortune that they cannot understand, they attribute it to magic and then seek healing and protection from the same, something that, according to Osiander, evokes divine wrath. In order to uproot such “abominations” (greuel) and to produce patience in

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the common folk, Osiander provides a five-point instruction on suffering for pastors to employ when ministering to the laity. His central goal in this instruction is to stamp out idolatry and superstition by emphasizing divine sovereignty and the subsequent need for patience and faith in the midst of adversity. As we have seen in other evangelical church ordinances, the Nuremberg reformer’s five-point instruction is remarkably traditional. It emphasizes the sovereignty of God over all evil forces, whether human or diabolical; the benevolence of God in the midst of suffering; the requirement that Christians take up the cross and follow their Lord in the way of suffering; the importance of the cross in the slaying of the “old Adam”; the presence of Christ in the Christian’s suffering;53 and the educative or pedagogical function that suffering serves in the Christian life—Osiander argues that God uses suffering as “the proper school” (die rechte schul) in which Christians learn a variety of lessons, including the ability to see their sinfulness and God’s goodness. The Nuremberg preacher is especially concerned to emphasize this latter point—the goodness of God—in his treatment of suffering.54 After noting how some Christians learn of their sinfulness in the school of suffering, the Nuremberg reformer writes, “Others, however, learn to recognize in the cross not their sin, which God has already forgiven them and covered; rather, [they learn to recognize] the simple goodness of God toward them.”55 Osiander refers to the story in John 9 of Jesus’s encounter with a man who was blind from birth. (This story was a favorite of medieval and early modern consolers. We have already seen Gregory the Great, Peter Lombard, and Bruder Berthold cite it in their works.) In this story, the disciples ask Jesus, “Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus’s response directly challenges the disciples’— and later, the Pharisees’—simplistic and self-aggrandizing application of retributive justice: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but [this happened] so that the work of God might be revealed in him.” Jesus then proceeds to heal the man, applying a clay made of dirt and his own spittle to the man’s eyes. Osiander’s comment on this gospel story is striking, especially when viewed against the backdrop of currently scholarly fascination with social discipline. He writes, “And suffering of this kind [i.e., the kind intended by God to demonstrate his glory and goodness] comprises the majority and greatest part of the suffering of all Christians, because God has a much greater desire to give, help, and save than we do to ask and call upon Him

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for the same.”56 According to Osiander, the primary reason God either sends or permits suffering—the reformer can say both things57—is to move Christians to call upon him so they can learn firsthand how eager he is to help them.58 The Nuremberg reformer goes on to ask, “Who, then, would not want to be blind for a time if he could experience through his blindness that Christ himself should wonderfully make him healthy with his own hands?”59 Who would not suffer as David or Job did, Osiander asks, if he could know that he would be saved, healed, and vindicated? If only Christians would believe and call upon God, the Nuremberg preacher continues, they could be certain of receiving help. He concludes, “Therefore, the servants of the Word should constantly exhort [the people] to this [perspective] until faith and the practice of calling upon God, which have been so completely extinguished in Christendom, are again established.”60 That Osiander could place such a strong emphasis on the benevolent rather than the punitive nature of divinely imposed suffering is quite significant. His church ordinance was one of the most influential in early modern Germany; it was one of the traditional five “Urkirchenordnungen.” Most of the major Franconian cities, towns, and principalities adopted it, and it stayed in force in certain parts of Franconia well into the eighteenth century. It also influenced church ordinances in Bavaria, Swabia, Württemberg, Hesse, Mecklenburg, Saxony, Saarland, and even Austria. Owing to the 1533 ordinance’s widespread influence, one scholar aptly dubbed it the Stammutter of a whole family of Lutheran church ordinances.61 To the extent that evangelical pastors consulted church ordinances for guidance in pastoral care of the sick and suffering, a not insignificant number of them must have learned this art from Osiander. Those who did so were well equipped to offer assurances of God’s goodness and mercy to those who suffered. Osiander was by no means all consolation; he could also use misfortune to attempt to frighten the common folk by making a direct connection between sin and suffering, something one sees in his plague sermon from the summer of 1533 (X). (His church ordinance was formally adopted in January of the same year.) In the printed version of the homily, he argues that the pestilence is first and foremost a divine punishment for sin and that the only way to avert it is through repentance.62 But this is not what he says in his church ordinance. Osiander could have stressed the connection between sin and suffering, as other authors did, but he chose not to. When presented with the opportunity to issue a general statement to evangelical pastors on the purpose of divinely imposed suffering, Osiander emphasized mercy over

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wrath, consolation over discipline. He sought to re-Christianize through consolation. Osiander endeavored to persuade baptized Christians through their pastors that they should reject all pagan means of coping with suffering, because adversity was a tool that the good God used to accomplish good things in their lives—they simply needed the eyes of faith to see things this way, which is what Osiander was trying to provide.63 This emphasis on the humane side of evangelical pastoral care should be given more than passing lip service, as is currently the case in much of the scholarly literature.64 Osiander makes an additional point in his treatment of suffering that also deserves our attention. He argues that suffering can take a number of forms in the Christian life; it need not be limited to actual persecution for being Christian. Similar to what we saw in the early evangelical consolation literature, here Osiander argues against the perceived tendency among Anabaptists of making persecution a necessary mark of a true Christian and therefore insisting that it is the only valid form of Christian suffering.65 Osiander seeks to champion the expansive definition of suffering that Christendom had accepted for centuries. He argues, “It is not in our power to choose the cross we want. Rather, each one of us must bear the cross God lays upon us and determines is appropriate for us.”66 The Nuremberg preacher also observes that John the Evangelist, whom Christ especially loved, did not suffer martyrdom but died a natural death. Other evangelical church ordinances argue for the same expansive definition of Christian suffering against alleged Anabaptist restrictiveness.67 This argument became a commonplace in the evangelical pastoral literature as it sought to draw a strict line between Lutheran and Anabaptist approaches to suffering.68 This literature also drew a clear line between Lutheran and Catholic approaches. While Osiander’s treatment of suffering is rather traditional, it does contain one important omission that separates it from similar Catholic treatments: it does not present suffering as a penance for sin. It was this omission that caught the attention of Johannes Eck, who published a refutation of the Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance entitled A Scripture-Based Christian Instruction against the Presumptuous Authors and Posers of the Alleged New Church Ordinance (1533).69 In his comment on the section that deals with suffering, Eck says that he agrees with Osiander’s statement that a Christian must take up the cross and follow Christ, but he argues that this injunction loses its meaning when made by the Nuremberg preacher, because he excludes the possibility that suffering can render satisfaction for the penalty of sin. (Osiander makes this

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argument elsewhere in the church ordinance, basing his position on the full sufficiency of Christ’s Atonement and the utter bondage of the human will to sin.)70 Where Osiander teaches that Christians do not need to suffer in order to merit salvation because Christ has already suffered for them, Eck advises just the opposite: “Christ has suffered, therefore we should also suffer, so that through [our suffering] we might become partakers of the suffering and merit of Christ. Just as he taught: we should not only endure patiently what God sends us, rather we should also take up self-imposed crosses, that is, works of satisfaction, and follow after him; Scripture is full of this.”71 Osiander believed that Scripture contained none of this. As we saw in the early evangelical consolation literature, the rejection of suffering as a means of penance continued to be one of the clearest dividing lines between Protestant and Catholic approaches to adversity. Protestants reiterated this difference time and again, as did Catholics: both the canons of the Council of Trent and the Roman Catechism insist that suffering can function as a penance for sin, and Trent anathematizes those who disagree.72 Behind this important division lay the more foundational differences between Catholic and Lutheran soteriology. The 1542 Calenberg-Göttingen Church Ordinance contains an interesting treatment of these differences in its discussion of suffering, which is simply entitled “Concerning the Cross.” The author, Anton Corvinus (1501–1553), played an important role in the reformation of churches in northern Germany, writing several influential postils and composing a number of significant church ordinances. In an extended reflection on cross bearing in the Christian life, Corvinus seeks to explain the connection between suffering and salvation. He quotes Matthew 5:10–12: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you on my account and persecute you and falsely speak all manner of evil against you. Be joyful and take delight, because you will be well rewarded in heaven.” Corvinus applies these verses to Christian suffering but is anxious to define in exactly what sense endurance of adversity merits eternal life. As in other evangelical church ordinances, here Corvinus allows justification by faith to shape his understanding of suffering, along with his exegesis of Scripture. He writes: One must mark well here that God does not reward [the endurance of ] distress with eternal life because we have suffered it and bear it with patience, but because he has promised and pledged it to us.

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Such patience is not our work, but God’s, which he effects in us by his Spirit, as one sees in Galatians 5 [:22]. If patience is now his work, and if he crowns in us his own work on account of his promise, and rewards it with eternal life, then we have not earned it and it remains in all respects true, that one is saved through faith by grace and not through one’s own works [Ephesians 2:8].73 Patience in suffering might merit eternal life, but according to Corvinus, the agent in the meriting is God via the Spirit, not the Christian, and so there is no question of the Christian earning heaven. And patience only receives a reward because of the divine promise attached to it. As we have seen throughout, evangelical reformers would allow for suffering to play a necessary role in the sanctification of the Christian, and in this qualified sense, one can refer to cross bearing as being redemptive for early modern Protestants. But reformers would never allow suffering to merit heaven in the late medieval sense of atoning for sin; the evangelical Christian was not to view suffering as an opportunity to endure the temporal punishment for sin in this life and thereby to reduce one’s suffering in the next. Salvation was an exclusive gift of grace; suffering simply enabled one to retain and grow in this grace, not earn it. Justification by faith cast suffering in a new light, supplied it with a new meaning. The final substantial treatment of suffering in the church ordinance literature that we should consider is Johannes Aurifaber’s (1517–1568) 1552 Church Ordinance for Mecklenburg, which took over in full Melanchthon’s discussion of adversity in his influential Examination for Ordinands (1552).74 Aurifaber had been dean of the arts faculty at the University of Wittenberg. He was serving as a professor of theology and pastor in Rostock when he authored his church ordinance, which was adopted in Wittenberg in 1559.75 Similar to Osiander’s, Melanchthon’s primary goal in his treatment of “Why the Christian Church Has Been Placed under the Cross” is to dissuade Christians from recourse to “heathen” means of coping with suffering. He believes that such approaches have a deep attraction for the laity and therefore exhorts evangelical pastors to oppose them at every turn. He writes, “The appearance that God’s people are subject to suffering and misery in the same way that heathen people are . . . causes reason to stumble. Therefore it is highly necessary to instruct the people well so that they know why the church has been placed under the cross.”76 Melanchthon seeks to provide an explanation both for why the church suffers and for how Christians should console themselves in the midst of adversity, so

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that they do not adopt the “heathen” view that no group of people on earth is more special to God than another since all suffer equally. Melanchthon explains that all people are under the penalty of death owing to original sin and that all people suffer divinely imposed bodily afflictions as punishment for actual sins. Here God makes no distinction between Christians and non-Christians but applies the same standard to all. God does this to remind all people that “he is wise and righteous, and has an earnest, true, [and] great wrath against sin.”77 Melanchthon then cites the gospel story of the two criminals who were crucified with Jesus (John 23: 32–43) to illustrate the distinction between the suffering of Christians and that of heathens. The latter are like the criminal who ridiculed Jesus and suffered eternal punishment, while the former are like the criminal who converted and thus felt joy in his heart and the beginnings of eternal life. Melanchthon also maintains that God frequently reduces the temporal punishment of Christians as they, like the converted criminal, call upon him for help in time of need. Melanchthon then proceeds to offer a more specific account of why the church suffers, a topic that was of keen interest to evangelical Christians following the military defeats of the late 1540s. Similar to other church ordinances, the reasons Melanchthon provides are quite traditional. However, Melanchthon’s ordering of these reasons is different from that in other ordinances, especially Osiander’s. Melanchthon insists that the primary reason God sends suffering to Christians is so that “the sinful nature may be broken,” not to reveal the goodness of God.78 Similarly to late medieval penitential literature, evangelical guides for pastoral care could alternately emphasize divine justice or divine mercy, discipline or consolation, depending on the theological convictions and temperament of the author, along with his assessment of his audience’s spiritual condition and most pressing needs. Melanchthon’s treatment of consolation follows. He continues his antiheathen polemic by insisting that suffering comes from God, it is not the result of blind chance, and therefore Christians should submit themselves to it, because it serves their ultimate spiritual good by causing them to yearn for forgiveness of sin, which is grasped by faith. Melanchthon then repeats his earlier statement that God hears the prayers of those who call upon him for deliverance from their distress and can even remove or reduce the temporal punishment for sin. He writes, “as we now receive forgiveness of sin, faith should be more and more strengthened, and it should confidently conclude that God will hear you favorably and be near

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you and strengthen you. And this hope should shine forth [leuchten], [namely,] that God will reduce misery in this life or completely take it away. And even if you are not completely set free in this life, you are still an heir of eternal salvation.”79 God is free not to provide the requested healing, and it is clear from Melanchthon’s comments that the Christian’s ultimate hope is for a final deliverance from sin and punishment in heaven. In the meantime, the Christian is to take great solace from the fact that the Son of God took on human flesh precisely to offer help to those in distress: Christ is the Christian’s “Immanuel,” who bears the Christian’s punishment and preserves the Christian’s weak nature via the Incarnation.80 Similarly to what we saw in the early evangelical consolation literature, Melanchthon’s comments on the possibility of divine healing point to a tension in the evangelical approach to suffering. The framers of the church ordinances believed that God would save those who called upon him in time of need, as the oft-quoted verse from Psalm 50:15 promises, but, as in the late medieval ars moriendi tradition, they were generally hesitant to guarantee immediate divine healing for those who followed their prescriptions for dealing with suffering.81 The authors were seeking to deliver their contemporaries from a mentality that desired healing in exchange for services rendered, and thus, providing an evangelical version of the same dout-des approach to religion was at cross-purposes with the authors’ larger goal. The authors were also trying to liberate their contemporaries from a piety that sought divine healing through material means, something that had no basis in Scripture, at least in the framers’ minds; the tradition of anointing the sick with consecrated oil is consistently rejected in the church ordinances because it is held to rest on faulty exegesis of James 5:13–16.82 Still, as we have seen in Aurifaber’s ordinance, the framers do encourage evangelical Christians to pray for healing, and they can even state that those who do so in true faith can expect their prayers to be heard favorably. Osiander goes so far as to claim that the miracles of the apostolic age can take place again in his own time if evangelical Christians will return to faithful prayer.83 Few evangelical church ordinances make similar assertions.

Conclusion As a matter of highest priority, the authors of evangelical church ordinances sought to educate the common clergy in the Protestant approach to suffering, especially the way it redefined the relationship between suffering and salvation. The authors expected common pastors to understand this

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approach and to employ it as they ministered to suffering Christians through both word and rite. The authors of the church ordinances viewed this massive educational effort as being essential to the survival and spread of the evangelical movement. In many ways, suffering was the most important battlefield for the reformers and their movement—and they knew it. The reformers instructed pastors to strip their parishioners of all “pagan” and “quasi-pagan” means of understanding and coping with adversity. There was to be no recourse to magic, cunning folk, saints, relics, pilgrimages, penances, and the like. As they suffered, evangelical Christians were to rely exclusively on faith in the promises of God’s goodness, proclaimed to them in sermons and absolution and attested in the Lord’s Supper. Framers of the church ordinances placed a premium on God’s goodness and sovereignty; they sought to re-Christianize through consolation, not just through discipline. God had to be good, because now there was no other source of supernatural intercession or help in the universe.84 This was the way God wanted things, at least according to the evangelical point of view. Whether and how the church ordinances influenced actual pastoral care and lay religious life are questions that the church ordinances themselves cannot answer. This literature provides the ideal type; it does not record real experience, even if it seeks to anticipate and respond to it.

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Later Evangelical Consolation Literature I the treatments of suffering in the evangelical church ordinances provided pastors with a valuable (and required) resource for ministering to members of their flocks who were afflicted in body or soul. However, despite their importance, church ordinances remained one resource among many for communicating an evangelical view of suffering and consolation to the common clergy and through them to the common folk. Even as evangelical theologians authored church ordinances, they and their colleagues continued to prepare works of consolation for both clerical and lay use. In time, the book market became flooded with such works, a fact that is attested by the authors’ frequent attempts to justify the publication of new treatments of consolation. In the late 1550s, one author argued that there was always a need for additional Trostschriften because afflicted human hearts “could never have enough consolation.”1 This pastoral concern, coupled with the effort on the part of evangelical rulers and theologians to persuade the masses to suffer according to their doctrine alone, helps to account for the abundance of this literature in the sixteenth century, as does the simple fact that suffering remained so much a part of human life. As in the early evangelical consolation literature, many of the works of consolation that appeared after the period of Wildwuchs (wild growth) were written in response to either a real or a perceived crisis: the death of a friend or loved one; an outbreak of plague or other disease; threats to the existence of the evangelical movement (e.g., the Schmalkaldic War of 1547 and the Augsburg Interim of 1548); Turkish aggression; and, especially in the latter part of the sixteenth century, various signs and wonders in the natural order that were held to betoken impending doom and destruction. As was also true of the early evangelical consolation literature, most of these works appeared in just a few editions and likely had only a minimal

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impact on the pastoral care and lay piety of the early modern period. Others, however, were very popular, going through many editions, and may well have had an important influence on the care of souls and popular devotion of this period. The latter group includes works such as Andreas Osiander’s Plague Sermon (1533, X); Friedrich Myconius’s (1490– 1546) How One Should Instruct the Simple and Especially the Sick in Christendom (1539, XI); Johannes Bugenhagen’s Concerning the Current Preparations for War (1546, XVII); Johannes Spangenberg’s A New Consolation Booklet for the Sick (1548, XXII);2 Erasmus Sarcerius’s Cross-Booklet (1549, IX); Hieronymus Weller’s Antidote or Spiritual Medicine for Christians Who Have Affliction and Spiritual Distress (1554, X);3and Christoph Vischer’s Consolation Writing (1569, X). Pastoral manuals, catechisms, hymnals, prayer books, devotionals, and postils also contained important treatments of suffering and consolation. One immediately thinks of Johannes Habermann’s (1516–1590) widely popular Prayer-Booklet (1597, LIX)4 or Johannes Spangenberg’s On the Christian Knight (1541, XXIX), along with postils by Casper Huberinus (1545, XV), Simon Muesel (Musaeus) (1567, VIII), Simon Pauli (1567, XII), and Habermann (1583, XV), to name but a few.5 “Radicals” such as Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489–1561) also produced works of devotion and consolation that continued to oppose the alleged inadequacies in magisterial Protestant treatments of suffering.6 A collection of Schwenckfeld’s consolation writings appeared in the late 1530s and went through eight editions,7 and his German Passional (1539) is extant in nine editions.8 While authors of evangelical pastoral and devotional literature developed new and interesting ways of communicating the Wittenberg view of suffering to pastors and laypeople—and here we are primarily concerned with the Wittenberg view of things—they had little that was new to say about the evangelical approach to suffering itself. These works contain little if any theological innovation. The explanations and remedies for adversity in the Christian life that we have seen in the mature Luther, the early (pro-Luther) evangelical consolation literature, and the Lutheran church ordinances may also be found in later Lutheran pastoral and consolatory works. The theology of the cross is less evident in these sources than in earlier ones, but there are still references to God being hidden under suffering and accessible only to the eye of faith; that is, there are still examples of a cruciform view of reality in this literature.9 The Lutheran Reformation experienced any number of theological debates and developments after the appearance of the Augsburg Confession

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(1530) but not in its theology of suffering. Nevertheless, there were some important nontheological innovations in the literature of consolation that deserve our attention, and the Wittenberg theology of suffering also became more sharply differentiated in these works as its advocates continued to seek to define their approach to adversity over against Catholic, Reformed, and Radical approaches. As we will see, suffering became increasingly confessionalized as the sixteenth century wore on.

Nontheological Innovations and Aspects One weakness of the treatments of suffering found in Lutheran church ordinances is that they were intended to provide general instruction about general cases of suffering; it was not possible for them to address each and every form of affliction. It seems clear enough from the ongoing publication of consolation literature in the sixteenth century that a significant number of theologians and pastors perceived this weakness. No one sought to supplant the church ordinances, but many endeavored to supplement their treatments of suffering by providing additional works of instruction and consolation that were more detailed, specific, and comprehensive in nature. One of the important developments in the Lutheran consolation literature of the 1530s and beyond was a dramatic increase in the number of topics that it covered. The authors attempted to address as many different kinds of suffering as possible and to provide as many explanations as possible for why Christians experience misfortune. Similarly to Johannes von Dambach in the fourteenth century, Lutheran consolers endeavored to apply a Christian theology of suffering to every imaginable form of adversity in hopes of further Christianizing the way their contemporaries understood and coped with afflictions of body and soul. Lutheran theologians and pastors wanted to render suffering theologically and existentially plausible to their contemporaries so that they would seek consolation from Lutheran sources alone. They wanted to control the way people suffered, for they believed that a great deal was at stake: the salvation of souls, the well-being of the temporal order (along with their place in it), and the survival of their movement, especially amid growing apocalyptic fears.10 Of course, the crucial difference between Dambach and the sixteenth-century Lutheran consolers is that they thought that his approach to suffering was not sufficiently Christian; theirs was an effort at both Christianization and re-Christianization.

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A number of works illustrate this drive toward comprehensiveness. In 1549, the former palace preacher and superintendent of the county of Nassau-Dillenburg, Erasmus Sarcerius (1501–1559),11 published his Cross-Booklet, in which he provided twenty-four reasons to explain why true Christians were never without suffering. Sarcerius especially had in mind the suffering caused by the Augsburg Interim. He had recently been deposed from his clerical offices for resisting the reimposition of Catholic worship in the lands belonging to the Count of Nassau-Dillenburg and now found himself separated from his family and living in Annaberg (his hometown). It was here that he preached a series of sermons that were published as the Cross-Booklet. In this work, Sarcerius simply expands on the explanations and remedies for suffering that we have already seen in the early evangelical consolation literature, especially those having to do with suffering and persecution at the hands of alleged idolaters—here Roman Catholics—being “a sure sign that we have the pure doctrine and everything that depends upon it, [namely,] the proper sacraments and use of the same, and also the proper worship.”12 In 1554, the Freiberg (in Saxony) theologian Hieronymus Weller (1499– 1572) sought to provide for simple pastors a very full treatment of the different Anfechtungen that could afflict a Christian.13 Weller had lived with Luther for eight years and tutored his son, Johannes, while pursuing a doctorate in theology at the University of Wittenberg. He received the doctoral degree in 1535 and took up an ecclesiastical post in Freiberg a few years later. Weller’s Antidote or Spiritual Medicine for Christians Who Have Affliction and Spiritual Distress examines nineteen different afflictions and their cures.14 Along with more typical topics such as fear of God’s wrath, weak faith, and fear of death, Weller also addresses themes such as a difficult marriage, misbehaving children, physical handicaps, greed, anger, and the temptation to disobey parents. The closest thing approaching Dambach’s late medieval summa of suffering in terms of scope and length would have to be either Matthias Vogel’s (1519–1591) Consolation- or Medicine-Book for Souls (1571, II)15 or Johannes Pitiscus’s Cross- and Consolation Booklet (1590, I).16 Vogel was a pastor and superintendent in Göppingen,17 while Pitiscus was a deacon and pastor in Guhrau in Schlesien.18 Neither work enjoyed much success, most likely because of their bulk, but they do illustrate the urge that at least some Lutheran theologians felt to be truly exhaustive in their treatment of consolation. Vogel’s work discusses 110 different crosses and their remedies and takes up 410 folio volume pages (modern pagination);

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it is modeled on a doctor’s book of recipes for cures of various afflictions. Pitiscus’s “booklet” is even more fulsome in its treatment of explanations, afflictions, and remedies, filling 697 octavo volume pages (modern pagination). While some Lutheran works of consolation and pastoral care treated as many forms of adversity as possible, others focused on a single form of suffering; the consolation literature became both more comprehensive and more specialized as the sixteenth century wore on. A 1561 work of consolation for pregnant women illustrates this point well. It was entitled A Consoling Instruction: How Pregnant Women Should Console Themselves before and during Birth and How They Should Commend Themselves and Their Little Children to the Loving God through Christ (III). The author of this work was the Kulmbach palace preacher and general superintendent Otto Körber (ca. 1490–1552), and appended to Körber’s contribution is a pamphlet by a chaplain in Bentzel (Schlesien) named Martin Girlich (dates unknown); his pamphlet bears the title One May Instruct and Console a Woman Delivering a Child as Follows.19 Körber seeks to assure his readers that God is present though hidden during birth—he himself is the midwife (jha selbs gar Hebamme sey)—and he is greatly pleased by motherhood and the bearing of children.20 Körber says that the pains of childbirth are a fatherly chastisement (ein genedige Vaters straffe) that disciplines the body on account of sin and thus prevents both body and soul from being damned to hell, where the pains are eternal. This suffering must be borne patiently, with the sure knowledge that God will not test his children beyond what they can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13).21 In his pamphlet, Girlich specifically refers to the bearing of children as a cross that God imposed on sinful humanity in the Garden of Eden. Girlich says that humanity’s parents deserved to suffer eternally for their transgression, but God had mercy on them and gave them each a temporal cross to bear. The pains of childbirth are not a form of penance, according to the Bentzel chaplain; rather, they are a reminder to humanity of its despicable nature (verruckten natur) and of the fact that God is the enemy of sin, for which Christ alone has atoned.22 Similarly to Körber, Girlich seeks to relativize the suffering of childbearing by comparing it to the eternal suffering of hell; the pains of childbirth are to eternal punishment what a fox’s tail (Fuchsschwantz) is to sharp whips and scorpions or what a small drop of water is to the whole sea.23 Girlich stresses that God uses suffering to drive a woman to the end of her own resources so that she will call upon him in faith. When the

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exhausted mother and those around her have nearly lost hope of divine help and fear that death is imminent for both mother and child, at that moment, God intervenes and brings forth new life and joy.24 There is no theological innovation here, only an attempt to apply the basic insights of the theology of the cross, and especially justification by faith, to a specific form of human suffering. Before we turn to consider how the Wittenberg theology of suffering became increasingly confessionalized over time, it is important to note a final nontheological aspect of the later consolation literature. A number of such works began as private handbooks compiled by clergymen to help them meet the pastoral needs of their flocks. Some pastors obviously felt that the treatment of suffering in the local church ordinance (or in the local postil or catechism) did not suffice, and so they created their own supplements. They knew that the book market was full of other pastoral works,25 but they still felt the need to produce something that corresponded better to their own situation. This is the case with Vogel’s Consolation- or Medicine-Book for Souls—he assembled it on his own and was later urged by others to share it with a wider audience.26 Conrad Porta’s (1541–1585) Pastoral Instruction from Luther (1582, V) began the same way: the Eisleben preacher gathered quotations from numerous works by Luther that he found useful for his pastoral ministry and then shared his collection with his fellow pastors, who urged him to publish it.27 The Oschatz (modern-day Saxony) archdeacon Hieronymus Tanneberg (dates unknown) originally compiled his Consolation Booklet (1599, II) to help himself minister to plague victims, and then, when he observed that it was useful for other pastors, he decided to publish it, first having consulted with certain learned men, who gave their approval.28 Similarly, Felix Bidembach (1564–1612), the palace preacher in Stuttgart, put together a vade mecum to assist himself in his pastoral duties as a young minister and later published it as Manual for the Ministers of the Church (1603, V), having received encouragement from fellow pastors to do so.29 While there continued to be Lutheran pastors who either could not or would not provide adequate pastoral care to their flocks, a fact readily acknowledged in the consolation literature,30 at least a portion of the Lutheran clergy (and not just the leading lights) were quite dedicated to their vocation. They displayed an impressive degree of creativity and resourcefulness as they sought to equip themselves for the considerable demands of pastoral care in early modern Germany.31

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The Confessionalization of Suffering As was true of nearly every aspect of culture and human experience in early modern Germany, suffering became confessionalized. As the sixteenth century wore on, Lutheran pastors, theologians, and rulers became ever more concerned to define and enforce the Wittenberg doctrine of suffering vis-à-vis other doctrines as part of their larger effort to establish a distinctive confessional identity in the common folk and thus to ensure the salvation of souls. The sheer number of extant works of consolation bears eloquent testimony to how much importance society’s religious leaders attached to the continued promotion of the reformation of suffering that had begun in the early years of the evangelical movement. This reformation of suffering, in turn, played an extremely important role in the confessionalization of early modern Germany, something that scholars have largely overlooked. In many ways, the most distinctive or differentiating mark of each of the competing Christian confessions was how its adherents suffered, or at least how they were expected to suffer. These expectations became all the clearer as the sixteenth century progressed. In the midst of this century’s growing confessional pressure, a number of important themes in the Wittenberg doctrine of suffering emerged in bold relief.

The Primacy of Inward Suffering and the Importance of Lay Consolation There is widespread agreement in the Lutheran consolation literature that internal spiritual trials are more difficult to bear than external bodily afflictions. Caspar Huberinus makes this point in his frequently published Concerning the Christian Knight (1545, XII), where he differentiates not only between external and internal Anfechtungen but also between the internal assaults that lead to despair of divine comfort and those that cause one to doubt the existence of God himself, the “highest, most difficult, and greatest” (die allerhöhest/schwerest vnd grössest) temptation of all.32 Erasmus Sarcerius says much the same thing in his Cross-Booklet, where he asserts that internal assaults are far more difficult to endure than external afflictions.33 Matthias Vogel states in his Consolation- or Medicine-Book for Souls that the most difficult cross to bear is a troubled conscience, a statement that one can also find in the Dresden preacher Peter Glaser’s (1528–1583) Cross-Booklet (1587, VIII)34 and in Hieronymus Weller’s Book of Job (1563,

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V).35 One even finds such statements in Matthias Flacius’s (1520–1575) A Spiritual Consolation for This Dejected Church of Christ in Magdeburg (1551, II), which was directed to Lutheran Christians living in a city besieged by imperial forces. Similarly to Caspar Huberinus, the erstwhile Wittenberg professor of Hebrew maintains that diabolical assaults of conscience that deprive the Christian of divine consolation and of God himself are the most bitter form of suffering that a Christian can experience.36 Late medieval mystics had also emphasized the great difficulty of bearing internal suffering, but for them, such affliction usually took the form of divine dereliction in which they ceased to experienced God’s love and presence; for Lutherans, internal affliction had more to do with loss of confidence in the forgiveness of sin. The dread, despair, and pain of a conscience that could find no peace, that is, no assurance of divine absolution, were held to be more difficult to endure than any external cross, for when God seemed to be against the sinner, or worse yet, when the suffering Christian feared that God was not even there, then all was lost, because God himself was lost, and life without God, at least without the gracious God, was deemed unbearable. This is why forgiveness of sin was held to be so important: it was seen as the most important kind of consolation for the most difficult form of suffering, spiritual despair. As the Nuremberg preacher Veit Dietrich explains in How Christians Should Console Themselves during Times of Persecution (1548, VI), as long as believers have assurance of forgiveness through the Word, they can bear any external cross, no matter how heavy. Such assurance “transforms the desert into a paradise” (Das ist auß der wu[e]sten ein lustgarten machen),37 even the desert brought about by the defeat of Protestant forces in the Schmalkaldic War and the subsequent imposition of the Augsburg Interim, which were the immediate occasions for Dietrich’s pamphlet. The Nuremberg preacher argues that Christians can know in the midst of external adversity that they are forgiven and therefore that their suffering does not come from the wrath of God. Dietrich views this knowledge as the key to a peaceful conscience and thus to the ability to suffer well. We have seen Luther make the same argument in For the Investigating of Truth and the Consoling of Fearful Consciences. We have also seen the church ordinances make this argument as they urged pastors to attend to the internal spiritual trials that they assumed would accompany external afflictions of the body. As in the church ordinances, Luther’s spiritual experience of a troubled conscience set free by the evangelical gospel continues to be taken as normative in the later Lutheran consolation literature.

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Ideally, the consolation for the troubled conscience would come from a pastor via private absolution. But as we saw in the church ordinances, Lutheran consolers realized that this was not always possible, and therefore they attempted to equip laypeople to console one another and themselves when necessary. Lay absolution played an important role in this lay ministry, but it was not the only form of consolation that laypeople were to offer one another; they were instructed to bear the Word to one another through song, story, and words of solace. In these provisions for a lay ministry of consolation, one sees the strongly communal dimension of the Christianity envisioned in the Lutheran consolation literature. Although authors frequently discuss the individual Christian’s experience of suffering, and in many ways wish to enhance their readers’ (and hearers’) sense of being individuals by stressing the solitary nature of death and the Last Judgment, they also exhort Christians to share in the suffering of others and to allow others to share in theirs.38 One of the common explanations given for why God sends affliction—and this explanation predates the Protestant Reformation—is that through it, the Christian learns to have compassion for others who are suffering. Michael Bock (dates unknown) makes this point in his frequently printed Little Garden of Spices for Sick Souls (1562, XX): those who have suffered know firsthand “how it goes with the heart of a poor distressed person,” and therefore they can have compassion for him and be patient with him.39 Lutheran consolers looked to the Christian community to play a crucial role in supporting the sick and suffering in their midst. Similarly to Luther, the Schmalkalden superintendent Christoph Vischer (before 1540–1597/1600) argues in his Consolation Writing that suffering Christians must not be left alone; rather, they must always seek out community. Vischer provides an important theological justification for this advice: “The Holy Spirit works consolation, peace, and joy wonderfully in us through the voice of Christians.”40 Lay Christians were to become spiritual knights who knew how to defend themselves and their companions against various spiritual foes. Lutheran consolers such as Caspar Huberinus borrowed the traditional image of the knight from the Christian devotional tradition and sought to emphasize with it the importance of disciplined self-preparation for spiritual battle.41 The general superintendent of the County of Mansfeld, Johannes Spangenberg (1484–1550), also employed the traditional image in his popular On the Christian Knight42 and again in another work, The Booklet of Comfort for the Sick (1542, XVI), which was frequently printed with On the Christian Knight. In The Booklet of Comfort

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for the Sick, Spangenberg argues that one must prepare oneself for death and other forms of suffering by trying to “impress [einbilden] some comforting passages from Scripture and the gospel on your memory, passages to use against all temptations. Collect them as provisions [ for the journey] and always carry them with you in your heart, just as a soldier carries his arrows in the quiver and has them ready to use whenever he needs them.”43 Spangenberg goes on to provide a number of such passages from Scripture. We have already seen both Johannes Briesmann and Urbanus Rhegius make similar arguments without recourse to martial imagery in their works of consolation from the early years of the evangelical movement. Johann Anselm Steiger has maintained that one of the hallmarks of the Lutheran care of souls in the early modern period was precisely this emphasis on the duty to prepare oneself for difficult times through sustained meditation on Scripture. The clergy sought to teach laypeople to become their own pastors by providing them with the “spiritual weapons” they would need for their inevitable duels with adversity.44 Steiger links this emphasis on spiritual self-care with the stress on physical self-care in the medical literature of the period; doctors of souls and doctors of bodies both urged their patients to become their own physicians.45 As we have seen, this emphasis on spiritual self-care predates the Protestant Reformation—it is present in the late medieval ars moriendi literature—but it clearly received new impetus from the evangelical movement through doctrines such as the priesthood of all believers and the rejection of the cult of the saints: this-worldly saints had to take over some of the functions attributed to heavenly saints in Catholicism. One also sees this new stress on spiritual self-care in the Lutheran treatment of private confession: laypeople were instructed to become their own (and one another’s) confessors; they were still to seek absolution from their pastors but only for those sins that continued to burden their consciences and for which they could not access divine forgiveness on their own.46 This is precisely the kind of spiritual self-reliance that one sees emphasized again and again in the consolation literature of the period. It is an important (and perhaps rare) example of how the early modern Lutheran clergy could relinquish control over the spiritual lives of their flocks and actually seek to legitimize and enlarge a sphere of lay spiritual activity. The clergy still sought to supervise this sphere but also did much to ensure its existence. (See chapter 10 below for an examination of lay responses to the clerical emphasis on lay consolation.)

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Penance and Purgatory The confessionalization of suffering is especially evident in Lutheran consolers’ comments on the soteriological status of suffering. In keeping with Luther, the early evangelical consolation literature, and the Lutheran church ordinances, the later Lutheran pastoral and consolation literature insisted that suffering was not a penance for sin.47 Lutheran consolers could borrow concepts or distinctions from traditional penitential theology, but they always rejected the attendant beliefs in penance and purgatory. We have already seen Georg Körber employ the traditional distinction between the temporal and eternal penalty for sin in his work of consolation for pregnant women. He did so when seeking to urge his readers to embrace suffering in this life so they could avoid it in the next. But Körber did not have purgatory in mind when he spoke of postmortem suffering; he was thinking of hell. The sources are unanimous in maintaining that purgatory does not exist; there is no possibility of postmortem repentance for sin.48 Reflecting on Christ’s statement to the penitent thief on the cross—“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43)—the influential Lutheran theologian Jacob Andreae (1528-1590) argues in his Passion Booklet (1577, IV): Christ did not say [to the penitent thief ], “You have been an evil rogue, therefore you cannot immediately go to heaven simply by what you have confessed with your mouth; you must first be purified from your great sins in purgatory through torment and torture, because you were a murderer and strangled many innocent people.” Rather, he says, “Today, today, today [Heut/heut/heut] you shall be with me in paradise,” that is, “When I am in my Father’s Kingdom all Christians should know that if they are repentant and believe on Christ, they do not have to fear any purgatory when they depart from this world,” instead, as Christ says, they will break through death into eternal life. For Christ is our only purgatory [Denn Christus ist vnser einiges Fegfewr] who cleanses and purifies us from all our sins, as it is written, “The blood of Christ purifies us from all, all, all [allen/allen/allen] of our sins.”49 Lutheran consolers emphasized that Christians had no need of purgatory because they were made perfect by God—that is, fully purified from sin— via imputation in this life and then in reality in the next life by a gracious act of God.50

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But as we have seen in our discussion of Wittenberg-inspired pastoral and consolatory sources, Lutheran theologians still thought that suffering was good and necessary, and they were still interested in the gradual purification of believers in this life. These themes may also be found in the Lutheran consolation literature of the 1530s and beyond. The Nördlingen preacher Caspar Kantz (ca. 1483–1544) observes in his How One Should Exhort, Console, and Commend to God Sick and Dying People (1539, VI) that Christ’s Passion has made all suffering holy; therefore, Christians must embrace and value it.51 In a work of consolation addressed to persecuted Lutherans in Hannover (1536, I), Urbanus Rhegius makes suffering one of the necessary eight steps that lead to heaven.52 The Halle (in Saxony) preacher Georg Walther (d. 1580) can even say in his Consolation Booklet (1565, III) that those who refuse to bear their crosses patiently will not enter heaven.53 Lutheran consolers argued that Christians were obliged to participate in the this-worldly purgatory that God had prepared for them so that they could be purified from sin and thus remain on the way to heaven.54 However, these consolers posited no essential connection between the purifying effects of suffering in this life and the final instantaneous purification that was to take place in the next life. There is no suggestion in their works that this-worldly suffering and the purification that it accomplished in any way contributed to the final purification from sin that was to take place in the next life. Presumably, one who experienced much purification in this life would require less in the next, but the sources do not address this issue. Lutheran consolers were not thinking in terms of continuity between purification from sin in this life and the next, because allowing such a connection would have raised the specter of works-righteousness for them. This-worldly suffering was for this-worldly purification only. One suffered patiently and faithfully because this was simply the nature of the Christian life. Although God had forgiven the full debt and penalty of sin in Christ once and for all, the Christian still suffered temporally because God allowed the devil some free rein and because sin continued to be present in the world and in the Christian’s own flesh. Christians also suffered because God remained just and could not let sin go unpunished in this life.55 The Christian knight had to engage in daily battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil (and in a sense, against God himself, at least the hidden God),56 because these forces remained powerful and also because God desired growth in righteousness. But the Christian engaged

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in this battle not in order to merit salvation or to reduce the pain of final salvation; the Christian did so simply to remain in salvation. Bearing one’s cross kept one safely on one’s way to heaven; this was finally the goal of all of the exhortations to suffer well that are contained in the Lutheran consolation literature. How exactly could refusing to suffer patiently cause one to lose salvation, especially if this salvation was a gift from the sovereign and generous God to spiritually impotent human beings? And how exactly could this refusing even take place? The consolation sources do not address these questions directly, even though they consistently mention the possibility of forfeiting heaven. As we have just seen, the forces arrayed against the Christian were deemed to be very powerful, but as the Lutheran consolers emphasized again and again, God was more powerful. It is therefore difficult to imagine how sin, the world, or even the devil could seize the Christian from God’s hand without consent from either God or the Christian. God would not let go of the Christian, on this the consolers were unanimous, so the only option left is that the Christian could let go of God; the Christian could give in to the constant temptation to reject God posed by sin, the world, and the devil. But where did this locus of human agency lie according to the consolers? What part of the Christian was able to choose whether to resist sin or yield to it? Surely not the old Adam (or old Eve), who was in utter bondage to sin. Perhaps, then, it was the new Adam (or new Eve); perhaps the new person was the target audience for the Lutheran consolers’ admonitions to bear suffering patiently, for perhaps the new person could either choose not to do so or, more likely, through lack of vigilance, fall prey to the old person.57 There is evidence for this explanation in the relevant sources. The Kassel superintendent Johannes Kymaeus (1498–1552) asserts in his Passion-Booklet (1539, IV) that God creates a new life and a new free will in the Christian via the Holy Spirit after the believer is made righteous by Christ. Perhaps the Christian could use this free will to shun suffering and thus to turn away from God. Kymaeus does not mention this possibility and probably would have rejected it. For him, “free” entailed not the ability to decide between two options without coercion; that is, it did not mean that the justified Christian enjoyed a kind of moral autonomy. Rather, it meant the ability to choose and follow the good, something that was not possible for the enslaved will of the old Adam and something that was only possible for the Christian through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.58

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And yet Lutheran pastors and theologians preached, exhorted, instructed, and consoled as if Christians had some necessary role to play in remaining on the road to heaven, though certainly not in entering upon this road in the first place. Kymaeus can even speak of Christians meriting rewards in the next life through good works in this life.59 This human role was rather minimal, but the Lutheran consolation literature still accorded to the Christian a measure of spiritual agency that it denied the sinful human being. The Word and the Holy Spirit were the primary agents but not the only agents. Bruce Gordon has observed a surprising emphasis on human agency in Zwinglian consolation literature, especially in the writings of Heinrich Bullinger;60 the same emphasis may be found in Lutheran consolation literature.61 Justified Christians were obliged to bear their suffering patiently if they wished to remain in the narrow way of salvation; at the very least, they needed to confess their reluctance to do so and ask for divine help. It may be that Lutheran consolers saw their exhortations to patient cross bearing as the equivalent of the preaching of the law—their intention was to present their contemporaries with a clear account of God’s expectations of them and then to show them how they could not possibly fulfill these expectations on their own; God had to do so in them via the Word and the Spirit.62 On this account, God could be seen as the sole agent in both bringing people to salvation and keeping them in salvation. Owing to the strength of indwelling sin, perhaps Lutheran consolers never really expected their contemporaries to be able to heed their admonitions to suffer well. They expected them to confess that they could not and then to look to God to help them begin to do so, however imperfectly, in this life. This explanation has some justification in the sources,63 but it does not finally make sense of the overall impression that one gets from these sources, namely, that Christians really did have to suffer patiently and that if they did not, they could forfeit eternal life. Lutheran consolers appear to have assumed some minimal degree of human agency in their exhortations to patient cross bearing. It would be much too strong to speak of a re-Catholicization of Lutheran pastoral theology, for there is no sense of merit in the sources, no sense that the authors viewed salvation as a reward for growth in divinely infused habits of virtue. There is simply provision made for a limited human role in keeping the believer in the narrow way of salvation, and this provision appears in the writings of all members of the Wittenberg circle, regardless of their fierce disagreements about the place of the human will in salvation. As Robert Kolb explains:

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Gnesio-Lutherans and Philippists shared the conviction that the Holy Spirit supports the converted will in its remaining faithful to God in faith and life but that it is also possible for believers to abandon their faith and their God. This position flowed naturally from the Wittenberg understanding that the whole life of the believer is a life of repentance and the distinction of law and gospel behind it.64 Kolb does not explain exactly how such a fall from faith could take place and would most likely wish to emphasize that questions involving divine and human agency inevitably lead to invocations of indissoluble tensions and paradoxes in Wittenberg theology along with assertions of the fundamentally mysterious nature of sin and evil.65 Mindful of this fact, I still wish to propose that the new Adam (or Eve) could have served as the locus of human agency that is assumed in the Lutheran consolation literature. It is admittedly difficult to conceive of the new person turning away (or being turned away) from Christ—indeed, according to Luther, the new person has no existence apart from a vital union with Christ66—but there seems to be no other possibility for finding an actual source of agency in the Christian according to Lutheran lights. If there is anything to this hypothesis, then we would be confronted with an interesting partial convergence between Protestant theology and Roman Catholic theology, at least in the consolation literature. One could then speak of early modern confessionalization containing not only impulses toward theological divergence but also impulses, however weak, toward theological convergence. While Wittenberg theologians rejected notions of human cooperation in conversion or initial justification, they did allow for limited Spirit-enabled cooperation in sanctification; they rejected Catholic synergism with respect to the beginning of salvation but allowed for something like it with respect to the process of salvation, even as they insisted that this cooperation did not merit heaven. All members of the Wittenberg circle were limited synergists when it came to sanctification, especially in their repeated exhortations to patient and faithful cross bearing.

Miracles Not only did Lutheran consolers seek to differentiate their doctrine of suffering from the Catholic doctrine on issues of penance and purgatory, but they also sought to distance themselves from the traditional view of miracles and their role in consolation. One of the charges that Catholic

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theologians leveled at Lutheran pastors and theologians as the sixteenth century wore on was that the latter’s version of Christianity could not be the true version because God had not confirmed it with miracles. God had not intervened in the normal course of things to help, heal, and save the sick and suffering in Lutheran lands; therefore, Lutheran Christianity was false Christianity, its doctrine of suffering both wrong and heretical.67 A corollary of this argument was that Lutherans who suffered in body or soul were far worse off than their Catholic contemporaries, who still experienced miraculous healings, at least now and again. Lutheran pastors and theologians responded to this charge by making several counterarguments, and not just in formal theological treatises; the pastoral and consolatory literature also contains Lutheran rejoinders to this Catholic accusation. Although Lutheran theologians and pastors occasionally asserted that the miracles attested in the New Testament could still take place in the sixteenth century, such statements usually occurred in the context of a clergyman chastising his contemporaries for their lack of faith: if only they had deeper faith, then God would act as he did in the first century.68 The more typical Lutheran view was that the miracles recorded in the New Testament were limited to the first century; their function was to confirm the divine nature of the gospel, and once they had done this, God no longer performed them. Numerous postils make this point.69 The Strasbourg pastor, theologian, and church convent president Johannes Marbach (1521–1581)70 sought to use the lack of New Testament miracles among Lutherans—a fact he readily acknowledged—as a proof of their right belief. In his On Miracles and Wondrous Signs (1571, I), Marbach argues that precisely because the Lutheran gospel is not a new gospel but simply a recovery of the original gospel, it does not need to be confirmed by first-century-like miracles, for God only performs such miracles to signal new developments in salvation history.71 (Luther had made the same argument in a 1522 sermon.)72 And what of Catholic miracles? In keeping with an argument that began with Luther and was oft repeated in the sixteenth century, Marbach insists that they are works of demons.73 The Strasbourg theologian also repeats another argument that had become standard fare among Wittenberg evangelicals by the early 1570s: while God has not performed New Testament miracles among them, God has provided other kinds of miracles to attest to the veracity of their faith. Here Marbach cites the emancipation of many Germans from alleged papal tyranny, the fact that neither the pope nor the emperor was able to

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capture Luther and put him to death, the survival of the Wittenberg movement itself, and the translation of the Bible into German.74 The Strasbourg theologian also cites an additional evangelical miracle that is directly relevant to our discussion of suffering: the ability of the Wittenberg gospel to console troubled consciences.75 Marbach takes the fact that the Wittenberg gospel actually worked (at least for some people) as proof of its divine origins. He and his fellow Protestants saw such consolation as nothing short of miraculous. A number of Lutheran consolers make this case. After asserting that Christ does not work special signs and wonders for his followers, as the “heavenly prophets” (i.e., Spiritualists) insist, Johannes Kymaeus argues in his Passion-Booklet that the Savior still intervenes miraculously—albeit invisibly—in the lives of true believers by relieving their doubt and anxiety as they face their own private hells.76 Similarly, Caspar Huberinus argues in his popular German Postil (1545, XV) that when Jesus healed the Roman official’s son in John 4:47–54, this was “a little miracle” (ain wenig mirackel) that corresponded to the official’s weak faith; the real miracle occurred when the official believed and experienced internal healing, that is, forgiveness of sin.77 In his Exhortation to Patience and Belief in God (1551, II), Matthias Flacius seeks to remind persecuted Lutherans in Magdeburg of the miraculous power of the Word. As an example of this power, he cites the way many inhabitants of the city were able to die so peacefully during an outbreak of plague three years before.78 Members of the Wittenberg circle thought that they did not need New Testament miracles because they believed that they had access to the most important miracle of all, consolation for the troubled conscience, along with its source, the Word of God.79 Suffering Christians in Catholic (and Spiritualist) communities might experience miraculous healings and the like, but according to Wittenberg evangelicals, these signs were not to be trusted, and in any case, they diverted attention from the divine miracles of consolation that they believed took place on a regular basis in their communities. These latter miracles only occurred among Wittenberg evangelicals because they alone possessed the Word; at least, this is how Lutheran theologians and pastors saw things. In The Consoling De Profundis (1565, IV), the Joachimsthal preacher Johannes Mathesius (1504–1565) tells a story of consolation through the Word that nicely illustrates the Lutheran belief in its miraculous powers. Mathesius had lived with Luther for a time during his course of study at the University of Wittenberg in the early 1540s. He was a frequent guest at

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the reformer’s table, published the earliest edition of his Table Talk, and also provided the first sympathetic biography of Luther.80 Echoing themes that we have seen in Martin Girlich’s pamphlet, Mathesius’s story is about a pregnant noblewoman who lay in bed for several days suffering with labor pains. Those around her tried to provide relief, but their efforts were fruitless—the pains continued unabated, and yet the infant remained captive within its exhausted mother’s womb. Then, one evening, a poor young student girl walked by the woman’s house singing a verse from a song based on Psalm 130 (v. 6): “And even if it endures into the night and again to the next day, my heart shall certainly [wait upon the Lord]” (Vnd ob es wert biß inn die nacht/vnnd wider an den morgen/sol doch mein hertz u). The suffering woman was greatly consoled by these words and, according to Mathesius, gave birth to a son within the hour.81 A simple verse from Scripture sung by a poor young girl out for a walk had brought peace to the laboring woman’s heart and had quite literally delivered her of her burden, so great was the power of the Word. It should be emphasized that Lutheran miracles were not limited to wondrous experiences of internal consolation associated with the Word. Nor were they limited to various signs and wonders in the natural order that received so much attention in the growing apocalyptic literature of the later sixteenth century (see discussion below).82 There are also claims of “external” miracles, including miracles of bodily healing. As we saw in the early evangelical consolation literature and the church ordinances, Lutheran theologians always held out the possibility that God might provide bodily healing for the sick and the suffering, and religious leaders instructed the laity to pray for such healing, something that continued into the later decades of the Protestant Reformation.83 Whenever a Christian recovered from illness, the restoration of health was always attributed to divine mercy, and in this sense, Lutherans could speak of acts of divine healing. But there are other reports of specific healings taking place in response to specific prayers. We have already seen that on at least three separate occasions, Luther prayed for the healing of loved ones and friends and believed that God responded favorably to his requests; Luther also believed that he had been delivered from death’s door by prayer.84 Beyond such stories of the healing effects of prayer, there are also reports of lay Lutherans seeking (and receiving) bodily healing from miraculous wells— and with their pastors’ full support.85 The biblical precedent of the healings at the pool of Bethsaida (John 5:1–15) provided legitimacy for a practice that otherwise would have been deemed pagan. These examples, coupled with

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reports of exorcisms and the existence of lay prophets,86 lend support to the challenge issued by the late Robert Scribner to the traditional Weberian view of the Protestant Reformation as a movement of disenchantment in Western history; Lutherans clearly continued to inhabit a sacralized universe, although the degree of “porosity” between the natural and the supernatural was not as great as in traditional Christianity.87 These examples also raise interesting questions about attitudes toward the body in the Lutheran pastoral and consolation literature.

The Suffering Body Traditional Christianity offered its adherents numerous opportunities to contend with suffering through observance of various rituals, and these rituals either required bodily participation (e.g., processions and pilgrimages) or sought to mediate divine protection and healing to the human body (e.g., unction and various blessings). Mystics such as Margaret Ebner and Henry Suso also saw the body and its suffering as a means of access to the divine. Through both self-imposed and God-imposed suffering, they sought to experience God in their bodies by achieving union with the crucified Christ. They sought to enter into the Passion through their own passion, believing that their bodies could become a locus of identity with their suffering Lord. This traditional emphasis on the role of the body and its suffering in Christian piety continued into the early modern period in new pious practices such as devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus and of Mary, the Passion play in Oberammergau,88 and the spiritual experiences of mystics such as Teresa of Ávila.89 Following Luther’s lead, Lutheran theologians and pastors of the late Reformation period continued to reject both traditional rituals as a means of coping with suffering and traditional mysticism as a way of entering into the Passion. From the Catholic (and modern-day anthropological) perspective, these rejections amounted to a demotion of the role of the human body in Christian spirituality.90 After all, there was not much for the body to do or have done to it in Lutheran piety, except to kneel for things such as prayer, Communion, and confession or perhaps to fast now and again. The Lutheran Christian did not experience God bodily, at least not in ways that Catholic laypeople and mystics did. There were no Lutheran stigmatics. Pain no longer saved, something that followed necessarily from evangelical soteriology and was also reflected in Lutheran art, especially its depictions of the body of Saint Dysmas, the penitent thief on the cross. Commenting

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on the striking change in the way Lucas Cranach the Elder portrayed the penitent thief before and after his conversion to the evangelical faith (see figures 8.1 and 8.2), Mitchell Merback observes: When we recall the brutally literal and physical terms in which late medieval Christian culture, artists in particular, cast the story of the Good Thief’s path to redemption, we realize how deliberately Cranach has here blocked the popular expectation that redemption was achievable, in large part, through an earthly purgatory of pain. . . . In Lutheran iconography, then, we can no longer speak of a St Dysmas, the Penitent Thief who dies the spectacular death of a pseudo-martyr, but only a model converted heathen. Pain does not ‘work’ to save him.91 Faith saves Dysmas, not his bodily mortification, which seems almost nonexistent in the 1538 painting; his body and its suffering appear to have little

figure 8.1. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Crucifixion of Christ , 1502. Berlin/Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany/ Volker-H. Schneider/Art Resource, NY.

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to do with his salvation—it is the condition of his soul that really matters. The consistent argument of the Lutheran consolation literature that internal trials are far worse and therefore far more important than external woes and that miracles of internal healing are more important than miracles of external healing could be seen as adding to this spiritual demotion of the body.92 Of course, Lutheran theologians and pastors did not think that they were demoting the body; they thought that they were restoring it to its proper place in authentic Christian devotion. They still thought that the human body had an important role to play in Christian piety, and they even maintained that Christ experienced the Christian’s bodily suffering. As we have seen, Lutheran consolers believed that Christ was present in the Christian via faith and baptism and that he shared in the Christian’s every tribulation, including those of the body. One did not need to work toward this union with Christ; one lived from it. This meant that as evangelical Christians suffered in body, they could know

figure 8.2. Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Crucifixion , 1538. Oil on panel, 47-3/4 x 32-1/2 in. (121.1 x 82.5 cm), 1947.62. The Art Institute of Chicago.

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that Christ was present with and in them and that their sufferings were also his sufferings. But this union and this communion were not experienced through either the bodily senses or some kind of direct mystical awareness. Luther may have emphasized the centrality of the ears in Christian piety,93 but he never expected believers to hear the actual voice of God, certainly not apart from Scripture, and then only in a mediated sense. Also in keeping with Luther, there is no mention of rapturous union with the divine essence in the later Lutheran consolation literature. (See chapter 9 for a discussion of mysticism in the Lutheran consolation literature.) Suffering Christians “experienced” their union and fellowship with Christ by faith; they believed that Christ was present within them and that he shared in their spiritual and bodily sufferings because this was what the Word said (Matthew 25:31–46; Acts 9:4–5). More often than not, they were required to believe against their bodily experience that Christ was present in their suffering. They felt only pain in their bodies, which they were tempted to view as evidence of divine wrath or divine absence, but which, in fact, was the gentle discipline of their heavenly Father, provided they had the faith to see it as such. In this sense, the body served an important pedagogical role in a care of souls based on the theology of the cross. As we saw in works of consolation for pregnant women, bodily suffering was viewed as a means that God used to drive a human being to the end of her natural resources so that she would seek divine help. From the Lutheran point of view, none of this amounted to a demotion of the body; the body was relieved of bearing a salvific burden that it was never meant to carry, it was rescued from having to do violence to itself in order to merit heaven, and it was permitted to host the indwelling presence of the Lord, who shared its suffering. The Passion continued to play an important role in later Lutheran pastoral care and piety, and this influenced the way Lutherans viewed the suffering human body. Lutheran consolers agreed with Luther’s critique of the alleged abuses of traditional Passion devotion, and similarly to the Wittenberg reformer, they urged Christians to see in Christ’s suffering evidence of their sin and God’s mercy.94 But Lutheran theologians and pastors also urged Christians to see more in the Passion, especially as they suffered. In his Consolation Booklet, Hieronymus Tanneberg exhorts sick Christians to ask God to help them keep the bodily suffering of Christ and the martyrs always before their eyes as an example of how to bear their bodily tribulation patiently.95 The Oschatz archdeacon also

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asserts that Christians have to be conformed to Christ through physical suffering if they want to receive a resurrected body at the Last Day, yet another piece of evidence for the Lutheran concern for growth in righteousness.96 Tanneberg can even instruct his readers to invoke Christ’s five holy wounds as they seek mercy in their bodily suffering.97 This is not the kind of participation in the wounds of Christ that was typical of traditional Passion spirituality; there is never a question of actual union between the Christian’s bodily suffering and Christ’s Passion in this literature. Christ bears the believer’s bodily suffering, but the believer does not bear Christ’s physical tribulations. The Christian can suffer in the body for Christ but not with Christ, because the Savior’s suffering is viewed as being unique and as belonging to him alone.98 Christ suffers in and with the Christian, but the Christian does not suffer in and with (and certainly not for) Christ; the divine-human relationship of suffering is seen as unidirectional.99 In the later Lutheran consolation literature, the human body remains earth-bound, as it were; it belongs exclusively to the present mundane order and as such has a certain provisional integrity, part of the “affirmation of ordinary life” that Charles Taylor has attributed especially to the Protestant Reformation.100 Its sufferings play an important role in the gradual spiritual growth of the Christian, but the body itself never becomes united with Christ’s suffering, nor does the flesh become divinized in this life, as was claimed of many medieval saints. The human body always remains a human body; it neither can nor needs to be anything more, not this side of heaven. Lutheran consolers thought that this view of things would provide relief and solace to their contemporaries, for they thought that traditional Christianity expected too much from the human body and thus had unduly burdened suffering Christians. As Lyndal Roper has recently observed, artistic depictions of Luther as the “Stout Doctor” reveal something extremely important, even revolutionary, about Lutheran piety and its view of the human body: “Deeply anti-monastic . . . Lutheranism could espouse an attitude to the body that sought not to transcend physicality but to embrace it, in all its aspects.”101 The pleasures of the human body—including food, (strong) drink, sex, and conversation—along with its pains played a role in Lutheran spirituality that was quite different from what one finds in most Catholic spirituality of the period. Both confessions could hold forth the resurrected body as a source of consolation and hope for suffering Christians, but they had very different views of how the preresurrected body and its suffering related to future glory.

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Saints and Angels The later Lutheran pastoral and consolatory literature reveals another important way in which suffering became confessionalized in early modern Germany: the protection and consolation once provided by saints was now taken over by angels.102 We have already seen how evangelical theologians attacked the traditional cult of the saints, seeking to depict it as pagan and therefore un-Christian. Lutheran theologians and pastors posited angels as the evangelical ersatz for the saints.103 In this, they were following in Luther’s footsteps.104 Angels came to assume many of the roles ascribed to saints in traditional Christianity, or, rather, their traditional functions of protection, assistance, and communication received stronger emphasis. Lutheran theologians knew full well that in order to secure and retain the loyalty of the laity, and thus to ensure the survival of the Wittenberg Reformation,105 they needed to provide a satisfying alternative to the consolation offered by the cult of saints. They also knew that they needed an alternative that went beyond urging this-worldly saints to stand in the gap left by the now rejected company of saints in heaven. Finally, they also needed to provide a substitute that in their minds had solid biblical support. Angels were their answer. It is striking how deliberate Lutheran theologians and pastors were in presenting angels as the evangelical alternative to saints. In addition to their traditional roles of protecting both individual Christians and the temporal order from diabolical assaults, Lutheran theologians and pastors taught that angels interceded with God for (Lutheran) Christians, asking him to be merciful to them and to hear their prayers. Johannes Spangenberg makes this point explicitly in his frequently published postil for feast days (1564, XIX), as does Johannes Tanneberg in his Consolation Booklet.106 Bruce Gordon’s observation about the syncretistic character of the Protestant theology of angels in the Zwinglian Reformation also holds true for the Lutheran Reformation: “Clearly medieval notions of mediation were still very present in Protestant teachings on angels.” In this sense, Lutherans, like Zwinglians, “still occupied the houses of their fathers,”107 although in other senses, they clearly did not. Lutheran writers also ascribed a consolatory function to angels. The Büdingen (Graffschaft Isenburg) pastor Josua Opitz (1542–1585) maintains in his Useful Instruction on Angels (1583, I) that angels comfort Christians in their tribulations just as they consoled Christ in his, specifically in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:43).108 Similarly, the Wittenberg preacher and later professor of theology Georg

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Major (1502–1574) asserts in his Consolation-Sermon for All Distressed Consciences (1542, I) that angels help Christians bear the yoke of external tribulation that Christ places upon them (Matthew 11:29).109 Lutheran theologians and pastors also taught that God sent angels to protect the evangelical movement at crucial points in its development. Josua Opitz claims that angels helped to rescue Luther at the Diet of Worms and also protected the city of Magdeburg from destruction as imperial forces laid siege to it; on a number of occasions, the inhabitants of Magdeburg allegedly saw a rider on a white horse doing great damage to imperial forces.110 The University of Greifswald master (Magister) Johannes Garcaeus (1530–1574) published a sermon about angels (1555, I) in which he relays a story of angelic protection that he heard from his teacher, Philipp Melanchthon. At the Second Diet of Speyer (1529), an angel disguised as an old man came to the inn where Melanchthon was staying to warn him that Catholic authorities were on their way to arrest an evangelical theologian named Simon Grynaeus (1593–1541), who had sought to instruct a Catholic bishop in the “true” faith.111 Grynaeus fled before he could be arrested. (He later became a prominent theologian in Basel.)112 Angels also allegedly provided special protection to Lutheran clergymen who ministered in dangerous circumstances. In a plague tract from 1544 (IV), Veit Dietrich attributes the low mortality rate of the Lutheran clergy during pestilence to angelic intervention.113 Dietrich claims in his tract that angels cannot be seen (at least as they afforded protection to clergy during the Nuremberg plague of 1543),114 but other Lutheran writers say the opposite. They maintain that angels can appear as an old man warning an evangelical theologian of imminent danger or as an old man caring for a lost child in the woods115 or as actual angels, either in dreams or in the waking world, in the latter case often protecting children from harm.116 While Lutheran consolers taught that angels performed several functions previously attributed to saints, there was a crucial difference between the traditional cult of the saints and its evangelical ersatz: one was not supposed to pray to angels, something that Lutheran theologians uniformly asserted; one was to pray to God alone.117 Despite the efforts of Lutheran theologians and pastors to console their contemporaries with assurances of angelic protection and assistance, scholars have wondered how effective these efforts were, given that, unlike saints, angels could not be invoked or bidden and were not identified with specific needs or locations; they simply carried out whatever task God gave to them to fulfill.118 For their part,

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Lutheran theologians thought that their lay contemporaries would (or at least should) find their message about angels more consoling than the traditional cult of the saints, because the existence and ministry of angels could be proven from the Bible, whereas in their eyes, the cult of the saints could not; it was nothing but baptized paganism and as such should have held no appeal for true evangelical Christians. Lutheran consolers hoped that this appeal to biblical religion and the spiritual confidence that they believed it inspired would keep members of their flocks in the narrow evangelical way.

The Passion in Wittenberg and Zurich Those who were concerned about this narrow evangelical way in Zurich and other German-speaking centers of Reformed Protestantism shared many of the Lutheran consolers’ objections to traditional approaches to suffering and consolation. One sees this very clearly in the pastoral and consolatory works of Zurich theologians Leo Jud (1482–1542) and Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575):119 suffering is not a penance for sin; there is no purgatory, no recourse to various blessings and sacramentals; and there are no saints, all of which are seen as pagan in origin.120 There is also the same emphasis on various causae for suffering: divinely sent tribulation punishes sin, tests faith, mortifies the old Adam, causes one to yearn for the next life, and teaches compassion for others, among other things.121 As we have just seen, both Lutheran and Reformed Protestants also placed a new stress on the importance of angels in ministering to suffering Christians. But there were also some important differences between Lutheran and Reformed doctrines of suffering. German-speaking Lutherans produced many more consolation booklets and pamphlets than Germanspeaking Reformed Protestants; the consoling booklet or pamphlet was a literary genre that was especially typical of Lutherans. This genre may also be found in Reformed Protestantism, but theologians and pastors tended to discuss suffering and consolation more frequently in biblical commentaries, catechisms, published sermons, and special forms for consolation included in hymnals.122 Bullinger and Jud are two important exceptions to this rule. As we have seen, Lutherans also included private absolution and the Lord’s Supper in the pastoral care of the sick and suffering, while Reformed Protestants typically did not. Beyond this, Reformed Protestants created a specific office for lay consolers of the sick (ziekentroosters) that had no counterpart in early modern Lutheranism,

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despite its emphasis on the importance of lay ministry.123 A final alleged difference requires further comment. We have seen that a defining feature of Lutheran consolation literature was its honesty about the despair that suffering could engender. This literature exhorts the Christian to submit to divinely sent suffering but not in stoic silence; one is supposed to cry out to God for help and solace “from the depths.” Luther’s candor about his own spiritual afflictions, influenced by his reading of Tauler and Gerson, shaped the Lutheran consolation literature in profound ways. This candor may be seen as part of a rich affectivity that Johann Anselm Steiger has attributed especially to Luther’s Christology, according to which the divine nature of Christ participated in his suffering in a way that was without precedent in the Christian tradition. According to Steiger, the belief that God himself—and not just Christ’s human nature—participated in the Passion of the God-Man both consoled early modern Lutherans and encouraged the development of an affectivity that was unique in early modern Christianity. Steiger argues that because Reformed Protestants lacked Luther’s unique Christology, they did not do justice to Christ’s cry of dereliction from the cross, and (Steiger implies) they therefore lacked the rich affectivity—and perhaps also the rich consolation—that one finds in Lutheranism.124 The works of consolation by Zurich theologians Jud and Bullinger make it difficult to accept this argument in its entirety. On the one hand, Jud and Bullinger do shrink back from involving the divine nature in Christ’s suffering and can also offer rather unaffected interpretations of Christ’s cry of dereliction from the cross.125 In his Instruction for the Sick (1535, VI), Bullinger interprets this cry as “a patient request and a child-like exhortation” (ein gedultig verlangen vnd ein kindtlich vermanen) for the Father to remove his painful suffering according to the Father’s will and to bring him through death.126 Compared with Luther’s interpretation of Psalm 22:1 in the Operationes, Bullinger’s rendering seems rather shallow and impoverished. On the other hand, Jud’s treatment of Christ’s despair in the Garden of Gethsemane is much richer, although it involves Christ’s human nature only. Jud wishes to emphasize in his On the Suffering of Christ (1534, II) that Christ was a real human being who truly suffered and who was willing to suffer because of his immense and burning love (überschwencklichenn hitzigen liebe) for humanity: “The strongest of all becomes weak, the one who consoled every heart requires consolation, the one who drives away all fear becomes frightened and despairs.” According to Jud, Christ underwent this suffering in order to provide encouragement to

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Christians to imitate him in calling upon God in strong faith in times of need, no matter how dire. Christ truly feared death and suffering, and he made this fear known to God and his friends.127 Jud argues that Christians are to suffer in similar fashion; they are to accept from God the cup he gives them, but they are not to drink it in stoic silence. Echoing ancient Christian consolers such as Ambrose and Jerome, Jud asserts, “Therefore Christian patience does not mean that Christians do not feel suffering, or that they have no fear, lament, or sadness; rather [it means] that no cross is so large that it can separate them from Christ [Romans 8: 39]. . . . [W]e should show patience, not impassivity or insensibility to suffering [gedult so(e)llend wir erzeygen/nit vnlydenliche oder vnbefintliche des lydens].”128 Jud’s work appeared fairly early on in the Swiss Reformation, and there is evidence to suggest that his style of pastoral care did not endure in every Reformed community, especially Basel.129 However, according to Bruce Gordon, Jud did have a decisive influence on the shape of Zurich’s spirituality, a fact that Gordon attributes in part to Jud’s borrowing from late medieval Passion piety.130 Christological (and eucharistic) differences aside, at least in Zurich, in the writings of Leo Jud, German-speaking Reformed Protestants had a pastor-theologian who appreciated the deeply affective component of both Christ’s and the Christian’s suffering.131

Sin and Suffering An examination of the role played by the Wittenberg doctrine of suffering in early modern Lutheran confessionalization would not be complete without a consideration of sin, one of the most important tools employed by clergy and rulers in their efforts to Christianize the masses. Sin is everywhere in the Lutheran pastoral and consolation literature; all authors agree that the reason human beings suffer is sin, both original and, in many cases, actual. The authors also uniformly maintain that sinful human beings deserve to suffer, always more than they, in fact, do.132 Human beings are like the guilty thieves who were crucified on either side of the innocent Christ; the thieves deserved to suffer, whereas Christ did not.133 Natural catastrophes such as plague were frequently interpreted as divine punishment for sin, as were disasters for the Wittenberg movement such as the Schmalkaldic War, the Augsburg Interim, and the siege of Magdeburg.134 These latter disasters were typically seen as punishment for Germans’ lack of gratitude for the Wittenberg gospel.135 Personal disasters such as bodily sickness were also frequently interpreted as

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punishment for sin. As Hieronymus Tanneberg asserts in his Consolation Booklet, “sicknesses are sin-flowers” (kranckheiten sind Su[e]ndenblumen); that is, they grow from the seed of sin.136 Lutheran theologians and pastors adhered to the traditional belief in the close connection between spiritual well-being and physical well-being: diseases of the body could be caused by diseases of the soul, that is, by sin.137 This meant that the most important prerequisite for bodily healing was confession of sin,138 something that was also seen as the key to restoring the health of suffering communities: if humans would repent, God would relent. Lutheran theologians and pastors were always careful to point out that human beings could not merit forgiveness or eternal life, but they also taught that divine favor in the temporal realm could be obtained by the proper moral response: do-ut-des thinking thus had an important if circumscribed place in official Lutherandom. (See further discussion of this point in chapter 10 below.) This reliance on anthropodicy as a primary explanation for the existence of suffering could result in some rather brutal “consolation.” Both Georg Major and Erasmus Sarcerius cite the tragic example of the Byzantine emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) as they seek to drive home the point that human beings deserve to suffer in this life. According to Major’s telling of the story in his Consolation Writing (1556, II), the emperor had implored God for some time to allow him to be punished for his (unspecified) sins in this life rather than in the next, something that he had also asked many churches to request on his behalf. Then, one night, Maurice had a dream in which he stood before a crucifix and a group of people— the latter accused him of much wrong-doing in the presence of the crucified Lord. A loud voice then spoke from the crucifix, asking the emperor if he wished to suffer now or later; the emperor chose the former. His dream was fulfilled: Maurice was deposed by a rival, Phocas (r. 602–610), and made to watch his wife and children being decapitated before his eyes. (Most sources say that it was only Maurice’s sons who were executed; his wife and daughters survived by entering a convent.) As he beheld this gruesome sight, Maurice recited Psalm 119: 137: “You are righteous, O God, and just are your judgments.” When asked if he had any other sons, the emperor admitted that he had one more, an infant, but when he asked a maid to bring out the child, she appeared with her own son. Maurice refused to allow this child to suffer; only he and his family deserved to be punished for his sins. The maid fetched Maurice’s infant son, and he was decapitated before his father’s eyes; more milk than blood flowed from his

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severed body. Finally, the emperor and his remaining relatives were executed. Major praises the emperor’s steadfastness in the midst of this dreadful situation, especially his acknowledgment that he deserved to be punished in this way (das er solche straffe wol verdienet), even though he was confident of receiving grace in the next life.139 Johannes Mathesius, usually one of the more talented later Lutheran consolers, could make similarly disturbing statements when seeking to find in human moral failure an explanation for misfortune. In a funeral sermon (1569, VIII) that he delivered at home after the death of his wife, Sybille (d. 1555), the Joachimsthal preacher has the following to say to his young son Casper (b. 1553/54), who was born with a cleft lip and a split palate, a source of much consternation to his late mother: “My dear poor little Casper, you caused your mother much misery and grief as God placed you in her womb as a sign of our sin. From then on all her courage and joy faded and she constantly dealt with thoughts of death.”140 Poor little Casper, indeed. Depending on when Mathesius actually delivered this sermon, Casper may have been too young to understand his father’s words. Still, they were recorded for posterity in a funeral sermon that went through several editions, which must have only added to his shame. Hieronymus Tanneberg addresses the issue of long-term illness in his Consolation Booklet and offers similarly unfeeling solace. The Oschatz archdeacon seeks to comfort his readers by saying that such suffering is not the result of divine wrath, nor is it an opportunity for penance. Rather, it proves the Christian’s faith, patience, and hope and—now comes the barb—also serves as an example to others of what will happen to them if they continue in their sin.141 One wonders if people who actually suffered from long-term illnesses would have been able to distinguish between their status before God as forgiven sinners and their standing before others as warning signs of divine wrath. At times, the image of God that informs the later Lutheran consolation literature can be equally troubling, again owing to sin as a primary explanation for suffering. The consoler’s God can be extremely jealous for his honor, so jealous that his primary reason in sending suffering to his children is not for their good or to demonstrate his mercy or glory but simply to compel them to confess that he is righteous in his judgments and thereby to render him the honor due his name.142 In other instances, the God of this literature seems to be bound by his own hatred of sin; he can do no other than punish miserable sinners, even though he would prefer not to. One sees this bound God in Veit Dietrich’s plague treatise. The

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Nuremberg preacher maintains that when God sends plague, he is a “wrathful and punishing God.” Why, Dietrich asks? “Not on his own account but because of your sins, which do not allow him to rest and drive him to wrath and punishment.”143 Here the Almighty appears to be unable to show mercy to sinful humanity or even to temper his just punishment—he is compelled by a force external to himself to respond in wrath. This is a rather odd intellectual position to assume, given the strong emphasis on the freedom and sovereignty of God in Lutheran theology. The growing apocalyptic outlook of Lutheranism could certainly strengthen the consolers’ tendency to connect sin and suffering.144 A number of scholars have demonstrated that as the sixteenth century progressed, Lutheran theologians and pastors became increasingly convinced that they were living in the last days. Christ would soon return in his glory, but before he did, there would be great tribulation, especially for God’s elect. Things would get much worse before they got much better.145 The latter half of the sixteenth century was a time of intense fascination with signs and wonders in the natural order that were taken to be portents of impending doom.146 Abnormal births of both humans and animals and strange appearances in the heavens were seen as omens of the end. While one can find this apocalyptic mentality in works of consolation from the first half of the sixteenth century,147 most notably in Luther,148 it is especially present in the pastoral and consolation literature of the late Lutheran Reformation. Erasmus Sarcerius makes it clear in The Book for Shepherds (1565, III) that he believes that he and his contemporaries are living in the end times.149 The Dresden preacher Peter Glaser reveals in his Cross-Booklet that he sees his age as a time of steadily increasing sinfulness and therefore of ever-growing divine punishment.150 At the end of the sixteenth century, the former Marburg preacher Peter Columbinus (1533– 1617) laments in his Necessary and Christian Instruction (1598, I) that Germans have squandered the Wittenberg gospel and can now expect God to speak to them in wrath rather than in mercy.151 He takes the growth of Calvinism, the prevalence of plague, and the aggression of the Turks as signs of this wrath. Accounts of angelic visitations from the last decade of the sixteenth century strike a similar note. Angels appear to common people—usually women—and command them to preach repentance to their fellow Germans for their pride and lack of neighbor-love. In one account, an angel appears to a poor woman in the village of Olschnitz near Nachod and tells her to confront some wealthy women in the area who, among other things,

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had objected to assisting in the burial of a second poor woman. In another account, an angel appears to a twelve-year-old girl in Berlin, commanding her to condemn publicly the extravagant and pretentious habits of dress that were current in Berlin and elsewhere, something that the angel says has provoked God’s anger against all of Germany. (People were apparently wearing a form of high collar that they used to hide their faces. The angel charges that such people will never see the face of God.) In both accounts, portents in the sky and demonic possessions confirm the angels’ message that divine wrath is upon them and the end is near.152 All of this talk about sin, suffering, divine wrath, and the end times in the later Lutheran pastoral and consolation literature fits very neatly into the confessionalization paradigm that has dominated Reformation Studies for the past couple of decades. What more effective way could there be to enforce the social and moral discipline that was so central to confessionalization than to threaten divine punishment for social and moral nonconformity? The connection between sin and suffering clearly played an important role in the effort of theologians and rulers to Lutheranize the masses. (The same could be said for the way other Christian confessions used this connection to promote confessionalization in their own lands.) But here it is important to stress that in order accurately to assess the role of consolation literature in the process of confessionalization, one must keep in view the full content of this literature and not just its treatment of sin and judgment; the consoling and not just the terrifying aspects of this literature must be taken into account when its impact on early modern confessionalization is measured. This argument is all the more important in light of the fact that the treatments of sin and judgment in the later consolation literature were consistently tempered by references to other causes of suffering. The ancient tradition of offering numerous explanations for suffering continued into the late Lutheran Reformation. The same pastors who warned about God’s wrath toward sinners in the last days could also insist that sin and its punishment were not the only cause of suffering. Hieronymus Weller makes this point explicitly in The Book of Job: “This book teaches that not all misfortune and suffering that the pious and God-fearing experience is owing to their sin, rather that God punishes them for no cause [that they have provided], but alone that he might be praised, as the story in John 9 about Christ and the man born blind attests.” The Freiberg theologian goes on to cite a number of examples from both the Old and New Testaments of people who suffered for reasons other than their sin and

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then concludes, “God has plagued and punished many more saints in this life in this way for the single reason that his name might be honored.”153 Weller maintains the same thing in his popular Antidote or Spiritual Medicine for Christians Who Have Affliction and Spiritual Distress, which continued to be published into the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He argues that one should not conclude that tribulation is always caused by divine wrath or that prosperity is always the result of divine favor, for if this rule were applied to many of the saints of Scripture, one would have to conclude that they had an unfriendly and wrathful God, something that Weller insists was not the case.154 This habit of providing multiple causes for suffering was not limited to cases of personal tribulation. We have already seen that challenges to the evangelical movement such as the Augsburg Interim and the siege of Magdeburg could be interpreted as tests of faith or confirmations of the truth of the evangelical creed, in addition to being punishment for sins. The same is true for plague. Veit Dietrich refers to the deadly pestilence as a “gracepunishment” (Gnadenstraff) for the Godly, because of the spiritual growth that it can promote—it is an example of God’s “strange work” (frembes werck) to effect life through death; for the un-Godly, however, plague is simply a punishment for sin motivated by divine wrath.155 As we have seen throughout the Lutheran consolation literature, as long as a person or a community was pious, they were no longer obliged to interpret their suffering as divine punishment for sin, for Christ had already suffered all such penalty. The number of the Godly was probably always taken to be quite low, perhaps especially as the sixteenth century wore on, so Lutheran consolers may well have believed that the suffering-as-grace explanation only ever applied to a minority of their contemporaries. But the point is that because of the expansive definition of suffering that most early modern Christians adopted, Lutherans included, the same set of explanations and remedies could be and, in fact, were applied to all manner of adversity, both for individuals and for whole communities. Even for the apocalyptically minded Lutheran theologians and pastors in the waning decades of the sixteenth century, there was a diversity of causae for suffering.156 Scholars who are on the lookout for evidence of early modern social discipline in their sources would do well to attend to the existence of these multiple explanations for suffering. Threats of divine wrath against sinners were not the only tool that society’s elites could use to encourage deeper confessionally differentiated Christianization; as we saw in the church ordinances, assurances of consolation were employed to achieve the same goal.157

9

Later Evangelical Consolation Literature II in chapter 8 , we examined the nontheological innovations of the Lutheran consolation literature along with its role in the confessionalization of early modern Germany. It is now important to examine the sources that informed this literature along with the pastors who were part of its intended audience. As we will see, even as members of the Wittenberg circle sought to differentiate their doctrine of suffering from the doctrines of other Christian confessions, they drew on sources that presupposed certain continuities between Lutheranism and pre-Reformation Christianity. As we will also see, while it is difficult to determine how the Wittenberg doctrine of suffering influenced actual pastoral care, there are good reasons to believe that the average Lutheran pastor was familiar with this doctrine and that he possessed the necessary resources to minister to the sick and suffering in his flock, something that could not always be said of his late medieval predecessor.

The Sources Scripture continues to be the most frequently cited source in the later Lutheran pastoral and consolatory works, but this literature also draws on a number of other sources that appear rather infrequently in earlier texts.1 Citations from patristic sources abound in the later literature as consolers sought to find ancient Christian precedent for their pastoral theology. Andreas Musculus produced a work of consolation exclusively dedicated to this purpose: Concerning the Cross and Affliction: Instruction from the Holy Old Teachers and Martyrs (1559, III).2 In this work, the Frankfurt an der Oder preacher and professor quotes Origen, Cyprian, Lactantius, Tertullian, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory Nazianzus,

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Chrysostom, Jerome, and Gregory the Great. Among other things, Musculus provides evidence in his text for the antiquity of the expansive definition of suffering that was so important in Lutheran consolation; he shows that the fathers did not limit suffering to persecution for the sake of the gospel. In works by other Lutheran consolers, Augustine (or Pseudo-Augustine) is typically the most frequently quoted ancient Christian authority,3 although there are also numerous references to Ambrose, Jerome, and Chrysostom.4 By way of contrast, ancient pagan sources appear rather infrequently, no doubt owing to the intended audience of this literature: common clergy and laypeople.5 The main medieval source is Bernard of Clairvaux (and Pseudo-Bernard), although Anselm of Canterbury and Jean Gerson are also cited now and again.6 Tauler is quoted with increasing frequency as the century wears on.7 It is clear that later Lutheran consolers were also reading the works of first-generation evangelical reformers; Luther is far and away the most frequently cited “modern” source. Andreas Musculus produced another work of consolation entitled The Golden Gem (1561, II), which gathered consoling sayings from Luther on the subject of Anfechtungen, and Conrad Porta provided in his Pastoral Instruction from Luther a collection of excerpts from the reformer’s writings on nearly every conceivable topic of interest to an evangelical pastor, including consolation. In time, other Lutheran theologians became recognized as authorities on suffering and consolation and were frequently cited in the consolatory literature of the late sixteenth century. These authorities included Johannes Bugenhagen, Veit Dietrich, Urbanus Rhegius, Johannes Spangenberg, Johannes Mathesius, Caspar Huberinus, and Erasmus Sarcerius. Finally, it is clear that the later Lutheran consolers were reading each other, as the frequent references to the abundance of contemporary consolation literature available in their day makes clear. For modern scholars, the most interesting and most controversial of the many sources that influenced later Lutheran pastoral and consolation literature were the mystical works of figures such as Pseudo-Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Pseudo-Bernard, Tauler, Pseudo-Tauler, and the author of the German Theology. As we have seen, although Luther could speak appreciatively of certain mystical works, the early theologians and pastors who were sympathetic to his version of reform did not invoke the mystics openly in their works of consolation and devotion. This is no doubt because they associated the mystics with what they saw as Catholic works-righteousness and radical excess.

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The reluctance of Wittenberg-leaning theologians to interact with mystical literature began to change, slowly, in the early 1550s. This change was motivated in large part by the aforementioned desire of Lutheran theologians to find testes veritatis (witnesses to the [evangelical] faith) in pre-Reformation sources and thus to add legitimization to their version of Christianity. Flacius led the way in this effort with his Catalogue of Witnesses to the Truth (1556, II),8 where he claims Bernard of Clairvaux, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Jean Gerson, Johannes Tauler, and the German Theology for the Lutheran cause; he specifically mentions Luther’s preface to the final work in order to provide support for its inclusion in his list of forerunners to the Wittenberg Reformation.9 Already in his Exhortation to Patience and Belief in God, Flacius cites approvingly the prophecies of Hildegard of Bingen and Mechthild of Magdeburg about the wrath of God being visited on the godless, here applied to “papists.”10 Similarly, Andreas Musculus quotes Pseudo-Augustine and Bernard in his treatments of cross bearing in the Pious and Select Formulas for Praying (1553, II), and in his frequently printed Prayer Booklet (1559, XVIII), he draws on them without direct citation.11 From the early 1580s on, such references to mystics become more common in the Lutheran pastoral and consolation works and also in formal works of theology. In 1581, the Ilfeld school rector and philologist Michael Neander (1525–1595) published The Theology of Bernard and Tauler (II) in which he reproduces criticisms of traditional Christianity, especially of the papacy, that are present in the works of both figures.12 In 1583, Peter Glaser published The Christian Teaching of Tauler (I), in which he, similarly to Neander, seeks to present the late medieval mystic as a forerunner of the Wittenberg Reformation who saw the errors of traditional Christianity, again, especially of the papacy.13 The Dresden preacher specifically cites Luther’s reliance on Tauler to support his admiration for the late medieval mystic.14 Glaser again invokes Tauler in his Cross-Booklet, this time regarding the importance of suffering in the Christian life; Johannes Pitiscus does the same in his Cross- and Consolation Booklet. In fact, both Glaser and Pitiscus cite the same story from Tauler’s sermons about how Christ allegedly appeared to an earnest seeker of God in the midst of a thornbush (Genesis 22: 13), indicating thereby that the path to God involved much suffering.15 In their influential postils, both Johannes Habermann and Simon Pauli cite Tauler to stress God’s eagerness to help and heal the suffering Christian.16 The Sprottau (Niederschlesien) preacher Martin Moller (1547–1606) quotes both Bernard and Tauler in his Meditations of the Holy

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Fathers (part one, 1584, IX; part two, 1592, VI) and specifically says that he has used their works in his own pastoral ministry.17 In The Great Mystery (1595, IV), a work that breathes the spirit of Bernardine mysticism, Moller emphasizes the reality of the union between Christ and the Christian, including the Christian’s suffering.18 As is well documented, the devotional works of Philipp Nicolai (1556–1608) and those of the early-seventeenthcentury luminaries Johann Arndt (1555–1621) and Johann Gerhard (1582– 1637) were deeply influenced by certain strands of mysticism.19 Similarly to Luther, Arndt provided editions of the German Theology (in 1597 and again in 1605) and later produced an edition of Tauler’s postil (1621).20 As we will see, this reliance on the mystics led to an important innovation in the reasons Lutheran consolers gave for the presence of suffering in the Christian’s life. This reliance on mystics at the height of the confessionalization process also suggests that even as Lutheran theologians expended great energy in seeking to define Lutheranism over against other Christian confessions, they simultaneously borrowed more deeply than ever from one of these confessions, Catholicism, or at least from certain portions of it.21 Why this return to the mystics in the closing decades of the sixteenth century, especially given their association with Radical and Catholic Christianity? The search for pre-Reformation theological precedent, while important, does not by itself provide a sufficient answer. A previous generation of scholars interpreted this return as a response to an alleged crisis in the piety of the later Lutheran Reformation. According to Winfried Zeller, by the early 1580s, the Wittenberg movement had lost its vitality; third-generation Protestants simply took the evangelical faith as a given but lacked the ability to make it their own, in large part because their spiritual leaders were negligent in teaching them how to do so. Theologians and pastors had become so embroiled in the battles of doctrine that gripped the later Lutheran Reformation that they lost sight of the spiritual needs of the common people. The result was an unsalutary division between theology and piety. Men such as Martin Moller, Johann Arndt, and Johann Gerhard perceived this crisis and responded by drawing on certain of the mystics, who knew no such gap and who emphasized the deeply personal aspect of faith.22 Zeller’s piety-crisis thesis has driven much scholarship, not all of it friendly to his argument.23 In the last decade or so, scholars have raised an objection to an underlying assumption of his piety-crisis thesis, namely, that mysticism is a foreign (and regrettable) intrusion into

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Lutheran devotion.24 Scholars such as Elke Axmacher, Johann Anselm Steiger, and Traugott Koch have countered that mysticism was always present in Lutheranism and that it served a necessary and beneficial function.25 Luther bequeathed a certain dependence on certain mystics to the Wittenberg movement,26 and pastor-theologians such as Musculus, Glaser, Habermann, Pauli, and, especially, Moller, Nicolai, Arndt, and Gerhard were drawing on this inheritance. These scholars concede that there was an increased dependence on mystics in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, part of an intensification of piety that took place in this period that can be readily seen in the increased production of devotional works.27 But they insist that this growth was not a response to a gulf between theology and piety, something that Steiger says never existed.28 In the case of Martin Moller, Axmacher sees the recourse to mystics as an attempt to deal with a tension in Lutheran soteriology that only became obvious to evangelical clergymen after they and their predecessors had spent decades exercising a pastoral care based on justification by faith.29 The Lutheran theology of salvation was highly eschatological in nature; it offered Christians certainty of forgiveness via imputed alien righteousness, and hence an ensured future in heaven, where, in a sense, Christians already lived through faith in Christ. And yet Christians also lived in this life, where their own actual righteousness was always incomplete. How were Christians to live in both places simultaneously, especially when life in this world seemed to be going on longer than anyone had expected? What continuity was there between these two existences, the one imputed, the other effective or actual? According to Axmacher, Moller found mystics such as Bernard and Tauler helpful because of their emphasis on the presence of the next life—that is, of Christ—in their souls, a reality that they accessed especially through meditation. Thus, Axmacher sought to explain the increased reliance on mystics in the later Lutheran Reformation by presenting it not as a response to a crisis but as the logical outworking of an irresolvable tension within Lutheran soteriology.30 Inherent in this theology of salvation was a recognition of the Christian’s ongoing need for consolation, because the gap between imputed and actual existence would always be so great, and the true Christian would be prone to doubt that these two existences or righteousnesses could ever become one. According to Axmacher, certain strands of medieval mysticism, which had always been present in Lutheranism, provided this consolation through their emphasis on the real presence of Christ in the Christian’s soul and Christ’s ability to defeat the sinful flesh.

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What light does the recourse to mystics in the later Lutheran consolation literature shed on this scholarly debate? There is some evidence to support Zeller’s thesis regarding the perceived need for spiritual renewal but not for the implicit assumption in his argument that those who turned to the mystics for help were stepping outside the “true” Lutheran fold. Many Lutheran consolers believed that they were living in a time of great spiritual warfare and that the piety of their time needed a fresh infusion of life to survive this battle; this is certainly the case with Martin Moller.31 The Sprottau pastor also complains in The Great Mystery about a certain aridity in the scriptural exegesis of his day. He makes reference to the presence of “many people” (viel Leute) who deny the reality of the union between Christ and his church that may be found in Scripture. These people take the Bible’s use of marital language and metaphors to describe God’s relationship with his chosen people as purely symbolic, whereas according to Moller, this language is sacramental; that is, it points to a real union between the divine and the human.32 The Sprottau pastor believed that mystics such as Bernard of Clairvaux could help his generation develop a more vibrant piety and a profounder understanding of the sacred mysteries contained in Scripture. Along with a number of his colleagues, he had clearly found something appealing in the mystics. But also similarly to these colleagues, Moller did not believe that his affection for works of mysticism had taken him beyond the pale of the Wittenberg tradition. He believed that his theology, especially in its emphasis on the vital union between Christ and the Christian, was in perfect step with that of Luther and Melanchthon.33 When viewed from the perspective of the pastoral theology of suffering, there is much to the claim of Moller and his contemporaries that in their recourse to works of mysticism, they were simply drawing on resources already present within Lutheranism and that they were using these resources in a way that honored the Wittenberg faith. We have already discussed Luther’s reliance on mystics, and it is clear that later Lutheran consolers were reading those mystics whom the Wittenberg reformer himself had approved. We have also seen that Lutheran theologians were interacting with mystics already in the early 1550s, so Moller and his contemporaries were doing nothing new in the 1580s and ’90s by reading and citing such texts; Flacius and Musculus had done the same. The uses to which later Lutheran pastors and theologians put the mystics were also rather conservative. The clergymen cited the mystics in order to provide pre-Reformation precedent for the Protestant assault on

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traditional Christianity, especially the papacy,34 and to underscore the centrality of suffering in the Christian life, along with the desire of God to provide solace in the midst of it. Similarly to Luther, the most distinctively mystical aspects of the mystics’ approach to suffering do not appear in this literature. There is no discussion of somatic union with the crucified Christ and no mention of suffering preparing the way for the divine soul’s return to its alleged place of true abiding, God. The mystics are made to support the Wittenberg theology of suffering that had been around for decades. However, the return to the mystics did enable later Lutheran pastors and theologians to see something new within the established Lutheran theology of suffering that greatly enriched the pastoral care they offered to their flocks. Especially in the devotional works of Moller, Nicolai, Arndt, and Gerhard, there is a renewed emphasis on the indwelling Christ, that is, on Christ’s union with the Christian.35 Lutheran consolers had long maintained that Christ shared the Christian’s suffering by virtue of the union between the Savior and the sinner effected in baptism. But this union itself received very little attention in the Lutheran consolation literature before the 1590s.36 This changes in Moller, who foregrounds the theme of union with Christ in The Great Mystery, relating it directly to his treatment of suffering; he speaks of a “communion of the cross” (Gemeinschaft des Creutzes) between Christ and his church. For Moller, this means nothing more than what we have seen in earlier works of consolation—Christ shares the Christian’s suffering via his union with the Christian. But Moller focuses much more directly on the union itself than is the case in the earlier sources: he argues that just as husband and wife bear each other’s suffering, so Christ bears the Christian’s suffering.37 In time, this new emphasis on union with Christ led to the development of a new explanation for suffering in the Lutheran consolation literature. Gerhard avers in his extraordinarily popular Sacred Meditations (1606/7, CCXX)38 that the experience of suffering facilitates a deeper abiding or habitation (beywohnung) of God in the Christian’s soul by producing in the believer a penitent and humble spirit; this beywohnung is the Christian’s deepest source of joy.39 I know of no other similar statements on the connection between suffering and union with Christ in the preGerhardian Lutheran consolation literature. This new evangelical causa for suffering no doubt stemmed from Gerhard’s reading of the mystics, even though, along with Moller and Arndt (his mentor), Gerhard continued to reject the mystics’ theological anthropology and soteriology, seeking to read them within the parameters set by the Augsburg Confession.40

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This emphasis on the Christian’s union with Christ along with the specific connection that Gerhard makes between suffering and the deepening of this union had always been present, or at least implied, in Lutheran theology. There is no theological innovation here; rather, there is a gradual unfolding of themes and possibilities within an established tradition that valued certain aspects of certain mystics. The eschatological pressure that many later Lutheran pastors and theologians felt, coupled with their sense that the piety of their day needed to be revitalized, no doubt hastened this unfolding. They found something in the mystics that they believed their generation needed: an emphasis on the indwelling Christ, which, as Axmacher has shown, helped them to live in the tension between their imputed and actual existences; they also found an earnestness of devotion to Christ that willingly embraced suffering. This return to certain of the mystics added a new richness and depth to a literature that on the whole had been rather reserved in its treatment of Christ’s presence in the suffering Christian’s soul, one of the most important sources of consolation that the Christian faith had (and has) to offer the afflicted human being. This return also added a new kind of affectivity to the Lutheran consolation literature. Works of consolation had always given ample room for the expression of despair and grief and also for assurances of divine help and mercy; they were far from emotionless. What the mystics, especially Bernard, added to this literature was a new vocabulary of divine love that provided a helpful counterpoint to some of the rather brutal “consolation” we discussed in chapter 8. Both Moller and Nicolai adopt the mellifluous doctor’s image of the divine kiss in their works of devotion and speak frequently of the mystical marriage that exists between Christ and the Christian.41 As we have seen, Moller uses the marriage metaphor in his treatment of suffering, referring to a “communion of the cross” between Christ and the Christian; he can also call suffering the “ring of remembrance” (Gedenck Ring) that Christ, the loving husband, gives to his bride, so that she will not forget him.42 When she does forget him and seeks other lovers, Moller insists that her husband still loves her and wishes to have mercy on her. Taking his lead from Hosea 11, Moller argues that God chooses not to carry out his just wrath against his wayward wife, saying in effect, “But no, my heart is otherwise inclined, my love is too great, my mercy too ardent, so that I will not act according to my fierce wrath or turn myself to destroy you in your sin. Yes, you have played the whore with the devil your paramour. But return to me because my heart breaks for you so that I must have mercy on you.”43 Here God is bound by his mercy and not by his wrath.

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The Clergy, Their Training, and Their Books The consolation literature of the later Lutheran Reformation had as one of it major goals the improvement of pastoral care; common clergymen were an important part of this literature’s intended audience. What do we know about the reception of this literature among common pastors? How equipped were they to minister to the sick and the suffering in their flocks? First, it must be conceded that the majority of pastors probably did not have access to the works of consolation that we have studied, including the “best-sellers.” As was true in the later Middle Ages, the typical pastor’s library was rather small and included books that were directly relevant to the practical demands of his office.44 Inventories of church and clergy libraries assembled in church visitations show that Lutheran pastors typically owned or had access to a Bible, the local church ordinance, a few postils (in some cases, both Lutheran and Catholic),45 a catechism or two, perhaps Melanchthon’s Loci communes or Examination for Ordinands, possibly a couple of Scripture commentaries, a hymnal, and occasionally the Augsburg Confession.46 It was a rare library that included separate consolation writings;47 such works were likely confined to the collections of the urban clergy, who also possessed more sophisticated treatments of theology.48 We know that some pastors created their own manuals for the care of suffering Christians and that they shared these works with their colleagues, but there is no way of knowing how widespread this practice was, and we should probably assume that the average pastor was content to use the materials that were ready-made and ready to hand. This modest supply of pastoral resources need not have hindered a pastor’s ministry to those members of his flock who suffered in body or soul. As we have seen, church ordinances and postils had much to say about suffering, as did Melanchthon’s Loci communes and Examination for Ordinands.49 Catechisms also addressed the topic of tribulation and adversity in the Christian life. This is true of catechisms by the Lüneberg deputy headmaster and hymn writer Lucas Lossius (1508–1582) (1553, XII),50 by Johannes Brenz (Latin, 1551, V; German, 1554, XI), and by Johannes Spangenberg (1564, V),51 all of which turn up in inventories of pastors’ libraries.52 Therefore, it is safe to conclude that the vast majority of Lutheran pastors were sufficiently equipped with relevant books to minister to the sick and suffering in their flocks. The possession of such books was very important, because, as we have seen, the clergy received no formal instruction in the care of suffering

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souls,53 even if they studied at a university, which an increasing number did from the late sixteenth century on.54 (Lutheran pastors were not required to complete a university degree until the eighteenth century in most places in Germany.)55 As we have also seen, despite this lack of formal instruction in pastoral care, the clergy were expected to provide consolation to their flocks through both word and sacrament.56 Most pastors were admitted to the clerical ranks after having been examined by either a senior pastor or the local superintendent or consistory. Their preparation for this exam typically consisted of a period of study at a Latin school, which usually included some theological instruction, and perhaps also a few semesters in the arts faculty of a university, where future pastors were able to visit theology courses and, in a number of cases, live as stipend holders in residential colleges that sought to nurture their spiritual life.57 Otherwise, candidates for ordination learned theology through their own experience of catechesis in church and at home—the latter being an especially valuable setting for the large number of candidates whose fathers were pastors58—and also through their own private study of basic theological texts and the Bible. Martin Moller is a good example of a Lutheran pastor whose theological education took place at home, in church, and at school; he never attended university. Melanchthon’s Examination for Ordinands was the standard text for many ordination examinations, and, as we have seen, it did contain a lengthy section on the role of suffering in the Christian life.59 Local church ordinances could also be used as the text for such ordinations, and, as we have also seen, they, too, contained treatments of suffering.60 Clergymen learned to apply such treatments of suffering to concrete cases of pastoral care largely through an informal apprentice system; one learned to minister to the sick and the suffering by actually having to do so, ideally under the supervision of a senior colleague, although this was not always possible. At least a portion of the senior clergy saw the weaknesses in this system and therefore produced works of consolation to assist their younger colleagues as they sought to learn the art of arts.61 Those pastors who had studied at university learned the care of souls through the same apprentice system, but if they actually studied for a degree in theology, which only a minority did,62 they likely received additional preparation for ministering to suffering Christians. This occurred both through their own experience of spiritual formation in the residential colleges and through their formal coursework. Theology students likely heard lectures on Melanchthon’s Loci communes and his Examination for

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Ordinands,63 which presumably included comments on these texts’ treatments of suffering. Beyond this, they were likely encouraged to view tribulation and adversity as essential ingredients in the making of a good theologian. As a number of scholars have demonstrated, Luther’s tripartite formula for theological study—oratio, meditatio, tentatio (prayer, meditation, temptation)—found in the preface to the 1539 collection of his German works,64 had a decisive influence on the subsequent shape of Lutheran university theological education.65 Theology students were urged to examine and learn from their own tentationes as a central part of their education. Here the significance of David Chytraeus’s (1530–1600) Discourse on How to Begin the Study of Theology Correctly (1560, IX) cannot be overstated.66 It was the single most important guide for university-based theological education in the later Lutheran Reformation.67 In this work, the University of Rostock professor insists that the student’s own experience of the cross (here understood especially as internal Anfechtungen) is the sine qua non of theological study; he argues that one cannot understand the gospel if one does not experience God-forsakenness and divine deliverance from the same.68 Therefore, the theology student must attend very closely to his own suffering, for according to Chytraeus, it will provide not only true theological insight but also much practical wisdom in the care of souls. University-trained theologians attempted to pass on this wisdom to Lutheran clergymen in their pastoral and consolation writings. A number of works stress the importance of the pastor’s own experience of suffering as a resource for his pastoral ministry. A pastor who had neither studied in the school of spiritual temptation nor lain ill in the hospital for afflicted consciences was said to be greatly hindered in his efforts to console those who had.69 Similarly, following Luther, Anfechtungen were presented as the touchstone (Pru[o]festein) for authentic pastoral care, for they taught one how “sweet, loving, powerful, and consoling” the Word of God truly was.70 Preachers who had not touched the “cross-thorns” (Creutzdornen) could offer little consolation to those who knew these thorns well.71 Which members of the Lutheran clergy actually ministered to the sick and the suffering? In large cities, the lower clergy would have shouldered the burden of daily pastoral care; those who held the high office of preacher may have rarely ministered to the sick and suffering beyond the solace they sought to provide in their sermons and written works. In smaller towns and in the countryside, pastoral care was typically a one-man show; the local pastor preached (usually with the help of a postil), baptized,

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administered the Lord’s Supper, heard confessions, and visited the sick and suffering.72 Both in cities and in the countryside, the clergy who ministered to the afflicted were likely married and had their own families, which meant that they could identify with the suffering and woes of their flocks in ways that would have been difficult for Catholic priests, who, at least in theory, were celibate; Lutheran pastors knew firsthand the feelings of grief and despair that came with the loss of a wife or children. So, in one sense, the Lutheran clergy were very well integrated into the social world of their flocks. But in another sense, they were outsiders. As the education level of the Lutheran clergy slowly increased in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this created a social distance between many pastors and their parishioners. The Lutheran clergy gradually became incorporated into the stratum of nonaristocratic functionaries (e.g., doctors and lawyers) that greatly expanded in the early modern period. As Luise Schorn-Schütte has put it, the clergy became “spiritual burghers” (geistliche Bürger).73 The clergy came increasingly from the educated middle class of Germany’s towns and cities74 and therefore could face social and cultural challenges when called to minister in rural settings. At least a portion of the well-documented conflict that the rural clergy experienced as they sought to re-Christianize the common folk must be attributed to the growing social distance between them and their flocks.75 The fact that the clergy were under increasing pressure to police their parishioners’ moral behavior and to report notorious sinners to higher authorities only made the situation more difficult.76 Still, even university-educated pastors could show remarkable agility in seeking to present the gospel in ways that would make sense to the common folk. A recent study of the preaching of Cyriakus Spangenberg (1528–1604), who studied at the University of Wittenberg, presents compelling evidence of his desire and ability to communicate the Lutheran gospel effectively to the many miners who made up his flock in Mansfeld; he expended great effort in learning about the mining trade and spoke directly to miners’ concerns in his sermons, seeking to couch his homilies in language that his congregation could understand.77 The same study discusses the great difficulty of determining exactly what such laypeople heard in sermons, along with how or whether they internalized their preachers’ messages and adjusted their lives accordingly.78 It is to this challenging yet crucial question of lay reception that we shall turn in the final chapter, focusing specifically on the Wittenberg doctrine of suffering.

10

Lay Suffering and Solace a good deal of the recent scholarly literature on the early modern Lutheran clergy suggests that pastors experienced considerable resistance as they sought to implement the reformation of suffering envisioned in the pastoral and consolation literature of the period.1 While studies of the clergy and lay popular belief have not focused specifically on the theme of suffering, many of the cases cited to illustrate lay-clerical conflict involve disagreements about the alleviation of various forms of pain and distress.2 The relevant literature deals largely with the clergy who ministered in the countryside, where the vast majority of the population lived. Scholars maintain that most rural Germans remained firmly wedded to a religion that drew on both traditional Christian and traditional pagan sources and corresponded very well to their felt material and spiritual needs, especially for protection and healing. The new evangelical religion was not able to capture and retain the allegiance of the masses, much recent scholarship insists, because it was too focused on words and not enough on rituals;3 it was too occupied with ideas and not enough with emotions;4 it was too obsessed with the individual and his conscience and not enough with the community and its sense of collective moral and spiritual health.5 Official Lutheranism was too bookish, too cerebral, too transcendent, too authoritarian, and too severe for the tastes of most people. It could not promise the same kind of access to divine power as traditional religion, because it rejected the notion of intermediaries between God and human beings (except for Christ and angels) and because it insisted that the supernatural could not be influenced or manipulated through mere human rites.6 Scholars have shown that even when Lutheran officials outlawed traditional Catholic piety and renewed laws that prohibited recourse to various pagan rites, rural Germans either ignored these laws and continued to practice their traditional religion7 or they adapted the new evangelical religion to suit their own needs in ways that frequently frustrated their

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pastors. The late Robert Scribner unearthed numerous examples of how the common folk would integrate the new Lutheran piety into their traditional enchanted worldview. Rural Germans would use Bibles, hymnals, and catechisms as ersatz sacramentals to access divine power in times of need, part of a “covert evangelical sacramentalism” that Scribner saw as an important line of continuity between late medieval Catholic and early modern Lutheran popular piety.8 Scholars have argued that while some pastors sought to accommodate themselves to their rural parishioners’ traditional piety, the majority simply redoubled their efforts at enforcing moral discipline and order,9 growing ever more despondent over time as their parishioners continued to resist their pious efforts, which only confirmed to the clergy that the end of all things was near.10 This depiction of lay piety and clerical ministry in early modern Lutheranism certainly has a basis in historical fact, but it also ignores evidence that calls for a more complex interpretation of the religious scene in communities that were aligned with the Wittenberg Reformation. Our discussion of the Lutheran pastoral and consolation literature has demonstrated that the Wittenberg religion was more human, more embodied, more communal, and more affirming of emotion than much recent scholarship has appreciated. We have also seen that even official Lutheranism could accommodate the traditional sacral worldview, and in many ways shared this worldview, because it continued to believe in the real presence of the supernatural in the natural, at least in certain biblically based instances: the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, healing wells, prophets, portents, angels, demons, exorcisms, and Scripture itself.11 This may not have been enough sacrality for many early modern Germans, especially as they suffered, but it now seems clear enough that those who lived in Lutheran lands were not expected to adopt a religion that aimed at the complete disenchantment of the world.12 Still, regardless of how sacral early modern Lutheranism was, there is no refuting the fact that many Germans did not suffer the way their pastors wanted them to. (This was no doubt true in varying degrees for each of the early modern Christian confessions.) None of the sources we have examined thus far would deny this point. The frequent complaints about lay recourse to magic and folk religion, and also to traditional Catholic piety, only substantiate this fact.13 It is also clear that not everyone liked the Lutheran God and the Wittenberg approach to suffering. One has only to recall Andreas Osiander’s comment in the 1533 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance about the peasants who opposed the evangelical doctrine

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of suffering. They rejected the belief that God is sovereign over all things, including misfortune, preferring to hold the devil culpable for suffering. When they were told by their pastors that God uses suffering to discipline those whom he loves (Hebrews 12:6), they responded, “Well, then I wish that he did not love me so much.”14 Surely this comment stems from an actual situation of pastoral care.15 There has been a trend in American Reformation scholarship for a couple of decades to view such comments as evidence for the inability of Wittenberg Christianity to influence the religious beliefs and practices of the masses in any significant way.16 This trend is understandable, given the unexamined assumption of earlier generations of scholars about the widespread (and inevitable) success of the Protestant Reformation. But one can question just how helpful this whole project of rendering verdict on the Wittenberg Reformation as either a success or a failure is today, especially because of the rather thinly veiled (and in at least one case, openly confessed) value judgments about the intellectual and moral worth of early modern Protestant Christianity that have attended this debate.17 We now know that the progress of the evangelical movement was quite slow in the countryside and that even in the cities, there was nothing like a perfect correspondence between the religion of the clergy and that of the burghers.18 Both of these points are important to affirm; they were certainly obvious to the early modern clergy. But it is also important to acknowledge the blind spots and unexamined (and unfair) assumptions that the success/failure dichotomy has created in Reformation scholarship. For example, we have very few recent studies of sixteenth-century laypeople who actually preferred Protestant piety to traditional devotion; there are not many recent treatments of “true believers” among the evangelical laity.19 The scholarly focus has instead been on the shortcomings of evangelical devotion, especially in comparison with traditional piety. The comparison between the two pieties is, of course, perfectly appropriate to make; it is the only way we can understand continuity and discontinuity in lay religious life over time. But in a number of scholarly works, this comparison is laden with value judgments about which piety was better, that is, more ideally suited to the “real” needs of the common folk—and the nod almost always goes to traditional piety.20 In the past, scholars unfairly measured the value of late medieval piety by the standard of Protestant theology and devotion;21 the current situation is just the opposite. Catholic piety—especially of the pre-Tridentine variety—is praised for being an organic, grassroots religiosity, whereas Protestant piety is characterized as

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contrived and coerced; this is the verdict rendered especially by cultural historians who take their methodological cues from anthropologists.22 It should be obvious that this way of proceeding does not really help us understand Protestant piety on its own terms and certainly not the people—whatever percentage of the overall population they made up— who actually preferred it over traditional piety. The task of this chapter is to remedy this situation by trying to assess what Protestant piety looked like when practiced by people who actually believed the Protestant message, especially as they faced adversity. How did true believers actually suffer? The goal here is not to hold up the committed Protestant layperson as being representative of the lay masses, for this would be misleading and false. Rather, the goal is to analyze an expression of lay piety that has been largely neglected in the recent scholarly literature and thus to help historians tell as full and accurate a story about the past as possible. This story should include true believers along with recalcitrant peasants and despondent pastors. Revising the story about lay piety in the Protestant Reformation is all the more important because, as we will see, the available sources reveal a feature of this piety that has been similarly neglected in the scholarly literature, especially among Reformation scholars in the United States: the striking degree of resourcefulness and personal agency that urban Protestant laypeople exercised as they suffered.23

The Sources The sources to be examined in this chapter consist largely of private letters, family chronicles, diaries, private works of devotion, and autobiographies—so-called ego-documents.24 Most come from elites, and all are from townspeople, hence the focus in this chapter on the piety of burghers.25 The authors were among the most thoroughly catechized people in early modern Germany, having been exposed to sermons by some of the age’s most talented Protestant preachers. The authors also had the most ready access to the consolation literature that we have examined, and it is likely that many of them had purchased such works for their personal use.26 We know from studies of late Reformation postmortem inventories that burghers of various classes owned vernacular devotional and consolation books.27 Sources from Braunschweig reveal this very clearly. A mayor and member of the war council, Hans Alfeld (d. 1607), owned the following works: postils by Luther and Simon Pauli, a Consolation

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Booklet by Christoff Fischer (or Vischer),28 Mark Scultetus’s True Christian Cross (1588, VI),29 the Little Garden of Spices for Sick Souls (presumably the one by Michael Bock), Habermann’s Prayer-Booklet, and two works bearing the same title by Andreas Musculus (1559, XVIII) and Johannes Mathesius (1569, IV).30 Caspar Kreutzberg, the master of a public bath in Braunschweig, owned Walther’s Consolation Booklet, as did a butcher’s wife, who also possessed Musculus’s Consolation Booklet (1561, II) and a postil by Johannes Spangenberg in her twenty-four-book collection.31 Spangenberg’s postil also showed up in an inventory of a potter’s books, as did a copy of the local church ordinance.32 A woodcarver and joiner owned twenty-eight devotional books, including a number of Luther’s works on the Bible and Bugenhagen’s History of the Passion of Christ (1534, X).33 A goldsmith owned Selneccer’s work on the Passion (1572, IV),34 and another goldsmith had Luther’s House-postil and the Consolation Writing (1592, I) by Friedrich Petri, a local preacher.35 The widow of a tinsmith and brewer owned a postil by Tilman Hesshusen (1581),36 Habermann’s Prayer-Booklet, and Christoff Fischer’s Consolation Writing, while a butcher’s widow possessed Bugenhagen’s History of the Passion of Christ, Walther’s Consolation Booklet, and Musculus’s work by the same title.37 There is similar evidence of lay ownership of devotional works from other towns and cities. A baker from the northern German town of Wismar owned Habermann’s PrayerBooklet, along with a copy of a Spangenberg postil,38 while a widow from the same town possessed Rhegius’s popular Soul-Medicine, Habermann’s Prayer-Booklet, and Bugenhagen’s History of the Passion of Christ.39 A Nuremberg merchant named Peter Voit (d. 1547) owned Luther’s Housepostil, along with another postil by Anton Corvinus and a German translation of Melanchthon’s Loci.40 A blacksmith from Heilbronn possessed a copy of Caspar Kantz’s How One Should Exhort, Console, and Commend to God Sick and Dying People.41 Artisan personal libraries tended to be rather small, having fewer than ten books, while merchant and patrician collections were on average larger, holding ten to fifty items. The largest lay libraries belonged to those engaged in the legal and administrative professions and to academics; some of these elite lay libraries had more than two hundred books.42 But urban book owners typically read intensively, not extensively, so they did not need large libraries, even if they could afford them.43 As Cornelia Niekus Moore has explained, “the ultimate goal was internalization through memorization, making the written text superfluous.”44 People also tended to read aloud rather than silently, and thus, the illiterate or

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partially illiterate could learn from texts that they could not read for themselves.45 The autobiographical sources left behind by such book-owning burghers are quite valuable. They provide the historian with a perspective on lay religious life that actually comes from laypeople rather than from the clergy or judicial inquisitors, which is the case with many of the sources employed by scholars of popular culture. This does not mean that egodocuments provide direct access to the hearts and minds of early modern burghers; they are still a mediated source, having been deeply informed by the cultural norms and values that shaped their authors. As previously noted, it also does not mean that these sources and the religious assumptions that they contain may be taken as representative of the masses in the early modern Protestant lands; this would be claiming too much for egodocuments. But if handled carefully, these sources can still yield some very important insights into early modern lay piety, especially as it relates to suffering and consolation among burghers.46

True Believers and Their Suffering In many ways, the most important insight that ego-documents yield is that there were, in fact, a number of burghers who believed what their evangelical pastors taught them about suffering and who sought to put this teaching into practice; not everyone resisted the clergy’s efforts to reform the way people dealt with adversity. To take but one example, the private letters of patrician families in Nuremberg reveal a very important change with respect to the role of saints in protecting human beings from catastrophic suffering such as plague.47 Whereas the saints—especially the Virgin—appear on a regular basis in the salutations or conclusions of letters written during pre-Reformation outbreaks of plague, such references disappear shortly after Nuremberg adopted the Wittenberg faith in 1525. (The Nuremberg city council formally abolished most saints’ days in the same year and also prohibited the singing of the Salve regina and participation in processions with saints’ relics.)48 The most striking example of this transformation may be seen in the letters of Michael Behaim (1510– 1569). Up to 1528, the merchant’s son began all of his letters with “Praise be to God and Mary,” whereas thereafter, he changed the dedication to “Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ.” This change is quite significant, because Behaim had earlier believed that the Virgin Mary had helped to

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deliver him from the plague in Milan.49 Letters written by other evangelical patricians reveal the same trend; after the mid-1530s, references to the saints disappear.50 There is also evidence to suggest that many Nurembergers eventually rejected objects associated with the cult of the saints. Inventories of burgher households conducted in 1530 discovered that about half of the households contained rosaries, while similar inventories conducted from 1550 to 1560 revealed just one.51 It is possible that some burghers continued to invoke the saints.52 A church visitation that took place in 1560/61 discovered several instances of the common folk turning to traditional piety and magic when faced with misfortune.53 However, this visitation was limited to the countryside surrounding Nuremberg; it did not examine the religious life of the city itself, where the cult of the saints—or at least the praying of the rosary—appears to have had little appeal for the majority of burghers. The efforts of religious leaders in Nuremberg such as Andreas Osiander, Wenzeslaus Linck, Lazarus Spengler, Sebaldus Heyden, Veit Dietrich, and Leonhard Cullmann—all of whom authored works of consolation—to reform their contemporaries’ attitude toward suffering apparently bore at least some of the desired fruit. One sees a similar resolve to reject traditional Catholic approaches to suffering among Reformed Protestant burghers in Switzerland. The humanist teacher and book printer Thomas Platter (1499–1582) recounts in his autobiography (1576) how his wife, Anna Dietschi, refused the efforts of her Catholic midwife to help ease a difficult birth by placing a rosary on her and by urging her to endow a private mass. Anna responded to her midwife, “Oh, I trust in the true God to help me through this.”54 She later gave birth to a baby girl. Platter had been a student in Zurich and had converted to the evangelical faith under the influence of Zwingli and his fellow reformer Oswald Myconius (1488–1552), who served as a kind of adoptive father to Anna.55 (As Myconius did, Platter would later move to Basel.) Similarly to burghers in Nuremberg, Thomas and Anna appear to have taken the basic evangelical message about suffering to heart. No scholar today denies that there were people like Michael Behaim, Thomas Platter, and Anna Dietschi who embraced the evangelical faith, but neither have scholars paid much attention to such figures of late, no doubt because they are viewed as subjects who were studied a couple of decades ago and who are therefore no longer immediately relevant to the current scholarly agenda. The problem with this perspective is that during the heady days of urban Reformation research (the 1960s to the 1980s), no one examined the theme of suffering in depth.56 The cities remain our

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best source of information about how laypeople who believed the Protestant faith sought to understand and cope with suffering, for, as we have seen, it is in the cities that we find laypeople who were capable of describing their experiences of tribulation in their own words. The extant lay sources also help us see that evangelical burghers were not simply passive recipients of their pastors’ teaching about adversity, even when they knew their pastors very well and wished to follow their spiritual advice. Sometimes there were misunderstandings, but in other cases, laypeople could be quite creative in developing their own theologies of suffering. We have already seen that Nuremberg’s council secretary Lazarus Spengler espoused a view of suffering in his early consolation treatise that was not in agreement with Luther’s theology; for a time, he continued to think of suffering as a means of penance for sin. This was a case of simple (but productive) misunderstanding. More interesting is the example of Katharina Schütz Zell. She had an understanding of suffering that no doubt diverged from the theology of Strasbourg preachers such as Martin Bucer, Johannes Marbach, and even her own husband, Matthias Zell (d. 1548). In the mid-1550s, Schütz Zell began ministering to Sir Felix Armbruster, a member of the Strasbourg governing council and one of the few aristocrats who had supported the evangelical movement in the imperial city.57 In 1552, he was stricken with leprosy and forced to move outside the city walls, where he lived alone until his death in 1559. Armbruster’s wife was already dead, and his daughter refused to see him, perhaps fearing infection. Schütz Zell would visit Armbruster and seek to encourage the isolated aristocrat, but in time, she became too sick to do so; she was also busy caring for her nephew, who suffered from both mental and physical disabilities. Therefore, the church mother composed a work of consolation and sent it to Armbruster, hoping to accomplish with the written word what she could no longer achieve in person. The 1558 work, which she later had printed (I), contains a letter of dedication to Armbruster, along with meditations on Psalms 51 and 130 and an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. (Schütz Zell had authored the exposition of the Lord’s Prayer in 1532 and the meditations on the Psalms in the late 1540s.) In her treatment of the Lord’s Prayer, the church mother argues that before the Incarnation, God could not fully empathize with human weakness because he had not experienced such weakness himself.58 Drawing on the same kind of feminine and maternal imagery that she employed in To the Suffering Christ-believing Women of the Community of Kentzingen, Schütz

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Zell asserts that only a woman who has born and nursed a child can have true compassion for children; therefore, she reasons, it was not possible for God to have true compassion for his creation until Christ bore human beings anew in grace (and much blood) and nursed them at his own breast. After the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, God the Father could love suffering humanity in a new way because humanity was now joined with his beloved Son. Again making an analogy to family life, Schütz Zell reasons that just as a grandfather loves the children of his son because he loves his son, so God the Father loves his Son’s children, (evangelical) Christians. While it is difficult to understand why Schütz Zell’s jealous and wrathful God of the Old Testament would be moved to send his Son to save sinful humanity, her account of how God grows in compassion for suffering human beings clearly illustrates great lay theological innovation (and direct borrowing from late medieval female Cistercian Passion piety).59 She was not a passive recipient of the Strasbourg reformers’ doctrine of suffering. The relevant sources furthermore show us that consolation in the Protestant Reformation was not a strictly top-down affair; that is, solace did not flow in one direction only, from the clergy to the laity. Laypeople not only consoled one another, but they could also console their pastors as they suffered in mind or body, something that is attested in the consolation works of the Joachimsthal preacher Johannes Mathesius. He began his ministry in Joachimsthal in 1542, marrying the daughter of a local mine official in the same year. Thirteen years later, in 1555, tragedy struck Mathesius’s home. His wife, Sybille, died ten days after giving birth to their seventh child. The Joachimsthal preacher never really recovered emotionally from this blow.60 As we have seen, Mathesius wrote poems for his deceased wife and memorialized her in funeral sermons, some of which he delivered at home to his children and then later published (see chapter 8 above).61 The grief wore him down, as did the responsibility of caring for his seven children—he did not remarry. Approximately ten months after Sybille’s death, Mathesius suffered another blow. He was prone to spells of dizziness, and on one such occasion, he had a bad fall in which he seriously injured his right arm.62 He sought healing at a local spring and then through various medications, but nothing helped; he only got worse. The loss of feeling and stiffness that originally afflicted only his right hand now spread to his whole arm and in time to all of his limbs. This physical illness, coupled with the strain of unresolved grief, gave rise to spiritual despondency. At the end of

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December 1555, Mathesius managed to write a short note to Melanchthon, asking for his prayers and confessing that he, like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, was troubled to the point of death (Nam tristis sum usque ad mortem).63 Mathesius made a partial recovery, but his arm never properly healed. He soldiered on as best he could. For eight years, Mathesius continued to be troubled in body and soul. Finally, in the Easter season of 1564, he collapsed, overcome by both physical and spiritual fatigue. He sought support and consolation from his colleagues in Joachimsthal and also from his congregation. He wrote a letter to his fellow pastor Caspar Franck (d. 1578), asking that prayers be made for him “even in public [i.e., in church] and by name” (ora pro me etiam publice et nominatim). At the close of this letter, the Joachimsthal preacher refers to himself as “Mathesius sitting in the sieve of Satan” (Mathesius sedens in cribro Sathanae.)64 In this period of great suffering, Mathesius could not sleep at night because he was plagued by fears of death and by feelings of God-forsakenness; he could hardly talk, had difficulty breathing, and also could not bring himself to pray or read Scripture. By his own later admission, he had become suicidal; all knives had to be kept out of his sight.65 The preacher’s colleagues, friends, and family stayed by his side for eight weeks, never leaving him alone but seeking to console him with hymns, prayers, and readings from Scripture.66 Meanwhile, two doctors worked intensively with him, and he gradually began to recover, both physically and spiritually. Slowly, he started reading again and “sighing” to Christ,67 and then eventually, he could help with catechesis and children’s sermons. Finally, in June of the same year, he returned to the pulpit and preached on Psalm 119: 71 (“It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your decrees”).68 A little while later, Mathesius preached another series of sermons on Psalm 130 (“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord”), which had been of special help to him during his suffering. In the preface to the printed edition of these sermons—The Consoling De Profundis (1565, IV)—the Joachimsthal preacher reveals that in addition to the solace he received from his parishioners and from the people who kept watch by his side for eight weeks, he was also greatly consoled by the prayers and letters of several pious women from other churches. Mathesius does not mention any of them by name, and to my knowledge, none of the letters is extant, but it is clear that he valued their encouragement highly, in no way feeling that he, as a pastor, was above receiving consolation from lay women. He dedicated his De Profundis to all of the women who helped him in his darkest

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hours and offered them this work as a token of his gratitude. In the preface, Mathesius sings the praises of all of the holy women God had used in the past to accomplish his divine purposes. Early modern ego-documents not only reveal how active lay burghers could be in developing their own theologies of consolation, and in seeking to minister to one another and their pastors, but these sources also show that evangelical townsfolk shared with their Catholic counterparts some important assumptions about the purposes of piety and the nature of the God to whom they were so devoted. For example, burghers believed in what Steven Ozment has called the prophylactic nature of religion;69 their religion was as much about seeking protection in this life as it was about securing a place in heaven in the next life, although it was certainly about this, too. In other words, the traditional do-ut-des mentality continued to be part of evangelical burgher piety. In the early 1520s, Lazarus Spengler drafted a pamphlet about the Turkish threat to the German lands that clearly evinces this mentality. The council secretary outlines the kind of piety that he thinks God demands in exchange for divine protection and then quotes the following German proverb: “If we do what we should, then God will do what we would” (Wann wir thetten, was wir sollen, so thett Got, was wir wollen).70 Unlike in Spengler’s early work of consolation, here there was no misunderstanding of Wittenberg theology, for the reformers advocated the same principle in the temporal sphere; justification by faith apart from works was limited to the spiritual sphere.71 The prophylactic nature of burgher religion is evident not only in urban dwellers’ concern for the safety of their cities but also in their understandable obsession with individual physical health. Burgher letters and autobiographical accounts from across the confessions are filled with references to physical dangers and maladies along with divine deliverance from the same. The Augsburg patrician and merchant Lucas Rem (1481– 1542) records in his diary how in 1508, he was miraculously preserved from shipwreck by God and Saint Laurence in Spain, having run aground on a bank, only later to be delivered by a strong wind.72 One year later, near Lisbon, he fell from his horse but was not harmed. Rem uses religious language to describe his deep sense of relief: “I came wonderfully out of this without any harm. Therefore, I may say that on this day I was reborn.”73 Burghers thought that the best way to secure such divine protection was to be pious; they firmly believed that God would bless the Godly and punish the un-Godly (eventually). As the Nuremberg patrician’s daughter Magdalena Behaim (1555–1642) was fond of saying, “In time, each will get

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what he deserves.”74 This belief in the vital connection between morality and well-being for individuals and communities was an essential feature of burgher religion. Evangelical burghers might have rejected many forms of Catholic piety, but they retained the basic concern of traditional burgher religion for protection, along with the belief that Godliness was the best way to secure it. Anabaptist town dwellers were no different. Georg Frell, a bookbinder and bookseller in the Swiss town of Chur, records in his autobiography (ca. 1571) how his father, a night watchman, would pray for divine protection: “And whenever he would leave the house or go to bed or rise from bed, this would be his prayer: ‘May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, that is, the Holy Trinity, protect us from water, fire, from great sorrow and grief, from sin and from all evil. And may the almighty God and Father . . . show [his protection] neither too early nor too late, but at just the right time, through Jesus Christ, Amen.’”75 Lutherans such as the Greifswald lawyer and mayor Bartholomew Sastrow (1520–1603) and the Breslau goldsmith Wolfgang Vincentz (d. 1586) saw the same connection between piety and blessing. Sastrow composed his autobiography in 1595 for the express purpose of persuading his children that God always works things for the good of the Godly (Romans 8:28) and for the bad of the un-Godly.76 Vincentz had a similar purpose in compiling his family chronicle: he wanted to give his children an account of his piety, which he thought would provide a guarantee that God would bless them and subsequent generations of his family.77 These authors all believed that they had much to learn from suffering and in no way expected God to protect them from all misfortune. They agreed with their priests and pastors that it was necessary for Christians to suffer if they were to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But they still hoped that God would regard their piety, however inadequate it might be, with favor and either minimize their suffering or deliver them from it in a timely fashion. This deep concern for safety and protection, when coupled with the nearly universal belief that piety would be rewarded by God and impiety punished, gave good works a standing in burgher religion that at times was out of step with evangelical soteriology,78 which ultimately undermines all forms of do-ut-des thinking.79 Protestant preachers were always quick to point out that the retributive-justice model applied to this life only, but one cannot help but wonder if the majority of evangelical burghers were able to make such a clean division between the spiritual and temporal spheres of their lives, especially when they heard so

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much about the necessity of growth in Christ-likeness in the devotional and consolation literature of the day. Evangelical burghers also shared with their Catholic counterparts an abiding belief in the utter sovereignty of God, especially where suffering and adversity were concerned. Burghers lived in a world in which “security or calamity always remained one gratuitous divine decision away.”80 The belief in divine sovereignty cut across the confessions, but evangelical burghers were arguably predisposed to emphasize it more strongly than their Catholic counterparts because of the premium placed on God’s freedom and human bondage to sin in Protestant theology. The belief in divine sovereignty over adversity appears time and again in evangelical ego-documents. Michael Behaim asserts the following in a 1529 letter that he wrote when he feared death was near: “I believe I must die soon. But let God’s will be done, for it must always be as He wills.”81 After the danger has passed, he remarks in another letter, “I, too, praise God, am in good health. For a while, I had truly feared I would become very ill, but, thank God, I now expect to be spared. But God’s will shall be done.”82 The nominally Protestant law professor in Basel, Bonifacius Amerbach (1495– 1562),83 records his father-in-law’s words after the death of Amerbach’s wife from plague in 1541: “God the Almighty wanted it so; to him we must commend it, because what he wills shall be.”84 Private letters written during a 1562–63 outbreak of plague in Nuremberg attest the same belief in divine sovereignty over suffering.85 Linhart Tucher, a leading member of the city council, wrote a letter to one Hans Tiedeshoren in which he comments on the death of a mutual friend: “I have a true empathy with [the deceased’s] beloved and remaining relatives, but we still must allow the will of God to please us and we must be prepared, for he will also summon us.”86 Sebastian Imhoff (1511–1572), another well-to-do burgher, sounds a similar note in his letters. Writing from the safe haven of Nördlingen to a relative in Nuremberg, he has the following to say about a friend’s passing: “Because it is the will of God, one must commend the situation to him. Whatever God allows here on earth is most fitting.”87 Imhoff observes in another letter that people can take whatever measures they want against the plague, “nevertheless, the whole affair is in the hands of God, whom we must ask to take away this punishment from us.”88 A city council member named Joachim Haller (1524– 1570) informed a friend in Speier by letter about the progress of the plague in Nuremberg and then shared the news that the recipient’s cousin had “paid the debt of nature” while living in Nördlingen. Haller concludes,

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“because it is according to the gracious decree of God, we must give it over with patience to his divine will.”89 God frequently decreed that human beings should suffer, and he himself attacked them through numerous means, a theme that appears again and again in evangelical ego-documents. Burghers believed that the Almighty was constantly afflicting and testing them through all manner of tribulation. The Zwinglian Thomas Platter saw an outbreak of plague in Basel as an assault (angriff) of God,90 and the Lutheran Michael Behaim interpreted his own personal suffering in a similar fashion, as did the Nuremberg patrician couple Magdalena Behaim (1555–1642) and Balthasar Paumgartner (1551–1600).91 Misfortune was an Anfechtung, and ultimately, the one who assaulted humanity through misfortune was God and God alone.92 Unlike the unnamed peasant in Osiander’s church ordinance, the authors of the extant ego-documents do not object to such assaults or to the idea that God is the primary assailant, although they appreciate that this idea can be difficult to accept. Such divine attacks are always held to be just and are frequently interpreted as stemming from God’s goodness, not from his wrath. Thus, the Nuremberg patrician Kaspar Nützel sought to console his uncle Friedrich Behaim on the death of the latter’s infant son (1520), advising him to “give this over to God, because he decrees nothing evil.”93 (Nützel was a member of the Nuremberg circle of humanists, and it was he who first translated Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses into German.) Every escape from peril and every recovery from illness was credited to the all-knowing and all-powerful God. When a man in Breslau was delivered from a kidney stone through an especially gruesome surgery, Wolfgang Vincentz attributed it to “God’s great goodness.”94 Similar to the case in the evangelical consolation literature, God was held to work primarily through natural means such as medicine and healing springs to express his mercy and goodness. Magdalena Behaim prayed that God would heal her husband, Balthasar, of his rheumatic pains and headaches through the natural springs that were located near Lucca, Italy. She writes to him in 1584, “I have hoped that Almighty God will grant my heartfelt prayer and restore your health there by Christian means, since it has not been his will to do so here.”95 When Balthasar later began to drink from the springs, he did so “in God’s name,” being fully convinced that they would have no healing effect without God willing them to do so.96 He tells his wife that he has placed himself “in the hands of the loving God, the best Physician and Healer, who is best able to help me, according to his divine will.”97 Balthasar

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describes himself as “in God’s name . . . drinking, peeing, walking, and sweating a lot,” and also as “trusting God” to cure him.98 In some ways, medicine was an evangelical ersatz for late medieval sacramentals. Doctors could describe medicine and the medical arts in language normally reserved for the sacraments, and burghers such as Magdalena Behaim and Balthasar Paumgartner did the same.99 Natural springs, various herbs, plants, roots, and the like had the potential to become means of grace by which God miraculously preserved the faithful, if God chose to do so. Here evangelical Christians had tangible (although not especially reliable) access to divine power to help them contend with divine afflictions.100

A Resourceful Stoicism Evangelical burghers’ belief in God’s sovereignty over all things, including their suffering, did not produce in them a spirit of passivity or stoic apatheia, or this is not all that it produced in them. They did not believe that they were dealing with sheer power in their tribulations; they thought that they were dealing with their Almighty Father. Therefore, their response was not forced submission but chosen obedience. They furthermore believed that God had provided numerous means, both spiritual and physical, through which they could and should prepare themselves for suffering, so that they could be ready to contend with it once it befell them and their loved ones, as it certainly would. The most striking thing about the ego-documents is not their moderated Stoicism,101 which is certainly present, but their testimony to the remarkable resourcefulness and even creativity of evangelical burghers as they suffered.102 Scholars of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century lay piety have made much of this resourcefulness;103 Reformation scholars should also do so. Instead, several Reformation scholars have characterized lay evangelical piety differently, especially in the last decade or so.104 They have argued that developments such as the evangelical rejection of the saints and the general effort to reduce (in the Lutheran case) or reject (in the Reformed case) the points of contact between the natural and the supernatural left the Protestant laity with very few resources as they faced suffering.105 The anxiety that this produced contributed directly to a number of developments in early modern Lutheranism that we have already noted: a growing apocalyptic outlook and concomitant fear of the devil;106 a fascination with astrology and various signs and portents;107 a concern

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with moral discipline as a way of seeking divine favor;108 and a generalized sense of guilt for having squandered the gospel that God provided to Germany through Luther.109 The result was a very anxious human being who frequently felt powerless before Almighty God. Rather than providing peace for the troubled and anxious consciences of late medieval burghers, as Steven Ozment once argued,110 the Protestant Reformation only robbed urban dwellers of the few means they had of contending with life’s many trials and tribulations. The Protestant Reformation created anxiety; it did not assuage it. Each of these elements was present in early modern evangelical lay piety, although not in equal measure for each person,111 and there was much anxiety. But these elements and this anxiety were not all that was present in Protestant lay piety, especially among burghers. Recent scholarship has presented a one-sided picture of evangelical laypeople and their piety. A picture of the other—or at least, of another—side shows laypeople who were remarkably active and resourceful in their religious lives and who found a great deal of consolation in the evangelical faith. One might argue that these laypeople, most of them upper-middle-class and upperclass burghers, were among the select few in early modern society who had any real agency at all, and therefore, what one sees in their piety is simply a reflection of their social class, not something that was common or available to everyone or that was intrinsic to the evangelical faith. There is something to this argument, but one can also counter it by observing that burghers farther down in the socioeconomic hierarchy showed similar agency, purchasing works of consolation that they presumably read very carefully. The resourcefulness and creativity attested in the extant egodocuments need not have been a purely elite phenomenon, although the ability to produce certain kinds of ego-documents certainly was. Like death, suffering is a very effective social leveler;112 this was especially true in the early modern period, when status and wealth did not necessarily translate into better health or medical care, that is, reduced suffering. Mary Lindemann has argued that early modern Europeans displayed an impressive degree of resourcefulness and agency in the pursuit of health and healing; they were not passive in the face of the numerous mysterious diseases that afflicted them.113 The same was true in the spiritual life for people of every standing. As we have seen, a central goal of Lutheran preaching and writing about suffering was to encourage laypeople to become well-trained evangelical spiritual knights. There is every indication that at least a portion of the population took this advice to heart.

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One way evangelical burghers actively sought to console themselves was by employing the various explanations for suffering that had been approved by their pastors and by rejecting those that were deemed unbiblical. For example, the evangelical ego-documents never view tribulation as a penance for sin. They also usually avoid attributing suffering exclusively to divine punishment, something that one sees in a letter that Lazarus Spengler sent to his sister-in-law during a 1533 outbreak of plague in Nuremberg. The council secretary writes, “In sum, God wishes to be and remain the lord and master, and [he] gives us cause in this punishment to cry to him and to acknowledge him as our only helper.”114 For Spengler, plague was both a punishment for sin and a spur to prayer and faith. The Zwinglian Thomas Platter saw things the same way. When he and his wife were first stricken by plague in 1563 and then delivered from the same, Platter prayed in his autobiography that God would use both the suffering and the healing to bring honor to God’s name, which he saw as the salvation of their souls.115 Wolfgang Vincentz, a Lutheran, interpreted an outbreak of plague in 1568 as God’s means of testing and purifying Christians.116 Bartholomew Sastrow, also a Lutheran, saw the numerous ways in which God had allowed the devil to afflict him in his body as the Almighty’s efforts to teach him to seek help from God alone and to yearn for the next life.117 The Anabaptist Georg Frell similarly maintained that the purpose of suffering was to teach human beings to seek help from one source only, God—this is what Frell most wanted to teach his children in his autobiography.118 An especially rich example of a lay Lutheran who used several of the standard evangelical causae to explain his suffering may be found in the autobiography of the Augsburg lawyer and humanist Lucas Geizkofler (1550–1620).119 Geizkofler and his wife, Katharina Hörmann von Guetenberg, lost their five-month-old son Ludwig in March 1591, just one year after they had married. A few weeks later, Geizkofler, who worked for the Fuggers, was called to Prague on business for an extended period of time. The Augsburg lawyer knew that his wife was suffering greatly from the death of their child, and he was also clearly struggling with his own grief. On Palm Sunday 1592, he wrote to Katharina, seeking to bring her some solace: To this point I have consoled myself by considering that the Founder of holy matrimony does not visit Christian married folk with the dear cross out of wrath, rather much more out of a fatherly inclination to test their patience and to bless them, and that all of his works

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are meant for our best, which they achieve. [This is] something that you, my beloved spouse, might also consider and console yourself with in a Christian manner. We should and indeed gladly wish to confess that we are great sinners and have certainly merited every manner of cross and suffering. But along with this we must remind ourselves in what way the same crosses and sufferings are sent to us Christians, [namely,] so that in this world we Christians do not allow ourselves to be taken in and tempted by the temporal and the worldly treasure, rather much more are moved to strive after the eternal and heavenly treasure. In the time that I have been absent from you and allowed myself to be too concerned with worldly business, such things, my beloved wife, have caused me to go into myself, and especially in this Lent to seek after an enduring consolation in our miserable life. In view of our sinful lives, we may seek and find this [consolation] through no other means and through no one else than our Savior Jesus Christ and his bitter suffering and death, which according to ancient Christian usage is held up for our consideration especially in Lent and Holy Week.120 Here we see Geizkofler seeking to reassure himself and his wife that the death of their son was not a punishment for sin, even though he believed that they well deserved such punishment; rather, it was a fatherly test of their patience and a fatherly blessing that caused them to seek what was best for them, the true treasure in heaven. The Augsburg lawyer also moved beyond these standard evangelical remedies and considered the very ground of Christian consolation itself. For him, it could only be Christ and the merit he won for humanity on the cross. Geizkofler composed a theological treatise on Christ’s merit that he sent to his wife along with this letter. In it, he again emphasized that God sends suffering to Christians not because he is their enemy but because he is their Father, and as such, he disciplines those whom he loves (Proverbs 3:12).121 Geizkofler’s decision to compose this treatise provides a very helpful example of the strong emphasis on self-consolation that Johann Anselm Steiger and others have found in early modern Lutheranism. This tradition of self- and neighbor consolation is the most important piece of evidence in the argument advanced here that early modern Lutheran lay piety was marked by resourcefulness, creativity, and even confidence, not just by fear and anxiety. There is no reason to maintain that this tradition of self-consolation was unique to Lutheranism or even to Protestantism.

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After all, its origins lie in the late medieval Catholic ars moriendi. But, as we have seen, self-consolation did take on a unique form and urgency in Lutheranism, owing to the emphasis on the priesthood of all believers and the rejection of traditional means of dealing with suffering such as the cult of the saints. In any case, there are many more lay Lutheran sources to document such self-consolation than there are for the other Christian confessions in early modern Germany. In his letter and theological treatise, Geizkofler reveals an additional aspect of the solace that deserves our attention. He describes in his letter to his wife how he has read the account of the Passion again and again and how he has made for himself a small hand- or memory-booklet (ein kleines Hand- oder Memorialbüchel) based on it, a reference to his theological treatise. He says that he has also copied down consoling sayings from some of the leading teachers of the church (etlichen fürnehmen Kirchenlehrern) and organized them into chapters. Because he was living in the recently reCatholicized Prague, there were apparently no Protestant sources available to him, but he was able to borrow works of Origen, Hilary, Augustine, and Bernard, among others, from a Jesuit “who travels and rightly teaches the way of Jesus to salvation” (der den weg Jesu zur seligkeit recht gehet und lehret). He tells his wife that he has found something especially consoling in these works, namely, their emphasis on Christ being the bridegroom not only of the church but of every Christian soul. Geizkofler takes great solace from the knowledge that as a loving husband, Christ has given to his bride, the Christian, all of his works and merit—they belong to her, and therefore, she can and should claim them as her own. Christ awakens an “inexpressible consolation” (unaussprechlichen trost) in Christians by means of the mystery of holy matrimony, the indivisible union of honor, body, and goods between a bridegroom and his bride. Geizkofler believes that husbands and wives are able to experience in their love for each other the kind of fervent love (inbrünstige lieb) that Christ must have for the church on earth, which is a source of great solace.122 Interestingly, Geizkofler found in the ancient and medieval fathers precisely the thing that Luther and later Lutheran theologians such as Martin Moller discovered in them: the “wonderful exchange.” It is not clear if the Augsburg lawyer had read Luther’s Freedom of the Christian or Moller’s The Great Mystery, but he clearly saw Bernardine-style bridal mysticism as an important source of consolation for himself and his wife;123 believing that Christ had taken on all of his sin and offered divine grace in its place brought peace to Geizkofler’s troubled conscience,

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allowing him to face his suffering with confidence, because he did not need to view it as punishment meted out by an angry God. At least in the case of this Augsburg lawyer, Lutheran consolers were correct to assume common ground between Luther’s spiritual experience and that of devout laypeople. This borrowing from ancient and medieval sources also demonstrates that a certain eclectic evangelicalism could still be found among both the clergy and the laity during the age of confessionalization, even among those who were deeply committed to the Wittenberg faith, such as Geizkokler.124 There was a certain porosity between the confessions even as the boundaries between the confessions were being drawn and emphasized more strongly than ever. One sees this porosity especially in instances of suffering. We have already seen other examples of self- and neighbor consolation among Lutheran lay burghers in Lazarus Spengler, Katharina Schütz Zell, and the pious women who wrote to Johannes Mathesius. Christopher Brown has discovered similar examples of Lutheran laypeople consoling one another with hymns and also via lay absolution, especially in the case of midwives.125 Lutheran funeral sermons are also full of references to how the deceased memorized or copied down consoling sayings from the Bible or devotional works to provide themselves with solace as they suffered and faced their end; the sermons urge survivors to do the same.126 Another very rich example of a Lutheran burgher who took such advice to heart comes from a source that has received no scholarly attention of any kind: the Pious Meditations on the Most Sorrowful Bereavement (1619) of the jurist and legal adviser to the Nuremberg city council, Johannes Christoph Oelhafen (1571–1631).127 Similarly to the works prepared by Lucas Geizkofler for his wife, Oelhafen’s Pious Meditations provides evidence not only of how burghers could exercise remarkable creativity and resourcefulness in their ministries of self- and neighbor consolation, but it also shows how the Lutheran emphasis on consolation—highlighted by Susan Karant-Nunn in her The Reformation of Feeling—could shape the emotional lives of Lutheran burghers in profound ways.128 Oelhafen’s work may be seen as a self-conscious attempt to allow Lutheran consolation to inform and heal his own emotional life, along with that of his children and their descendants. Upon the death of his wife of nearly eighteen years (February 1619), Oelhafen began composing prayers, hymns, confessions, and other devotional reflections to help him and his eight children deal with their collective grief. According to one source, in addition to being a highly educated

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man, Oelhafen was in the regular habit of composing his own hymns and prayers, and so it was only natural that he would employ these talents as he sought to contend with his grief.129 As we have seen in the case of Lucas Geizkofler, the creation of private devotional material was a commonplace among people of Oelhafen’s class; so, too, was the use of various rhetorical devices and strategies to assuage grief, something that one finds in the Pious Meditations.130 Still, there is nothing quite like Oelhafen’s work of consolation in the extant private devotional literature of the period, for where others culled inspirational thoughts from established sources, providing their own commentary now and again, Oelhafen recorded his own inspirational thoughts, although he no doubt drew heavily on the many devotional manuals that were available in his day. At some point, Oelhafen produced a final handwritten version of his musings on gilded vellum pages and had them bound as a book in red leather. He intended the book for the private use of a very close circle of friends and family members, then to be passed on to subsequent generations of Oelhafens. Oelhafen’s wife was Anna Maria Harsdörffer (1582–1619),131 and it seems that the two enjoyed an especially rich marriage.132 This is certainly how he presents their relationship in the Pious Meditations. Oelhafen refers to his deceased wife throughout as AMICO, a neologism composed of an acrostic of their joint initials intended to convey the deep union that he believed existed between them: Anna Maria Iohannes Christoph Oelhafen.133 We learn from Oelhafen’s diary that Anna Maria had been violently ill in the days before her death and that it was a stroke that finally claimed her life.134 However, Oelhafen does not reveal what caused this illness; perhaps it was related to the cumulative effects of having borne thirteen children in eighteen years of marriage, the last of which came just months before her death. (The couple saw five of these children die in infancy.) One source asserts that Oelhafen was an especially pious and theologically well-informed man who began and ended each day by reading Scripture.135 As we will see, the death of Anna Maria would call forth every spiritual resource that Oelhafen could muster. The first entry in Oelhafen’s Pious Meditations is dated February 13, 1619, the day of Anna Maria’s death. His deep sense of loss and his longing for consolation and reunion with his beloved are palpable: O living God and Consoler of all the sad-hearted, I have lost my dearest treasure on earth, for you have torn away a piece of my heart. You gave her to me and let me have her for eighteen years;

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now you have taken her again to yourself out of this miserable existence as your dear child, because she knew your Son and called to him from her heart as her bridegroom in the middle of death’s despair. Console me, a sad and miserable widower, and help me to bear my suffering and to rear up my small children. According to your divine will, send a blessed final hour when I and those who belong to me may come together with her and be near her before your face in new joy and eternal love. May you, who can bring eternal joy and pleasure out of suffering, be highly praised in all eternity. Amen.136 We see here several themes and images that are present in the Lutheran (and most premodern Christian) consolation literature and also recur throughout the Pious Meditations. Among these are the bridal imagery that we saw in Lucas Geizkofler and Martin Moller (and Luther), along with the belief that God is both sovereign over suffering and also humanity’s only true source of comfort in the midst of it. We also see Oelhafen’s great concern for his children. Why had God deprived Oelhafen of his “most beloved treasure on earth”? Oelhafen thought that it was because of his sin, although this was not his only explanation.137 The day after his wife’s death, as she was laid in her coffin, Oelhafen composed a second prayer in which he beseeches God to remove his “great rod of wrath” (große Zorn Ruthe) from him and his family. A number of entries reveal the same desire for cessation of divine wrath and take the form of confessions of sin.138 Oelhafen does not reveal any specific sin that might have moved God to chastise him so severely; he focuses not on his sins but on his general sinfulness. He also stresses that only God can provide the needed forgiveness. And so Oelhafen turned to God and God alone for consolation.139 Four days after Anna Maria’s death, as a wagon carried her coffin to the cemetery, he composed a poem that expressed this absolute dependence on God: When I consider my misery, and cast my eyes here and there, All help and consolation from people and the wide world fail me. But you, the true and merciful God, help me, because urgent help is necessary.

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If you do not provide counsel and salvation, I will soon die too. If you do not take away this burden, my heart will have neither peace nor rest. O Father, regard my sighs and tears with grace, so that I can endure this heavy hardship into which my wife’s death has plunged me. If your helpful hand would only extend a little finger, there would be nothing to fear. I would be wholly strong, calm, and healthy, and would have peace and rest at the same hour. It is the merit and great beneficence of your Son by which he redeemed us that I seek and desire from the heart and humbly grasp in faith.140 The mention of faith in the merit of Christ in the final lines of this poem provides further evidence of the intimate connection that Lutheran believers saw between justification by faith and the ability to face suffering with hope and confidence. As long as one knew that one was forgiven through grace, one could contend with tribulation, no matter how severe. Again and again, Oelhafen places the cross between himself and God’s wrath as he seeks mercy and grace in his grief and suffering.141 The merit that Christ won for humanity not only provided Oelhafen with hope in the face of divine chastisement, but it also relieved him of the need (and the opportunity) to see his suffering as in some way salvific. As he observes in a later entry, the only merit that he believes he can offer to God is the merit of the cross, Christ’s cross,142 not his own. Oelhafen never sees his suffering as meritorious. He believes that he has to bear his suffering patiently but not because it will atone for his sins. The only way he can “satisfy” God is through faith.143 It is clear from the Pious Meditations that faith did not always come easily to the grieving Oelhafen. In another entry, he compares himself to doubting Thomas and confesses his lack of faith.144 In such instances, Oelhafen turns to biblical promises of divine goodness and mercy for solace. He consoles himself with the promise that God will not discard the broken reed, that is, the weak in faith (Isaiah 42:3; Matthew 12:20).145 In one entry, he states that although he feels utterly abandoned and his children are now

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motherless, God’s unique work is to have mercy.146 In another entry, he asserts that God is like a mother hen who protects and does not forget her chicks.147 Such assertions of divine goodness were essential to Oelhafen’s sense of consolation, and one can see him seeking to persuade himself and his children of their veracity again and again in the Pious Meditations. This work also contains a number of hymns in which Oelhafen has revised well-known songs to convey the depth of his grief and his desire for consolation.148 For example, in Oelhafen’s version of All Mankind Fell in Adam’s Fall (which was written by Lazarus Spengler), he conveys the sola Christus nature of his piety: Before you alone Lord Jesus Christ I now lament my hardship. You are rich in consolation and help; Do not allow me to despair. In you alone stands my hope; Give to me, Lord, your grace, so that I may be obedient to you and so that this cross will not harm me. (verse 1)149 It is the “alones” that are so striking in this verse. Christ alone is Oelhafen’s source of consolation as he bears his cross. In another hymn, written in early May, Oelhafen observes that the coming of spring has brought only suffering instead of the usual joy and refreshment.150 In an interesting move for someone with Oelhafen’s humanist training, he insists that time, the great boon to griefstricken souls in classical consolation literature, cannot remove his cross, which only seems to grow heavier as the weeks and months pass. This conviction, along with the intended audience—Oelhafen’s children and their descendants—helps to explain why there are no references to works of consolation from classical antiquity, whether Christian or pagan. There is one brief quotation from Boethius, who drew heavily on such works, but that is it. The primary and nearly exclusive source for Oelhafen’s Meditations is Scripture, which he quotes frequently, in many cases providing book and chapter references in the margins. There are no nonbiblical references in the margins, a rather striking commentary on Oelhafen’s piety and the sources to which he felt he could turn and trust in his hour of greatest need.151 As a Lutheran spiritual knight, Oelhafen outfitted himself first and foremost (and nearly exclusively) with Scripture.

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Perhaps the most moving entry in Oelhafen’s Pious Meditations is the ten-stanza poem he composed on the occasion of his wedding anniversary, May 25.152 The poem takes the form of a dialogue between Oelhafen and his deceased wife, in which he has her consoling him with assurances of her blessed existence in heaven, a rhetorical device that other grieving Lutherans also employed in their works of consolation.153 Oelhafen begins by calling out to Anna Maria, asking her to relieve his grief, which clearly has not subsided: AMICO, beloved darling, where have you gone? Has the dear God taken you to himself? Or have you been completely taken from me for no reason? On our anniversary speak or cry out and help me to lessen my heart’s sorrow.154 Anna Maria “responds” that she is now in God’s “hall of joy” (frewden Saal), where there is no pain, and therefore, Johannes Christoph should let go of his concern for her. He cannot do so; he “replies” that he still bears his suffering all the time and that his heart aches for her every hour. He also wishes that she could still be with their children, though healthy and not sick. Anna Maria again “counsels” him not to despair but to give himself over to God’s will and in so doing to find peace for his troubled heart. She also “urges” him to take comfort in the fact that she died in his arms, as she had wished. Now he must let go of her, body and soul, for this is the divine will.155 Oelhafen finally resolves to do so, or at least to make a beginning in doing so, and wishes her much joy, even as he eagerly anticipates the day when she will be reunited with him and their children in heaven. In the final line of this ten-stanza poem, Oelhafen reveals that he has sung the preceding nine stanzas in the presence of his children, who shared his tears for his departed beloved.156 In the Pious Meditations, Oelhafen teaches his children how to grieve as good Lutherans by welcoming them into his own grief at a very intimate level. It would take some time for Oelhafen fully to commend Anna Maria into the hands of God. He confesses in the very next entry (on the very

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next day, May 26) that he simply cannot bear this cross of grief unless God helps him. He asks God to hold him “secure in faith and constant in hope” (fest im glauben, unndt bestendig in hoffnung). He thanks God for sending him “visible angels” (sichtbare Engel), that is, his good friends, who have offered their own consolation.157 (Oelhafen was not completely alone, it seems. He received comfort from this-worldly saints, and elsewhere in the Pious Meditations, he expresses gratitude for the consolation that he has received through the Lord’s Supper and private confession.) Oelhafen then prays that God will help him to regard this affliction as a sign not of God’s “disfavor” (ungnaden) but of God’s “fatherly affection” (väterlichen liebs naigung) that only seeks his “edification” (besserung). He goes on to ask for help in remaining faithful in his calling, adding, “so that your fatherly heart’s affection (which is frequently hidden under the Cross) may correspond to my immature faith, and equipped with your strength, power, and might as a Christian knight, may [it] stand firm.”158 It seems that Oelhafen was familiar with the theology of the cross and here applies it directly to his own suffering. In the later entries of the Pious Meditations, Oelhafen continues to lament his meager supply of faith in the hidden God. On December 21, he again beseeches God to forgive his small faith and to grant him deeper trust in the future. He wants to be able to hold to God firmly in faith and love regardless of whether he sees or feels God.159 One is tempted to conclude that Oelhafen did not expect or even desire such experiences of the divine, that the consolation that he sought consisted exclusively of a Wordinspired faith in the goodness of God that believed against considerable evidence to the contrary, including the state of one’s own affective life. There certainly is support for this interpretation in the Pious Meditations— after all, he asks God for nothing more than a little finger (Ein fingerlein) of help160—but there is also reason to qualify and augment this reading. On October 28, Oelhafen composed a prayer to the “sweet Jesus Christ” (Ach du süßer Jhesus christe), in which he asks, “let me always feel your friendly sweetness in my heart” (laß mich deine freundliche süßigkeit in meinem hertzen allwegen Empfinden). There is no request here for ecstatic union with the divine essence, as in the late medieval mystics, but it seems that Oelhafen did wish and even long to experience the presence of God in his heart, here in the form of Christ’s “inexpressible grace” (unaußsprechliche gnadte) toward his adopted friends.161 Oelhafen’s use of bridal imagery also suggests a desire for some kind of actual encounter with Christ and his grace, especially in the midst of suffering. The references to divine

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sweetness and bridal spirituality in the Pious Meditations furthermore indicate that Oelhafen was likely familiar with devotional writers who stressed these Bernardine themes, such as Martin Moller, Philipp Nicolai, and Johann Arndt—there is especially good evidence to suggest that Oelhafen was familiar with Arndt (see below). Oelhafen also could have encountered references to spiritual sweetness in Staupitz’s published Advent sermons (see chapter 3 above) and references to bridal spirituality in Luther’s The Freedom of the Christian. We do not know if he had read these works. It seems that the version of consolation that Oelhafen constructed for himself provided him with a measure of solace. His Pious Meditations end on a confident note. Owing to the trustworthy promises of the Word, he is certain that his beloved will arise with the faithful at the Last Day, and he and their children with her. His faith has weathered the test of suffering and death—but he still cannot completely let Anna Maria go. In the final verse of the final (vernacular) song, he writes that her “sweet memory” will never leave his heart.162 In addition to sharing portions of the Pious Meditations with his children, we know that Oelhafen also showed it to the well-known Lutheran pastor and theologian Johannes Saubert (1592–1646), who was a strong promoter of Arndtian-style devotion and Lutheran Orthodoxy in Altdorf, Nuremberg, and elsewhere.163 Affixed to the first page of Oelhafen’s Pious Meditations is a slip of paper with a short Latin inscription signed by Saubert. The preacher and theologian observes how those bearing the name of “friend” frequently lead one astray from the true path of faith, but here, in the Pious Meditations, one finds a friend who can be trusted: “O extraordinary testaments of extraordinary faith! In this friend Oelhafen let us learn what true faith ought to be and what it ought to love” (O’ raras Fidei rarae tabulas! In AMICO HOC OLHAFIUS qvis sit, discimus et qvid amet).164 This searching, repenting, suffering, and finally trusting faith is what the Lutheran consolation literature wished to promote. This fire-refined evangelical faith is finally what the reformation of suffering was all about. Such an approach to tribulation certainly had the potential to create anxiety for early modern Christians, but it could also provide great solace. If we wish to tell as full a story as possible about the early modern past, then we must attend to both this anxiety and this solace, for both were a part of the religious scene in Reformation Europe.

Conclusion The Protestant lands of early modern Germany experienced a reformation of suffering; the evangelical movement caused a profound change in the way many inhabitants of these lands understood and sought to cope with the afflictions of body and soul that were so prevalent in this period. The preceding pages have examined this reformation of suffering and have sought to explain its causes, defining characteristics, and larger impact, especially on pastoral care and lay piety. The preceding pages have also attempted to demonstrate that this reformation played a central role in the overall reformation of church and society envisioned by Protestant theologians and temporal rulers and that it became a crucial factor in the process of confessionalization that continued into the seventeenth century. The analysis has focused especially on Wittenberg Christianity and has emphasized the importance of consolation in this version of Protestantism, endeavoring to show how creative both pastors and laypeople could be in conveying solace to those in need. The sheer volume of Lutheran Trostschriften should have persuaded the reader of the importance of consolation in this tradition. The investigation has examined the continuities and discontinuities between Protestant and Catholic doctrines of suffering and has finally emphasized the decisive changes made by Protestants, showing how these stemmed from evangelical soteriology: suffering was no longer salvific in Protestant Frömmigkeitstheologie, a change of profound importance in the history of suffering in the Christian West.1 In many ways, the most important differences between Protestants and Catholics—and among Protestants of various stripes—had to do with suffering and its alleviation, that is, with how theologians and pastors urged their contemporaries to understand and cope with suffering and how the latter responded to this urging. Changes in attitudes toward suffering, I have argued, are among the most important changes that take place in human society. Having underscored the theme of discontinuity, in closing, I would briefly like to note an important line of continuity that runs through the entirety of the premodern Christian consolation literature. This line of

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th e r e f or m at ion of suffer ing

continuity suggests at least one possible legacy of the early modern reformation of suffering for the subsequent trajectory of Western church history. Viewed as a whole, the premodern Christian consolation literature consistently directs believers to accept their suffering patiently and to make no protest against the workings of divine providence. There is no room for lament in this literature. There is ample room for expression of sorrow, grief, and pain to God but not for anguished cries of protest against God, as happens in portions of Job. There is no holding of God to accounts, even to his own accounts, as one sees in certain Psalms. No one has the chutzpah to say to God, “Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O LORD?” (Psalm 44:23a), or, “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?” (Psalm 89:49), or, “It is time for the LORD to act” (Psalm 119:126a). This exclusion of lament was only strengthened in the Protestant reformation of suffering, owing to the strong emphasis on divine sovereignty and on human bondage to sin in Protestant theology. In his treatment of suffering in the 1533 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance, Andreas Osiander interprets Job’s cursing of his birth (Job 3:3) as a sin of impatience, despite the fact that Job has just been deprived of his children, possessions, and health.2 Similarly, in The Book of Job, the Lutheran Hieronymus Weller argues that God included Job in the Bible to give Christians hope that he has mercy on those with weak faith; Job is an example of a human being with weak faith because he questioned God, a terrible sin. Elsewhere, Weller depicts the Psalms of lament in the same way.3 He asserts, “God does nothing in vain” (Denn Gott thut nichts vergebens); therefore, the Christian must humbly submit to God’s will.4 Zwingli’s successor, Heinrich Bullinger, says much the same thing in his Instruction for the Sick (1535, VI): “Why God casts someone into sickness and does not heal him—even though he would like to do so—stands alone in the just judgment of God, against which we should not murmur or dispute.”5 According to Calvin, whose sermons on Job were translated into German in 1587 (I), Christians must know that anytime they enter into a court case (rechtshandel) with God, they will always lose.6 Job had a good case—he was not being punished for sin, as his friends charged— but the way he went about defending himself was all wrong. By way of contrast, Job’s friends defended a bad case in a good way—they did not seek to dispute with God.7 We have seen much the same thing in the pre-Reformation consolation literature. Cyprian, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, and Johannes von

Conclusion

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Dambach all emphasize the importance of submission to the divine will in suffering quite apart from any consideration of lament. Even when objections to God’s treatment of his children are occasionally entertained, they are quickly dismissed, something we saw in Henry Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom. Why this exclusion of lament? One reason is that the authors of the premodern Christian consolation literature were engaged in an ongoing battle with approaches to suffering that they saw as pagan, and therefore, they felt compelled to stress the utter sovereignty of God over all misfortune as part of their effort to bring it under the Christian sacred canopy. The authors believed that the salvation of souls was at stake in this endeavor. The premodern Christian consolation literature was in the first place a missionary literature; it aimed at Christianization or re-Christianization, which the authors saw as the necessary precursor to consolation. Unlike modern attempts at consolation, this literature was not interested in the problem of theodicy, certainly not of the post-Enlightenment variety.8 Christian consolers acknowledged that suffering could lead a person to the conclusion that God does not exist,9 but they did not dwell on this possibility. They were not facing a well-articulated case for atheism that posed a real challenge to the intellectual plausibility of Christianity; they were facing doubt and feared that their contemporaries would adopt either a practical skepticism that saw chance as the governor of life10 or a practical paganism that would seek relief from suffering in magic and superstition. Therefore, they placed a premium on the sovereignty of the triune God over suffering and sought to assure their contemporaries of his desire to comfort and save them. The authors knew that having faith in God’s goodness was difficult in the face of tribulations, which is one reason Protestants, especially, referred to faith as an “art” or a “craft” (kunst), that is, an ability to believe against experience that required disciplined training over a long period of time to master.11 Complaint, protest, questioning, and lament were not part of this art. Catholic Christianity may have provided its adherents with more means of contending with the divine will than Protestant Christianity, but both traditions finally required unquestioning submission to the divine will once it became known. Modern scholars have suggested another reason for the loss of lament: premodern Christian theologians were unduly shaped by ancient pagan philosophy, especially Stoicism, and thus lost sight of ancient Hebrew theology and the very human way in which it could conceive of God’s relationship with his covenant people. Oswald Bayer has asserted:

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Since the earliest days of Christianity, expressions of lament in worship have largely withered. Because of the influence of Stoic thought, lament was pushed out of the everyday lives of Christians, and where it does appear, it does so without form. Even theological reflection has largely ignored it. While elements of lament did not entirely disappear, because of the church’s appropriation of Israel’s psalms as ancient prayers, the fundamental significance of lament has not been accounted for in the church’s liturgy or its theology.12 What Bayer says about the disappearance of lament from Christian worship and theology also applies to Christian consolation. From the perspective of the biblical tradition of lament—a minority tradition, to be sure—one would have to conclude that the God of Cicero and Seneca is at times more present in this literature than the God of David and the Father of Jesus Christ. A feminist critique of the premodern Christian consolation literature would build on this assertion of undue allegiance to Stoicism and argue that the exclusion of lament in this literature is an unavoidable feature of the patriarchalism that infused nearly all ancient philosophy and premodern Christianity. The God of the Christian consolation literature, feminists would argue, is an impassible, omniscient, and omnipotent emperor whose absolute rule over human beings—God’s subjects—had its counterpart in the rule of house fathers, civil magistrates, and princes over the bodies and lives of their underlings. In fact, feminists would argue that belief in the patriarchal God arose from such this-worldly power relationships: similarly to mundane patriarchs, the heavenly Father brooked no dissent. Despite the assurances of this deity’s benevolence in the Christian consolation literature, feminists would maintain that the God of this literature must be rejected, not only because of the celestial emperor’s disdain for lament but especially because of this God’s concomitant role in causing suffering. A word about this role is order. From the perspective of modern feminism, clearly the most troubling and offensive aspect of the traditional view of God contained in the premodern Christian consolation literature is that this God uses suffering to punish and shape human beings. As Elizabeth Johnson has put it: What is even worse than the dominating model of God’s power in itself is its effect when introduced into the question of suffering, thereby linking destructive, radical suffering and evil to the permissive will of God. From a feminist perspective, the idea that

Conclusion

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God might permit great suffering while at the same time remaining unaffected by the distress of beloved creatures is not seriously imaginable. The connected self typical of women’s way of being in the world demands a different concept of God in the midst of suffering.13 Feminists are not alone in this critique of the traditional understanding of God and suffering; the idea that God has a causal relationship to adversity and misfortune is rejected by many contemporary theologians. The notion of God as co-sufferer is welcomed, but the idea of God as an agent of suffering is shunned, and in part for very understandable reasons.14 Of course, from the perspective of the premodern Christian consolation literature (and arguably the majority of worldwide Christians today), a God who has no causal relationship to suffering is no God at all, certainly not the God of the Bible, who both suffers with humanity—supremely on the cross—and yet is in some sense also sovereign over suffering. Both beliefs were (and are) essential to the traditional Christian assertion that suffering ultimately has some meaning and that the triune God is able to provide deliverance from it. The Christians under consideration in this book were very confident—in fact, too confident—of their ability to discern the meaning of suffering in their lives; many modern folk, on the other hand, frequently lack all such confidence and tend to remain agnostic about the ultimate causes of suffering.15 Premodern Christians would have found this agnosticism intolerable, because it would have deprived them of both meaning and hope and, finally, of God. The Christians under consideration in this study, it must be said, had a difficult time appealing to mystery in the face of suffering—it was beyond them to confess that, at least in some cases, they simply did not know how to interpret misfortune. As we have seen, they found it equally challenging to allow for lament as they encountered adversity, and for many of the same reasons. As I have worked on this project over the past several years, I have frequently wondered what the long-term impact of this difficulty might have been on the subsequent course of Western Christianity. What effect has this centuries-long rejection of lament had on the plight of Christianity in the modern Western world? Might it have contributed to the “grave-digger” effect that Jean Delumeau once accorded to early modern Christianity’s alleged focus on sin and guilt or that Charles Taylor has recently attributed to its preoccupation with a juridical-penal theory of the Atonement?16 Might the rejection of lament have been a factor in the secularization of

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Western society?17 The Protestant reformation of suffering certainly contributed to the gradual disenchantment of the world by decreasing the porosity between the natural and the supernatural realms, although, as we have seen, this contribution to secularization was neither as immediate nor as thoroughgoing as was previously believed. Perhaps the rejection of full-bodied biblical lament, which was arguably intensified in Protestant Frömmigkeitstheologie, has had an analogous effect by cutting off a crucial portion of the “relational flow” that should exist between God and his covenant people. Perhaps in the (very) long run, the insistence of the Western churches that human beings must face suffering without the possibility of lament has worked to undermine the plausibility of Christian faith, especially among certain populations of the modern West. And perhaps it is in our own day, in the widespread opposition to the idea of divinely imposed suffering, that we are finally seeing the consequences of this age-old rejection. Charles Taylor has connected the demise of belief in divine punishment of sin to the modern conviction that God’s reason for being is to promote human flourishing.18 Taylor sees this conviction as following from the “anthropocentric turn” and the “Providential Deism” that he believes have been central to the Western process of secularization.19 But perhaps the skepticism about a God who is sovereign over suffering is also related to the rejection of lament, that is, to the rejection of the human creature’s ability—even obligation—to hold the Almighty to his own accounts as an act of deep faith and appropriate self-regard when life is badly out of joint and God appears to be absent. The traditional idea of God’s sovereignty over suffering is certainly easier to embrace if it is paired with the biblical possibility of lament, for this possibility furnishes the suffering person with a crucial sense of agency before the Almighty, an agency that the God of the Bible appears to welcome, at least in some cases. Perhaps the plight of Christianity in the West would have been different if the authors of consolation literature had included lament in the doctrines of suffering that they sought to commend to their contemporaries. There is a final question that has also occupied me as I have worked on this project, one that historians are not supposed to ask but that I have been unable to escape: did God console? Christian consolers hoped and believed that their writings would serve as conduits of divine solace. Did this happen? Could it have happened? Might the living God have deigned to work through the consolatory efforts of clerical and lay ministers to communicate real divine solace to the sick and suffering in the later Middle Ages and early modern period, even as Christians engaged in unprecedented debates and

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battles about how best to define an authentically Christian doctrine of suffering? Might God have used such time-bound, culturally conditioned, and even flawed means to convey grace, hope, and peace? Unlike earlier generations of providentialist historians, I do not believe that I can detect the actual movements of the Spirit in individual human hearts in the past, but neither do I believe that I must deny such movements simply because they are not open to modern historical scrutiny. If one believes that there is a God who is both interested in and capable of visiting suffering human beings with heavenly solace, this greatly influences how one interprets human efforts at consolation in the past. One is less likely to interpret these efforts in an exclusively materialistic fashion.20 I have sought to remain open to the possibility that my sources did act as conduits of divine solace, even as I have endeavored to observe the boundaries and borders that separate me from such divine activity in the past and from the human beings whom I have been privileged to study in this project.21

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Abbreviations

ADB

AOG

AWA Beinecke CL CR CRL GNM-HA Grimm

GW

HAB Houghton ISTC

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 2nd ed., 56 vols. Historische Commission bei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1967–1971. Available online at http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/index.html. Andreas Osiander d.A., Gesamtausgabe, 10 vols. Ed. Gerhard Müller and Gottfried Seebaß. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus. 1975–1997. Archiv zur Weimarer Ausgabe der Werke Martin Luthers. Ed. Ulrich Köpf and Bernd Moeller. Wien, Köln, and Weimar: Böhlau, 1991–2011. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Luthers Werke in Auswahl, 6th ed., 8 vols. Ed. Otto Clemen et al., with Albert Leitzmann. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1962–1967. Philippi Melanthonis Opera quae supersunt omnia. Corpus Reformatorum, 28 vols. Ed. C. G. Bretschneider. Halle, 1834–1860. Center for Research Libraries, http://www.crl.edu. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Historisches Archiv, Nürnberg. Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, 16 vols. in 32 fascicles. Leipzig: S Hirzel, 1854–1961. Quellenverzeichnis, 1971. Available online at http://woerterbuchnetz.de/ DWB/?lemid=GA00001. Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, 11 vols. Kommission für den Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke. Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1925–. Available online in expanded form at http://www.gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de. Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbuettel. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/ index.html.

266 LexMA

LSS I

LSS II

LSS III

LW

NDB

OER OKHABW PL Sehling

StA TRE

VD16

Abbreviations Lexicon des Mittelalters, 9 vols. and index vol. München and Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1980–1993 (Vols. 1–6); München: LexMA-Verlag, 1995-1998 (Vols. 7–9 and index). Lazarus Spengler Schriften, Vol. 1: Schriften der Jahre 1509–1525. Ed. Berndt Hamm and Wolfgang Huber. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1995. Lazarus Spengler Schriften, Vol. 2: Schriften der Jahre 1525–1529. Ed. Berndt Hamm, Wolfgang Huber, and Gudrun Litz. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1999. Lazarus Spengler Schriften, Vol. 3: Schriften der Jahre Mai 1529 bis März 1530. Ed. Berndt Hamm, Felix Breitling, Gudrun Litz, and Andreas Zerchele. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2010. Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols. Ed. J. Pelikan and H. T. Lehmann. St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–. (Concordia is currently expanding this collection by 20 volumes. The editor for Vols. 56–75 is Benjamin T. G. Mayes; the editor for Vols. 56–75 is Christopher Boyd Brown.) Neue Deutsche Biographie, 24 current vols. Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1953–. Available online at http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/ index.html. Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 4 vols. Ed. Hans Hillerbrand. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Online Katalog der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuettel, http://opac.lbs-braunschweig.gbv.de/DB=2/LNG=DU. Patrologia Latina, 221 vols. Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris, 1844–1855, 1862–1865. Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI Jahrhunderts, 19 vols. Ed. Emil Sehling. Leipzig: O. R. Riesland; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1902–1913, 1955–. (There are 24 volumes planned in this series.) Martin Luther Studienausgabe, 6 vols. Ed. Hans Ulrich Delius. Berlin: Evangelische Verlangsanstalt, 1979–c. 1999. Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Studienausgabe, 36 vols. Ed. Gerhard Krause and Gerhard Müller. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1993–2006. Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts, 25 vols. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in München, with Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1983–2000. Available online at https://opacplus. bib-bvb.de/TouchPoint_touchpoint/start.do?SearchProfile=Altbestand& SearchType=2.

Abbreviations VD17

WA WABr WATR Z

267

Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachraum erschienenen Drucke des 17. Jahrhunderts. Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in München, and Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 1996–. Available online at https://opacplus. bib-bvb.de/TouchPoint_touchpoint/start.do?SearchProfile=Altbestand & SearchType=2. D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Schriften, 73 vols. Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–. D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefwechsel, 18 vols. Weimar: Böhlau, 1930–1948. D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Tischreden, 6 vols. Weimar: Böhlau, 1912–1921. Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke, 13 vols. Ed. Emil Egli and Georg Finsler. München: Kraus-Reprint, 1981. (Reprint of the edition begun in 1905, Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger.)

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a p p e n d ix

Select Early Modern Protestant Works of Consolation and Devotion from the German Lands Arranged Alphabetically by Author with Number of Extant Editions

Author

Short Title

Earliest Extant

Editions

Edition Agricola Amsdorff Andreae Arndt Bock Brenz Brenz Brenz Brenz

Der Neuntzigeste Psalmus Ein trost an die zu Magdeburg Passional Bu[e]chlein TrostSpiegel Würtzgertlein Ain Außzug . . . Ro[e]mern Auß was ursach glück und unglück Ein sermon von den heyligen Passio Vnsers Herren Jesu Christi

1526

3G

1551

1G

1577

4G

1617 1562 1528

1G 15 G/5 LG 4 G/1 LG

1527

5 G/1 LG

1523

3G

1551

3 G/4 L

(continued)

270 Author

Appendix Short Title

Earliest Extant

Editions

Edition Brenz Briesmann Brunner Bugenhagen Bugenhagen Bullinger Codomann Columbinus Culmann Dietrich Dietrich

Dietrich Flacius Flacius Garcaeus Glaser Glaser Habermann Heling Heyden Huberinus Huberinus

Wie das holtz des Creutzes Etliche trostspru[e]che Eyn Christlicher vnderricht Vnnderricht deren . . . kranckheiten Von der jtzigen Kriegsru[e]stung Bericht der krancken Christliche Leichpredigt No[e]tiger vnd Christlicher Bericht Trostbu[e]chle Der XCI. Psalm . . . Sterbsleufften Passio . . . histori vom leyden Christi

Wie . . . Christen . . . verfolgung Ein geistlicher trost Vermanung . . . zur gedult Ein Predigt von . . . Engeln Creutzbüchlein TAVLERI Christliche Lehre Betbüchlein Klag vnd Trostschrifft Wie man sich in allerlay nötten Eyn kurtzer außzug Vom Christlichen Ritter

1527

5G

1524 1530

15 G 7G

1527

5G

1546

17 G

1535 1603

6G 1G

1598

1G

1559 1544

3G 4G

1545

1548

8 G (with Luther’s Hauspostil: 47 G/ 7 LG/ 8 L) 6G

1551 1551

2G 2G

1555

1G

1563 1583

8G 1G

1567 1596 1531

44 G/15 L 1G 2G

1525 1545

10 G 12 G

271

Appendix Author

Short Title

Earliest Extant

Editions

Edition Huberinus Huberinus Jud Kantz Kantz Karlstadt Karlstadt Keller Körber Kymaeus Leyser Linck Linck Luther Luther Luther Luther Luther Luther Luther Luther

Vom Zornn vnd der Gu[e]tte Gottes Wie man den sterbenden trösten Des lydens Jesu Cristi Die historia des leydens . . . Christi Wie man dem krancken Missive vonn . . . gelassenheyt Was gesagt ist: Sich gelassen Trostliche vnnderricht zwen Tro[e]stliche bericht Passional Buch Eine Christliche Predigt Wie man Christenlich die krancken Wie sich ein Christen mensch Auslegung deutsch des Vaterunsers Betrachtung . . . Leidens Christi Pro veritate Sermon . . . bereytung zum sterben Sermon von Ablass und Gnade Sermon von Sakrament der Buße Sieben Bußpsalmen Tessaradecas consolatoria

1529

24 G/8 LG

1529

23 G/15 LG

1534

2G

1538

5G

1539

6G

1520

7G

1523

2G

1531

2G

1561 1539 1602

3G 4G 1G

1529

5G

1528

3G

1519

18 G/2 LG/3 L

1519

25 G/1 LG/1 L

1518 1519

3L 22 G/2 L

1518

23 G

1519

16 G/1 LG

1517 1520

9G 7 L/7 G

(continued)

272 Author

Appendix Short Title

Earliest Extant

Editions

Edition Luther Luther Luther Luther Major Major Mathesius Mathesius Melanchthon Moller Moller Montag Müntzer Musculus Musculus Musculus Myconius, F. Neander Nicolai Opitz Osiander Pfeffinger

Tractatus de libertate christiana Tröstung . . . in hohen Anfechtungen Von den guten werckenn Sermon von Kreuz und Leiden Ein Trostpredigt Trostschrift . . . Johan. 3 Das tro[e]stliche De Profvndis Drey Predigten Ein Trostschrift Meditationes sanctorum Patrum Mysterium Magnum Eine Christliche . . . Trostschrifft Von dem getichten glawben Betbu[e]chlein Precandi Formulae piae et selectae Vom Creutz vnd Anfechtung Wie man . . . die Krancken Theologia Bernhardi ac Tauleri Freudenspiegel des ewigen Lebens Nu[e]tzlicher Bericht . . . Engeln Wie und wohin . . . fliehen soll Trostbu[e]chlin Aus Gottes Wort

1520

10 L/21 G/1 LG

1521

8G

1520

13 G/1 LG/4 L

1530

4G

1542 1556 1565

1G 2G 4G

1564 1547 1584 (part 1)/92 (part 2) 1595 1602

1G 3G 9 G (part 1), 6 G (part 2) 2G 1G

1524

2G

1559 1553

18 G 2L

1559

3G

1539

10 G/1 LG

1581

2L

1599

1G

1583

1G

1533

10 G

1552

7 G/1 L

273

Appendix Author

Short Title

Earliest Extant

Editions

Edition Pitiscus Porta Rhegius Rhegius Rhegius Rhegius Saccus Sarcerius Sarcerius Schütz Zell Schwenckfeld Schwenckfeld Scultetus Selneccer Spangenberg, C. Spangenberg, J. Spangenberg, J. Spangenberg, J. Spengler Spengler Tanneberg Vermigli Vischer

Creutz vnd Trostbu[e]chlein Pastorale Lutheri Ein trostbrieff . . . Hannofer Seelenärtzney Trostbrieff . . . Hildesheym Von volkomenhait vnd frucht Vrsachen Warumb die Christen Creutzbüchlein Pastorale Oder Hirtenbu[e]ch Den leydenden . . . weyberen Deutsch Passional Tröstung/Ain Trostbu[e]chlin Warer Christen Creutz Passio Passio Die historia Vom Leiden . . . Christi Ein new trostbu[e]chlein Vom Christlichen Ritter Tröstliche christliche Anweisung Wie sich eyn christenmensch Trostbu[e]chlein Heilige vnd trostliche Geba[e]tt Ein Trostschrifft

1590

1G

1582 1536

5G 1G

1529 1531

48 G/10 LG/6 L 3 G/1 LG/1 L

1525

10 G

1573

1G

1549 1565

9G 3G

1524

2G

1539 1537/38

9G 8G

1588

6G

1572 1557

3 G/2 L 5G

1543

2 G/1 L

1542

22 G

1541

29 G

1521

2G

1529

2G

1599 1589

2G 1G

1569

10 G

(continued)

274 Author

Appendix Short Title

Earliest Extant

Editions

Edition Vogel Walther Weller Weller Will Zwingli Zwingli Zwingli

Trost oder Seelenartzneibuch Trostbüchlein/Fu[e]r Krancke Antidotvm: oder Geistliche Ertzney Das Buch Hiob Eine Christliche Leichpredigt Pestlied Sermonis de providentia Wer Ursache gebe

1571

2G

1565

3G

1554

5 G/1 LG/4 L

1563 1611

5G 1G

1519 1530

9G 1 L/1 G

1524

1G

Notes: On the sources of the publication statistics, see Introduction, note 33, above, along with the relevant references and discussions in the notes throughout. G = German; LG = Low German; L = Latin.

Notes

in t roduc t ion 1. See Berger, The Sacred Canopy, chap. 3, “The Problem of Theodicy.” 2. Scheler, “The Meaning of Suffering,” p. 121 (italics in original). Cited in Duclow, “‘My Suffering Is God’,” p. 187. 3. “Premodern West” refers to Western civilization before the Enlightenment. 4. See, e.g., Dempsey Douglas, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching; and Brown, Pastor and Laity. 5. For a recent treatment of preaching in the Reformation, see Taylor, Preachers and People. 6. For three older studies on the social origins and education of Lutheran pastors, see Brecht, “Herkunft und Ausbildung”; Klaus, “Soziale Herkunft und theologische Bildung”; and Karant-Nunn, Luther’s Pastors, pp. 13–21. For recent studies of the education of Protestant pastors, see Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung; Kaufmann, “The Clergy and the Theological Culture of the Age”; McLaughlin, “The Making of the Protestant Pastor”; Dykema, “Conflicting Expectations”; Dykema, “Handbooks for Pastors”; Burnett, Teaching the Reformation; Nieden, Die Erfindung des Theologen; and Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books.” For recent studies of the social origins of Lutheran pastors, see Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit in der Frühneuzeit; and SchornSchütte, “The Christian Clergy in the Early Modern Holy Roman Empire.” 7. The study of lay resistance to Protestant Christianization efforts got its start among American Reformation scholars from Gerald Strauss’s important work, Luther’s House of Learning. For recent studies that focus on the opposition that the late medieval and early modern clergy experienced as they sought to minister to their flocks, especially in the countryside, see Hans-Christoph Rublack, “‘Der wohlgeplagte Priester’”; Hans-Christoph Rublack, “Success and Failure of the Reformation”; Scribner, “Pastoral Care and the Reformation in Germany”;

276

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

Notes to Pages 4–5 Cameron, The European Reformation, pp. 411–416; Strauss, “Local Anticlericalism in Reformation Germany”; Karant-Nunn, “Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism in Saxony”; Goodale, “Pfarrer als Außenseiter”; Goodale, “Pastors, Privation, and the Process of Reformation in Saxony”; and Dixon, “Rural Resistance, the Lutheran Pastor, and the Territorial Church.” For a study that takes a somewhat more optimistic view of the Lutheran clergy’s ministry in rural areas, see Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners. Tolley also discusses the social origins, education, and material living conditions of the clergy. There are older treatments of pastoral consolation in the Reformation period but very little that is recent, aside from studies of Luther (see n. 13 below). Here the most important exception is Karant-Nunn’s book The Reformation of Feeling, which does discuss the theme of consolation in Lutheran pastoral care and piety. See my comments on this book below. The most important older works are Hardeland, Geschichte der Speciellen Seelsorge; and Althaus, Zur Charakteristik der evangelischen Gebetsliteratur. Lindemann, Medicine and Society, p. 10. See Porzelt, Die Pest in Nürnberg, p. 37, and Bühl, “Die Pestepidemien des ausgehenden Mittelalters,” p. 123. Lindemann, Medicine and Society, p. 157. See Mowbray, Pain and Suffering in Medieval Theology; Seegets, Passionstheologie und Passionsfrömmigkeit; Haug and Wachinger, Die Passion Christi; MacDonald, Ridderbos, and Schlusemann, The Broken Body; Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross; Viladesau, The Triumph of the Cross; Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel; and Bynum, Wonderful Blood. See McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011); von Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross; Ngien, The Suffering of God; Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe; Leroux, Martin Luther as Comforter; Rittgers, “Embracing the ‘True Relic’ of Christ.” For a recent treatment of the theme of consolation in Luther’s devotional writings, see Ngien, Luther as Spiritual Adviser. See Leroux, Martin Luther as Comforter; Reinis, Reforming the Art of Dying; Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes; Moore, Patterned Lives; Kobelt-Groch and Moore, Tod und Jenseits; Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead; and Gordon and Marshall, The Place of the Dead. Resch’s book is especially important for the present study as it deals with several of the same sources. (I acknowledge the places of convergence in the notes throughout.) Trost im Angesicht des Todes is Resch’s dissertation, which she completed in the Philosophisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät of the University of Wien. While her analysis of Reformation ars moriendi sources is quite helpful, her treatment of the late medieval context of this literature is somewhat truncated, as is her exploration of the Protestant theology of suffering that informs this literature. She cites the influence of mysticism on the Protestant ars moriendi tradition but does not go into much depth on this topic. Finally, Resch pays very little attention to the larger Christianizing effort

Notes to Pages 5–10

15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

277

that informed much of the late medieval and early modern consolation literature; she does not acknowledge how the campaign against “superstition” shaped these sources. My book borrows profitably from Resch’s work and also seeks to redress the aforementioned deficiencies. See Carrdus, Classical Rhetoric and the German Poet; Carrdus, “‘Thränen-Tüchlein’”; Carrdus, “Consolatory Dialogue”; Linton, Poetry and Parental Bereavement; Grosse, Gott und das Leid; and Bitzel, Anfechtung und Trost. See Herlihy, The Black Death; Cunningham and Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse; Cohn, The Black Death Transformed; Lindemann, Medicine and Society; Esser, Pest, Heilsangst und Frömmigkeit; Porzelt, Die Pest in Nürnberg; and Heinrichs, “The Plague Cure.” Lindemann, Medicine and Society, p. 212. See Kolb, Bound Choice, p. 291, n. 9 (definition). Leucorea is the Graecized name for Wittenberg (leukos = white; oros = mountain) and came to be applied to the university itself. See Bast, The Reformation of Faith, p. xv; for Hamm’s own (translated) description of Frömmigkeitstheologie, see pp. 18–24. See also Hamm, “Was ist Frömmigkeitstheologie?” Bast, The Reformation of Faith, pp. 18–19. Two very helpful summaries of the massive literature on confessionalization are Brady, “Confessionalization: The Career of a Concept”; and Lotz-Heumann, “Confessionalization.” Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, pp. 9–10. Ibid., p. 14. Dixon, The Reformation in Germany, p. 159. Ibid., pp. 158–159. Dixon acknowledges that the clergy were “more than mere servants of the secular powers” and shows that they could oppose these powers. Still, his description of the clergy’s role here is limited to the disciplining of parishioners. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, pp. 96, 97, 178, 201, 226, 251. See Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 27, 80. For treatments of retributive justice in the Hebrew Bible, see Koch, “Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?”; and Miller, Sin and Judgment in the Prophets. See Beker, Suffering and Hope, p. 45. See Crenshaw, “The Shift from Theodicy to Anthropodicy,” p. 4. I have already published an article in which I use the private letters of burghers to comment on their attitude toward plague. See Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague.” For a general introduction to Christian consolation literature, see the article on “Trost” in TRE 34: 143–153, and the article on “Trostbücher” in LexMA, Vol. 8, pp. 1048–1051.

278

Notes to Pages 10–12

33. For information regarding the total number of extant editions of the late medieval sources—both manscripts and incunabula—examined in chapters 1 through 3, I have relied for the most part on the relevant secondary literature, which I cite in the notes; I also occasionally cite statistics from the GW and the ISTC where they are helpful. For the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources in chapters 4 through 10, I have relied especially on the VD16 and the VD17, supplemented by information from the relevant secondary literature and occasionally from other library databases such as the Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog. I have not conducted an exhaustive search for all possible extant editions of each and every source cited in this book. I am aware of the problems of relying on the VD16 and the VD17, as they were originally based on the holdings of two prominent libraries—the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich—and are therefore being continuously updated as editions of works are found in other libraries. The publication statistics that I provide throughout should be taken as tentative estimates, not as hard and fast totals; the statistics provide suggestive but not conclusive evidence for a work’s significance, insofar as one can establish such significance on the basis of total number of extant editions. For publication statistics of Luther’s works, I haved relied on both the WA and the Lutherbibliographie assembled by Josef Benzing and Helmut Claus. For printed sources, I assume an average run of 1,000 to 1,250 exemplars. See Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, p. 71, n. 195. 34. In an otherwise helpful book, David Lederer makes the claim that the Trostbuch was a new genre that first made its appearance in the sixteenth century as a response to “widespread tribulations.” This is simply false and reveals Lederer’s lack of familiarity with the very long tradition of Christian consolation that preceded the sixteenth-century Trostbücher. See Lederer, Madness, Religion and the State, p. 167. 35. There are already studies of consolation for Dutch Reformed Protestantism. See de Niet’s “Comforting the Sick” and Ziekentroosters. For an example of a recent study of suffering and consolation in early modern England, see Schmidt, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul. 36. I am an advocate of “chastened realism,” a term coined by Mark Noll. For discussion of this epistemological stance, see Noll’s four-part series on the “History Wars” (especially the fourth part), along with his two related book chapters “The Potential of Missiology for the Crises of History” and “Traditional Christianity and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge.”

c h a p t er 1 1. Gregory the Great borrowed this phrase (ars artium) from Gregory Nazianzen and employed it in his Regulae pastoralis liber. See Prima Pars, Caput Primum, 3, col. 0014A; Davis, St. Gregory the Great, p. 21 and p. 242, n. 1.

Notes to Pages 13–16

279

2. See Boyle, “The Fourth Lateran Council,” p. 30; and Tanner, “Pastoral Care,” p. 122. 3. See Swanson, Religion and Devotion, p. 2. 4. See Innocent’s explanation of the purposes for the council in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, p. 227. For the original Latin, see PL 216, col. 824. 5. Shinners and Dohar, Pastors and the Care of Souls, p. 121. Tanner explains that while Innocent probably did not author the canons of Lateran IV himself, they clearly bear his influence. See Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, p. 228. 6. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, pp. 227–229. 7. Boyle, “The Fourth Lateran Council,” p. 31. 8. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, p. 248.4–12. 9. Ibid., p. 249.9–26. 10. Ibid., p. 240.6–27. 11. Ibid., pp. 235.25–237.3. 12. See Tanner, “Pastoral Care,” p. 113. 13. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, pp. 239.25–240.5. 14. See Tanner, “Pastoral Care,” p. 117. 15. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, p. 245.10–13. 16. Ibid, p. 245.1–23. 17. On the history of penance in medieval Christendom, see Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences; Watkins, A History of Penance; McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance; Tentler, Sin and Confession; and Firey, A New History of Penance. 18. Such penances originated in the early medieval penitential canons. For examples, see McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance. 19. Boyle, “The Fourth Lateran Council,” p. 37. 20. Boyle argues that Canon 21 was the most important canon for the shape of pastoralia, as the great majority of this literature focused on confession. Ibid., p. 31. 21. Ibid., p. 31. Boyle provides a very helpful diagram showing the different kinds of pastoralia and their relationship to each other on p. 38. Elsewhere, Boyle defines pastoralia as “any and every manual, aid or technique, from an Episcopal directive to a mnemonic of the seven deadly sins, that would allow a priest the better to understand his office, to instruct his people, and to administer the sacraments, or, indeed, would in turn enable his people the readier to respond to his efforts in their behalf and to deepen their faith and practice.” See Boyle, “The Inter-Conciliar Period 1179–1215,” p. 46. 22. Dykema, “Conflicting Expectations,” p. 125. 23. See Milway, “Forgotten Best-Sellers,” p. 127. 24. On the popularity of the Manipulus curatorum, see Dykema, “Conflicting Expectations,” p. 142; and Milway, “Forgotten Best-Sellers,” pp. 117, 128–129. Milway states that the Manipulus curatorum was the eleventh-best-selling book of the fifteenth century, going through 119 printings. (There are 180 extant manuscript

280

25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

Notes to Pages 16–19 copies.) Thayer and Lualdi have counted 250 extant manuscript copies and 122 print editions. See Guido of Monte Rochen, Handbook for Curates, pp. xviii–xiv. The Latin title is Summa rudium. The Directorium curatorum also circulated under the title Summa de auditione confessionis et de sacramentis. Robert Bast asserts that Surgant’s Manuale curatorum predicandi was “the most popular preaching manual of its time.” See Bast, Honor Your Fathers, p. 20. The VD16 lists three editions, all in the German lands. The earliest is from 1503; I work with a 1506 edition. See Dykema, “Conflicting Expectations,” pp. 302–313. On the popularity of the Manuale parrochialium sacerdotum, see Tentler, Sin and Confession, p. 43. According to Tentler, there are fifteen extant incunabula editions, all of them from Germany. On the place of the De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis in Cusa’s mission, see Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” p. 98. McLaughlin, “Universities, Scholasticism, and the Origins of the German Reformation,” p. 23. Dykema takes exception to McLaughlin’s depiction of the late medieval pastoralia but can still refer to works in this genre as “these boiler-plate manuals” in which “the rubber—the pastoral theology of the Late Middle Ages—meets the road of parish and popular religion”; “Conflicting Expectations,” p. 120. Swanson, Religion and Devotion, p. 242. For example, see ibid., p. 163; Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, p. 28; and Esser, Pest, Heilsangst und Frömmigkeit, p. 117. See Aho, Confession and Bookkeeping; and Hamm, Bürgertum und Glaube, pp. 33, 67. Zika, “Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages,” p. 36. See Bynum, “The Blood of Christ,” and Bynum, Wonderful Blood. See Scribner, Religion and Culture, p. 23. Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, p. 141. See also Brown, The Cult of the Saints, p. 107. Swanson, Religion and Devotion, p. 163. See Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague,” pp. 135–136. Swanson provides an example of a German custom whereby the image of Saint Urban would be dunked in mud if the saint failed to provide good weather for vine harvest on his day. Swanson, Religion and Devotion, p. 163. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 5. See also Bailey, Magic and Superstition, pp. 80–81. Francis Oakley traces the Latin church’s antimagic/superstition campaign back to the early medieval penitential manuals. See Oakley, The Western Church, p. 119. Sullivan, “Nicholas of Cusa,” pp. 398, 407. See also Hürten, Cusanus-Texte, p. 59. I am grateful to Tom Izbicki for drawing my attention to this latter source.

Notes to Pages 19–21

281

46. For visitation ordinances and parish decrees against superstition, see Hürten, Cusanus-Texte, pp. 29.25, 37.38. 47. For the original Latin, see Nicholas of Cusa, “Ex sermone: Ibant Magi,” fol. 390. 48. See Bynum, Wonderful Blood, pp. 27–28. 49. Bast, Honor Your Fathers, pp. 6, 18. 50. Ibid., p. 14; Geffcken, Der Bildercatechismus, pp. 54–56. 51. Jaspers says that there are several extant manuscript editions, three incunabula editions, and two print editions from the early sixteenth century. Stephan von Landskron, Die Hymelstrasz, pp. 15–21. 52. Ibid., p. ix v. 53. Ibid., p. xl r. 54. Here Stephan draws directly on Martin von Amberg’s treatment of superstition in Der Gewissensspiegel (Stephan von Landskron, Die Hymelstrasz, p. 24). See Martin von Amberg, Gewissensspiegel, pp. 41.163–143.193. 55. Stephan von Landskron, Die Hymelstrasz, p. xliiii v. For other prohibitions of superstition and magic in treatments of the First Commandment, see the following late medieval catechisms and devotional works: Brother Dederich [Kolde] von Münster, “A Fruitful Mirror,” p. 11.50–51 = Kolde, Der Christenspiegel des Dietrich Kolde von Münster, p. 88.5–13; Wolff, “Das Beichtbüchlein des Frankfurter Kaplans Johannes Wolff,” pp. 23–30; Marquard von Lindau, Das Buch der Zehn Gebote, p. 11.34–35. 56. See Bast’s brief discussion of Gerson’s Opus tripartitum in Honor Your Fathers, pp. 13–15. 57. Bast, The Reformation of Faith, pp. 18–19. 58. Gerson, Opus tripartitum, col. 430. 59. On the importance of preaching in late medieval Christian piety along with lay demand for the ministry of the word, see Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, pp. 10–25. 60. This connection with sin and forgiveness is already present in the James 5 passage. 61. Clebsch and Jaekle have argued that already in the ninth century, anointing with holy oil was limited to the dying. See Clebsch and Jaekle, Pastoral Care, p. 35. 62. Aquinas asserted in De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis, “Hoc autem sacramentum non debet dari nisi infirmo quando timetur de periculo mortis”; see p. 256.321–323. Both the Manipulus curatorum (fol. e iii r) and the Summa rudium (fol. f 8 v) agree with Aquinas on this point. 63. Poschmann, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick, pp. 234–247. Poschmann notes that extreme unction had originally preceded confession and Communion in the clergy’s ministry to the dying. See p. 245. 64. Not everyone agreed with the general rule that extreme unction was for those near death. See the discussion of Surgant’s Manuale curatorum below. Even Aquinas, who took the majority view by restricting extreme unction to the

282

65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72. 73.

Notes to Pages 21–22 dying, argued that it could still both heal the body and cleanse the soul: “Effectus huius sacramenti est sanatio mentis et corporis.” De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis, p. 256.333–334. This is clearly the case in the Manipulus curatorum. Guido argues that the effect of extreme unction is to forgive sins (fol. e ii v) and then later concedes that it can also heal the body (fol. e iii r). For an example of a late medieval catechist’s effort to correct this misapprehension, see Stephan von Landskron, Die Hymelstrasz, p. cxliiii r. Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 30. Surgant, Manuale curatorum predicandi, fol. CVIII r–v. “Darumb so sollent ir nit an der barmhertzikeit gottes verzagen/ sunder all üwer hoffnung vnd zu[e]uuersicht in got setzen/ üwer kranckeit gedultigklichen lyden/ vnd üwer cleins lyden opfern in das groß lyden christi. Darumb sollent ir kein anfechtung nit fo[r]chten. Aber in allen no[e]ten ein zu[e] flucht haben vnder den schirm des heiligen crützes. Sollent got den herren trüwlichen anrüffen vnd bitten das er das gemeldet syn bitter lyden setzen wo[e]ll zwüschen üwer sünd vnd syn strengs gericht vnd üch verlyche so[e] llich syn bitter lyden andechtiklich zu betrachten mit aller danckbarkeit/ also das ir der frucht des lydens immer ewigklich teilhafftig werdent. Dar by so wo[e]llent ouch anrüffen die wirdige vnd hochgelobte künigein vnd mu[o]ter gottes die iunckfrow Maria vnd alle gottes heiligen vnd engeln/ das sie üch wo[e]llent bystandt thu[e]n an üwerem letsten end. Vnd so ir vß disem zyt scheiden das sie üch geleiten wo[e]llen zu[o] der ewigen seligkeit. . . . Die vngründtliche barmhertzikeit gottes des allmechtigen vatters/ der kostlich verdienst des schmertzlichen lydens vnsers lieben herren Jesi christi. Das trüw mitlyden vnd fürtrettung der edlen verrumpten gottes gebererin der wirdigen iunckfrowen Marien. Das verdienen aller heiligen. Vnd der trostlich schirm des heiligen crützes syent mit üch in üweren letsten no[e]ten/ vnd syent üch beschirmen vor allem de[-] das üch schedlich syn mag zu sel vnd zu lyb. Amen.” Surgant, Manuale curatorum predicandi, fol. CVIII v. Resch argues that owing to a shortage of priests, consolation of the sick and dying frequently fell to laypeople. Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 42–47. On the importance of lay confraternities in the ars moriendi, see Terpstra, “Death and Dying.” Surgant, Manuale curatorum predicandi, fol. CIX. For a later example of a pastoral manual that includes a treatment of extreme unction in the German vernacular, see the discussion of “Krankensalbung” in Meier, Der Priesterliche Dienst, pp. 270–271. The discussion draws largely on Johannes Gropper’s 1549 Wie bei Haltung/ und Reichung der heiliger Sacramenten. See Rudolf, “Ars moriendi,” TRE 4: 143–149. Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 17.

Notes to Pages 22–23

283

74. On the significance of the Sancti Anselmi admonitio for the late medieval ars moriendi, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 31. 75. See Rudolf, “Ars moriendi,” TRE 4: 145. 76. Gerson wrote that his work was intended “primo sacerdotibus et curatis illitteratatis, atque simplicibus”; Opus tripartitum, col. 427. On the popularity of this work, see Burger, “Gerson, Johannes,” TRE 12:534. 77. Gerson’s De arte moriendi first appeared in French and then in Latin. See Gerson, La science de bien mourir. 78. The German title of Geiler’s work is Tötenbüchlein (Wie man sich halten sol by eym sterbenden menschen). Both the GW and the ISTC list three editions. 79. The full German title of Geiler’s work is Der dreieckecht Spiegel. Von den gebotten. Von der beicht Vnd von der kunst des wol sterbens. I have not found an edition of this work that dates before 1510. The VD16 lists three editions. 80. The ISTC lists three editions. 81. “Sollicite cogita te in vita tua plurima delicta perpetrasse, pro quibus pœnam ferre meruisti, unde & hujus infirmitatis & mortis pœnas patienter tolerare debes; rogans Deum ut praesentis doloris acerbitas, remissionem operetur peccatorum, & Purgatorii horribilis cruciatus in hanc afflictionem tuam per suam misericordiam commutetur: tolerabilius est namque hic præsentialiter quam in futuro puniri. Quod si sic, corde contrito, patiens pœnam necessarium, tanquam voluntariam feres, & omnem pœnam & culpam remittet Deus, certusque Paradisum introibis. Alioquin per impatientiam æternam pœnam & dampnationem incurres.” Gerson, Opus tripartitum, cols. 447–448. Cf. Gerson, Der dreieckecht Spiegel, fol. Ff v v. Geiler includes a similar section in his Tötenbüchlein; see pp. 6.24–7.11. It should be noted that these late medieval works of consolation place a much greater emphasis on penance than does the Admonitio Anselmi, which hardly mentions penance at all. On this point, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 34. 82. Gerson, Opus tripartitum, cols. 448–449. Cf. Gerson, Der dreieckecht Spiegel, fol. Ff v v–Ff vi r; and Geiler, Tötenbüchlein, p. 10.2–19. 83. See Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 40. Gerson instructs priests to use a crucifix when ministering to dying Christians. See Opus tripartitum, col. 449. Cf. Gerson, Der dreieckecht Spiegel, Ff vii v. 84. Opus tripartitum, col. 448. Cf. Gerson, Der dreieckecht Spiegel, Ff vi v. In his Tötenbüchlein, Geiler urges the dying Christian to pray a very similar prayer to Christ; see p. 9.18–26. The Admonitio Anselmi was similarly eager to stress the primacy of divine agency and mercy in the face of death. See cols. 686C, 687A, 688B. 85. See especially Hamm, Religiosität im späten Mittelalter, pp. 34–36, 547–559. Hamm argues that rather than being characterized by threats of divine wrath and vengeance, late medieval pastoral care and preaching placed a strong emphasis on consolation, divine mercy, and what Hamm calls “die nahe Gnade.” He acknowledges the presence of harsher views of God in the late

284

86. 87.

88.

89.

90. 91. 92.

Notes to Pages 23–25 medieval cura animarum; indeed, he argues that the increasing stress on the nearness of grace was a response to anxiety and fear of divine punishment, but he finally wishes to depict late medieval Christianity as a religion that was far more concerned with consolation and mercy than previous scholars have appreciated. I am symphathetic to his argument. Gerson, Opus tripartitum, col. 449; Gerson, Der dreieckecht Spiegel, fol. Ff viii r; Geiler, Tötenbüchlein, p. 12.2–11. Gerson urges priests to warn laypeople not to expect or desire “nova miracula” as they suffer but simply to entrust themselves to their wise and loving Father; Opus tripartitum, col. 431. See Dohar, “‘Since the Pestilence Time,’” p. 172. See also Boyle, “The Fourth Lateran Council,” p. 31. For a very helpful recent overview of the pastoral literature devoted to the sacrament of penance, see Goering, “The Internal Forum.” It should be noted that Donald Mowbray’s 2009 book, Pain and Suffering in Medieval Theology, does contain a discussion of the place of pain and suffering in late medieval penitential theology; see chap. 3, “Pain as Restorative Power: Voluntary Suffering and Satisfaction for Sin,” pp. 61–80. Mowbray shows how thirteenth-century theologians in Paris—the subjects of his study—presented suffering not only as a means of atoning for sin but also as a way of healing sin’s destructive effects (by reordering the disordered will) and of preventing further sin in the future (by providing a contrary disposition to the pleasure of sin). However, Mowbray does not examine how suffering became a specific kind of penance for a specific kind of sin in late medieval penitential theology, nor does he relate his discussion to pastoral care. His concern is to relate the theologians’ treatment of pain and suffering to their theological anthropology, especially their understanding of the relationship between the body and the soul. In chap. 3 of his book, he examines how it was possible for bodily suffering to influence the condition of both the human soul and the human will according to the Parisian masters. Mowbray’s treatment of suffering in late medieval penitential theology is valuable, but it does not address the concerns I discuss below. Cohen also notes the connection between suffering and penance in late medieval theology, but she does not examine the reasons for this connection. See Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 25–42. The standard English work on the late medieval sacrament of penance remains Tentler’s Sin and Confession. The following discussion draws on Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys, chap. 2; and Rittgers, “Embracing the ‘True Relic’ of Christ.” The distinction between the guilt of sin and the penalty for sin goes back at least as far as Anselm, who argued that humanity, owing to the gravity of its original sin, deserved not only to incur an infinite moral debt with God (original guilt) but also to receive a fitting penalty for having transgressed against its maker in the first place. See Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man,

Notes to Pages 25–26

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Book I:11 (pp. 84–85). Thomas Aquinas accepted and readily employed this distinction; see the Summa Theologiae, pp. 548–549 (tertia pars, q. 86, art. 4). Here Aquinas maintains that the guilt of sin is forgiven by operating grace, the penalty for sin by cooperating grace, a distinction of graces that goes back to Augustine. 93. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, p. 41. 94. Ibid., p. 289. 95. Peter Lombard makes it clear that the penitent’s works of satisfaction are only efficacious because Christ’s poena cooperates with them, thus enabling them to atone for new penalty for sin. See Liber III: Dist. 19, cap. 4, in Magistri Petri Lombardi, sententiae in IV libris distinctae, Vol. 3, p. 121.17–23. Thomas Aquinas argues that it is fitting for Christians to be conformed to Christ’s suffering when they commit postbaptismal sin and that this punishment, which is much less than sins deserve, is only efficacious because Christ’s satisfaction works along with it; Summa theologiae, pp. 282–283 (tertia pars, q. 49, art. 3). 96. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, pp. 49–50 (Supplementum, q. 15, a. 3). (It should be noted that Thomas did not write the Supplementum; rather, it is a later work gathered largely from his Scriptum super sententiis.) When commenting on the three standard forms or categories of penance, Joseph Goering explains that prayer made reparations for sins against God, alms for sins against the neighbor, and fasting for sins against oneself. See Goering, “The Internal Forum,” p. 401. 97. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, pp. 40–41, 42–43 (Supplementum, q. 12, art. 3; q. 13, art. 2). In addition to making atonement for sin and protecting against future transgressions, penance was also frequently held to provide healing for the destructive effects of sin. See discussion of Mowbray’s Pain and Suffering in note 89 above. 98. See Johannes von Paltz, Supplementum Coelifodinae, p. 289.12–13. 99. For an effort to rehabilitate indulgences as a salutary aspect of medieval devotion, see Shaffern, The Penitents’ Treasury. Less interested in such rehabilitation is Swanson’s Indulgences in Late Medieval England. Swanson simply wishes to argue that contrary to much scholaship, indulgences were a major feature of devotion in late medieval England. 100. Shaffern, “The Medieval Theology of Indulgences,” pp. 11, 26. See also Shaffern, The Penitents’ Treasury, chaps. 2 and 3; chap. 2 examines how indulgences evolved out of ancient and medieval Christian penitential thought and practice, while chap. 3 treats the development of the treasury of merit, beginning with Unigenitus. On Cum postquam, see Hillerbrand, The Division of Christendom, p. 45. 101. On this system, see McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, pp. 23–50. 102. Shaffern, “The Medieval Theology of Indulgences,” pp. 12, 19. 103. See Goering, “The Summa of Master Serlo,” pp. 309–311.

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104. Shaffern, “The Medieval Theology of Indulgences,” p. 16. 105. See Lindemann, Medicine and Society, p. 11; and Schmidt, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul, p. 63. 106. Canon 22 of the Fourth Lateran Council commanded physicians of the body to call upon physicians of the soul—i.e., clergy—to minister to sick people, both because bodily illness could be the result of sin, and thus could only be cured through confession and absolution, and because the health of the soul was more important than the health of the body, in any case. As we have seen above, the medieval Latin church had an additional reason for urging the sick and their caregivers to seek out extreme unction: to combat the common practice of seeking healing through recourse to magic or traditional folk remedies. Thus, Lateran IV commanded physicians not to prescribe anything for the health of the body that could harm the soul. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, pp. 245.25–246.8. 107. See Linton, Poetry and Parental Bereavement, pp. 23–24; and Lederer, Madness, Religion and the State, p. 97. 108. Boyle, “The Summa Confessorum of John of Freiburg,” III: 248. (This piece appears in a volume edited by Boyle that contains articles that he had originally published elsewhere. The articles appear with their original pagination and a roman numeral beforehand indicating their place in the edited volume, which is entitled Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law.) 109. Boyle, “The Quodlibets of St. Thomas,” II: 253. 110. Boyle, “The Summa Confessorum of John of Freiburg,” III: 258. In the prologue of the Summa rudium, the author singles out the Summa confessorum for special praise and then provides Pope John XXI’s enthusiastic response to the work: “I consider the brother who compiled this summa one of the best persons in the whole church—and I have learned many things from him.” Cited in Tentler, Sin and Confession, p. 34. For the original quotation, see the Summa rudium, fol. a 2 r. 111. Georg Steer et al. assert, “Die ‘Summa Confessorum’ des Johannes von Freiburg . . . ist das Hauptwerk der mittelalterlichen ‘Summae de poenitentia,’ zu mindest in der Germania.” Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 1, p. 7. 112. Wranovix identifies an edition of the Summa confessorum in the personal library of Ulrich Pfeffel, a one-time priest in the diocese of Eichstätt who became a preacher in its cathedral. Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” p. 203. In his inventory of the St. Sebald Church in Nuremberg, the late medieval Kirchenmeister Sebald Schreyer mentions “Excerpta de summa confessorum,” almost certainly a reference to the work by Johannes von Freiburg. See Caesar, “Sebald Schreyer,” p. 101. 113. “Sicut vigilie peregrinationes discipline et omnia opera carnem affligentia reducuntur ad ieiunium.” Johannes de Friburgo, Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, questio cv. (There are no folio numbers in the edition I worked with at the HAB.)

Notes to Pages 28–29

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114. Thomas Aquinas viewed bodily suffering as a species of fasting that compensated God for sin through renunciation of bodily goods for the honor of God; Summa theologiae, tertia pars et supplementum, pp. 49–50 (Supplementum, q. 15 a. 3, reply to objection 5). 115. Guido asserts that “omnes afflictiones corporales” are included in fasting; see Manipulus curatorum, fol. i viii r–v. Auerbach similarly maintans, “Nam vigilie, peregrinationes, omnia opera carnis afflictiva reducunt ad ieiunium”; see Directorium curatorum, fol. v r. The Summa rudium is nearly identical: “Sic vigilie peregrinatores et omnia carnem affligencia reducuntur ad ieiunium”; see fol. k 3 v. 116. The author of the Summa angelica, Angelus de Clavasio, asserts, “omnia opera afflictiones ad ieiunium reducuntur”; see fol. CCCLV r. On the influence of the Summa angelica in Germany, see Tentler, Sin and Confession, p. 35. 117. In his treatment of various flagelli, Johannes von Freiburg calls on Christians to persevere “in tribulatione et cuiuslibet egritudinis afflictione.” Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, questio cviii. 118. Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, questio cix. 119. “Utrum flagella missa deo vel ab homnibus etiam per peccatis nostris sint satisfactoria? Respondeo quod sic inquantum cadunt sub voluntate patienter ipsa acceptante: et patienter sustinere volente: dummodo alias sit in charitate.” Summa angelica, fol. CCLV r. See also Johannes von Paltz’s discussion in the Supplementum Coelifodinae of how suffering, if it is endured patiently, can function as a work of satisfaction. See pp. 289.27–290.1. 120. Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, questio cix. The supplementum to the tertia pars of the Summa theologiae (q. 15 a. 2) states that the scourges of the present life can be meritorious, provided that one accepts them for the cleansing of sin and bears them patiently; see p. 48. 121. “Cautus et discretus sacerdos post iniunctam penitentiam dicat penitenti quia omnia bona quae fecerit et omnia male que [sic] sustinuerit et proficiant ad salutem et ei penitentia hec omnia iniungat. Tunc enim valebunt ei omnia si a presbitero iniungantur et penitentia fit deuota.” Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, questio cviii. 122. Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 1, pp. 2, 13. 123. Neddermeyer shows that the Rechtssumme far outpaced the Summa confessorum in terms of manuscript editions in fifteenth-century Germany: 105 to 39 editions. Neddermeyer records eight incunabula editions of the Summa confessorum and seven of the Rechtssumme. See Neddermeyer, Von der Handschrift zum gedruckthen Buch, Vol. 2, pp. 738, 747. 124. Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 1, p. 1. 125. The edition I worked with at the HAB has such an index, while a 1518 edition published by J. Koberger in Lyons and housed in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (OCLC Record 9882582) does not.

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Notes to Pages 29–31

126. Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 3, p. 1560.1–2. Quotations are from B (München) unless otherwise noted. 127. Berthold collapses the four kinds of flagella given in the Summa confessorum (Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, q. cviii) into three kinds of suffering. See Hamm and Ulmschneider, Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 7, pp. 505–506. 128. “Vnd wenn der mensch ditz allez mit gedult leidet, vnd enpfaht die alz sie im sein su[e]nd su[e]llen pu[e]zzen, so cho[e]ment sie im zu trost vnd helffent die sund pu[e]zzen. Jst aber daz der mensch so[e]lich zu[o] va[e]ll in der zeit vngern leidet, vnd mit grozzer vngedult, so sint si nit nu[e]tz, weder dem leib noch der sel, besunder si sind ein zaichen der rach gotes.” Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 3, pp. 1560.15–1562.24. Here Berthold draws directly on the Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, q. cviiii. See Hamm and Ulmschneider, Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 7, p. 506. 129. “Vnd dar vmb wa[e]r ez gu[o]t, daz all priester in der ablo[e]sung spra[e]chen die sie den su[e]nden tu[o]nt, allez daz du leidest vnd gu[o]test tu[o]st, daz sei fu[e]r dein su[e]nd. Vnd also wurden leiden vnd andrew gu[o]tew werch lonpa[e]r. Hec Thomas.” Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 3, p. 1562.33–39. Hamm and Ulmschneider state that Berthold is here drawing on Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, q. 110, but the German quotation better matches Johannes von Freiburg’s Latin in q. 108, as cited in note 121 above. 130. Hamm and Ulmschneider, Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 7, p. 507. Johannes von Freiburg cites this line from Aquinas but does not use it as a chapter title. See Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, q. 8. 131. See Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 3, pp. 1564.1–1566.34. Cf. Summa confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, q. 9, and Hamm and Ulmschneider, Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 7, pp. 507–508. 132. “Vnd den edlen schatz mern vnd gro[e]zzer machent all tag gu[o]t la[e]ut mit iren gu[o]ten werken, die si tu[o]nt durch gotez willen vnd mit irem leiden daz si gedultikleichen leident durch got, wann in daz zu[o] vellet.” Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 1, pp. 161.1–162.28. Quotation = pp. 161.14– 162.19. This statement appears to be unique to Berthold; it is not in the Summa confessorum, according to Hamm and Ulmschneider, Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Band 6, pp. 10–11. 133. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, p. 11. See also Beyenka, Consolation in Saint Augustine, pp. 77–78. Like Aquinas, Berthold allows for one person to render satisfaction for the past sins of another. See Summa theologiae, tertia pars et supplementum, pp. 42–43 (supplementum, q. 13, art. 2); Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 1, p. 178.5–21. 134. Tertullian: Treatises on Penance, pp. 32 and 175 n. 162. Here the temporal suffering took the form of exomologesis. 135. “Pitt auch zu dem letzten ewr wirdikeit/ wöllet mir itzunt ein kleine kürtze sacramentalichen puß auff setzten, die ich pald in diser stund/ oder in disem

Notes to Pages 31–34

136. 137. 138. 139. 140.

141.

142.

143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151.

152.

289

tag müg außrichten/ auch wöllet mich tailhafftig machen und zu puß auff setzten/ das verdien des leides ihu xpi [Greek] unsers herren/ auch in ainer gemain zu puß geben fur mein sundt/ alle meine gütte werck die ich than/ oder die andere person fur mich thun/ es sey peten/ fasten/ almüsen geben/ wallen/ auch allen gnad und applas den ich löß/ auch mer alle mein kranckheit und widerwertikeit die ich leid/ auch zu dem letzten alle mein sorg und arbait/ die ich in meinem standt oder ampt/ und domit ich mein zeitliche narung gewynn/ die ding alle setzt mir auff zu einem genüg than uber mein sundt.”Peycht Spigel der Sünder, fols. L2 r–L2 v; my emphasis. The VD16 lists just one edition. Marquard says in a devotional work on Job that suffering is the best way to gain “applaß” for sin. Marquard von Lindau, Der Hiob-Traktat, p. 199.655–658. Siggins, A Harvest of Medieval Preaching, pp. 50–51. See discussion of this point in chapter 6. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 2, pp. 709.35–41, 718.13–26. The sixteenth-century Catholic burgher and diarist Herman von Weinsberg viewed his bodily suffering as a form of penance. He interprets a hernia that he developed as a child as a secret “cross” or “purgatory” that he hoped would reduce the penalty he owed God for his sins. See Lundin, “The Mental World,” p. 74 n. 114. Kieckhefer asserts that “once Christians had been sufficiently reminded that endurance of suffering can be meritorious, just as Christ’s own suffering was salvific, this theme would naturally be repeated in the widest variety of circumstances.” Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, p. 88. Delumeau argued, “Even though priests had women and children, if they had celebrated mass devoutly, been enlightened confessors and above all instructed their people in the catechism, there is every chance that the Protestant Reformation would never have happened.” Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, p. 156. Ibid., p. 158. Ibid., p. 159. Shinners and Dohar, Pastors and the Care of Souls, p. 33. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, pp. 160–161. Ibid., p. 161. Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages,” pp. 545–546. Ibid., p. 543. See also Swanson, Religion and Devotion, p. 42; and Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard, p. 9. These problems were owing in part to the influence of the Black Death on both the quantity and the quality of priests; clerical recruitment levels did not reach their pre-Plague levels until the late fifteenth century. See Dohar, “‘Since the Pestilence Time,’” pp. 190, 194. Swanson, Religion and Devotion, pp. 53, 56.

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Notes to Pages 34–36

153. Goering, “The Internal Forum,” p. 405. 154. Swanson, “Before the Protestant Clergy,” p. 43; Meuthen, “Zur Europäischen Klerusbildung,” pp. 276–277; Dykema, “Conflicting Expectations,” p. 124. 155. According to Gratian’s Decretum, a man had to be twenty-five to be ordained to the diaconate. See Dist. 28, c. 5, and Dist. 77, c. 2, col. 157B. Goering states that a priest had to be at least thirty years of age; “The Internal Forum,” p. 382. 156. Swanson, “Before the Protestant Clergy,” p. 42. 157. See session 15 of the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence-Rome (November 26, 1433), in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, p. 473.17–29. 158. Swanson, “Before the Protestant Clergy,” p. 43. 159. Pixton, The German Episcopacy, p. 464. 160. Sullivan, “Nicholas of Cusa,” p. 417. 161. Meuthen notes that, as one would expect, the urban clergy was better educated than the rural clergy in the later Middle Ages. “Zur Europäischen Klerusbildung,” p. 270. 162. McLaughlin, “Universities, Scholasticism, and the Origins of the German Reformation.” 163. Ibid., p. 20. 164. Ibid., p. 19. See also Swanson, Religion and Devotion, p. 57; and Meuthen, “Zur Europäischen Klerusbildung,” p. 276. 165. McLaughlin, “Universities, Scholasticism, and the Origins of the German Reformation,” p. 21. 166. See Dykema, “Conflicting Expectations,” pp. 227, 232. 167. See Meuthen, “Zur Europäischen Klerusbildung,” pp. 276, 277. 168. Ibid., p. 276; and McLaughlin, “Universities, Scholasticism, and the Origins of the German Reformation,” pp. 21–22. 169. See Dykema, “Conflicting Expectations,” especially p. 17. Dykema’s figures for university attendance among German clerics are somewhat lower than McLaughlin’s: 20 percent to 40 percent, with the highest numbers in the south; see p. 226. See also Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” especially pp. 104–116, 258. 170. McLaughlin observes that university education did not automatically contribute to greater piety among clerics, but it did increase the possibility of clerics’ being exposed to and shaped by pious mentors. McLaughlin, “Universities, Scholasticism, and the Origins of the German Reformation,” p. 22. 171. See Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” p. 260. 172. For a summary of this debate, see Rittgers, “Anxious Penitents.” 173. Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” pp. 89–90. 174. Ibid., p. 90. On the place of penitence in late medieval preaching, see Thayer, Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation. 175. See Swanson, Religion and Devotion, p. 66. 176. Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” 96–98.

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177. The 1480 Eichstätt church visitation was one of only six such visitations to have occurred in the Holy Roman Empire between 1452 and 1517, and it is one of only two to have addressed clergy’s morals and not simply the churches’ goods and property; Dykema, “Conflicting Expectations,” p. 104. The extant records from the 1480 Eichstätt church visitation are the oldest surviving records from a such an event in German-speaking lands; Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” p. 12. 178. Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” p. 151. For a comparison with England, see Shinners, “Parish Libraries.” 179. Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” p. 258. 180. Ibid., pp. 14–15.

c h a p t er 2 1. For overviews of this literature, see Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, chap. 1; McNeill, A History of the Cure of Souls, chap. 2; Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus, introduction; Holloway, Consolation in Philippians, pp. 55–83; and Beyenka, Consolation in Saint Augustine, introduction. 2. See Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, p. 49. 3. See Holloway, Consolation in Philippians. 4. Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, pp. 2–10; Holloway, Consolation in Philippians, pp. 55–58. 5. Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, p. 11; Beyenka, Consolation in Saint Augustine, p. 3; Holloway, Consolation in Philippians, p. 58. 6. Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, p. 47. 7. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus, p. 19; Beyenka, Consolation in Saint Augustine, p. 63. 8. See Cicero, Letter V: Servius Sulpicius Rufus to M. T. Cicero, pp. 268–277; and Letter VI: Cicero to Servius Sulpicius Rufus, pp. 277–281, in Cicero: The Letters to His Friends. 9. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus, p. 19; Beyenka, Consolation in Saint Augustine, p. 68. 10. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I (Douglas), ch. xxxi, sect. 75, pp. 58–59 (Latin), 60–61 (English). Unless otherwise noted, I follow the English translations of the ancient and medieval works of consolation provided in the relevant English critical editions. I also provide reference to the original-language source where necessary. 11. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (King), Book III, ch. i, sect. 1, pp. 224 (Latin), 225 (English). 12. Ibid., Book III, ch. iii, sect. 6, pp. 230 (Latin), 231 (English). 13. These schools included the Stoicism of Cleanthes, the Peripatetics, the Epicureans, the Cyrenics, and the Stoicism of Chrysippus. For a helpful discussion of these five schools, see Holloway, Consolation in Philippians, pp. 65–74.

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Notes to Pages 39–41

14. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I (Douglas), p. 10. 15. Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, p. 96. 16. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (King), Book III, ch. xxv, sect. 60, pp. 296 (Latin), 297 (English). 17. See Epictetus, The Enchiridion, ch. I, pp. 17, 18. 18. Gregg maintains that the Stoics did not counsel apatheia in a callous or utterly unfeeling way, although he does concede that they were unable to find any good in grief and thus made very little room for it in their philosophical system. See Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, pp.106–109. 19. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I (Douglas), p. 10. 20. Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, p. 101. 21. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I (Douglas), ch. xxxix, sect. 93, pp. 70 (Latin), 71 (English). See also Plutarch, A Letter of Condolence to Apollonius, ch. 28, pp. 180 and 182 (Greek), 181 and 183 (English). 22. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I (Douglas), ch. xi, sect. 24, pp. 34 (Latin), 35 (English). 23. Ibid., ch. xxvii, sect. 66, pp. 54 (Latin), 55 (English). 24. Ibid., ch. xlvi, sect. 111, pp. 82 (Latin), 83 (English). 25. Ibid., ch. xxxviii, sect. 91, pp. 70 (Latin), 71 (English). 26. Holloway, Consolation in Philippians, p. 68. 27. The citation is from the Odyssey, 19, 163; and the Aeneid, 4, 366. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (King), p. 238 n. 2. 28. Ibid., Book III, ch. vi, sect. 12, pp. 238 and 240 (Latin), 239 and 241 (English). 29. Ibid., Book III, ch. xxix, sects. 72–73, pp. 310 (Latin), 311 (English). 30. Ibid., Book III, ch. xxvii, sect. 64, pp. 300 and 302 (Latin), 301 and 303 (English). 31. Ibid., Book III, ch. xiv, sect. 30, pp. 262 (Latin), 263 (English). 32. Ibid., Book III, ch. xxiv, sect. 58, pp. 292 and 294 (Latin), 293 and 295 (English). 33. Ibid., Book III, ch. xxx, sect. 74, pp. 312 (Latin), 313 (English). 34. Ibid., Book III, ch. xxxi, sect. 76, pp. 314 (Latin), 315 (English). 35. Ibid., Book III, ch. xxxii, sect. 77, pp. 316 (Latin), 317 (English). 36. Seneca, De Consolatione ad Marciam/To Marcia on Consolation, ch. 9, sects. 1–2, pp. 26 (Latin), 27 (English). 37. Ibid., ch.10, sect. 3, pp. 30 (Latin), 31 (English). 38. Ibid., ch.10, sect. 6, pp. 30 and 32 (Latin), 31 and 33 (English). 39. Ibid., ch. 12, sect. 4, pp. 38 (Latin), 39 (English). 40. Ibid., ch. 22, sects. 3–4, pp. 78 (Latin), 79 (English). 41. Ibid., ch. 24, sect. 5, pp. 88 (Latin), 89 (English). See also ch. 26, sect. 1, pp. 90 (Latin), 91 (English); and ch. 26, sects. 6–7, pp. 94 and 96 (Latin), 95 and 97 (English). 42. Ibid., ch. 19, sects. 4–5, pp. 64 and 66 (Latin), 65 and 67 (English). 43. Seneca makes the same argument in De Providentia/On Providence. See Book V, sect. 8, pp. 38 (Latin), 39 (English).

Notes to Pages 42–46

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44. Ambrose, On the Death of Satyrus, p. 167B, paragraph 40; De excessu fratris sui Satyri, PL 16, cols. 1303A–B. [A=right column; B=left column] 45. Ambrose, On the Death of Satyrus, p. 161B, paragraph 41; PL 16, col. 1291C. 46. Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe, p. 34. 47. Cyprian, On Mortality, ch. 8, pp. 204–205; De mortalitate, PL 4, col. 587B. 48. See Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus, ch. 15; paragraph 2, pp. 66 (Latin), 67 (English). 49. See Ambrose, On the Belief in the Resurrection, p. 177A, paragraphs 21–22; De fide resurrectionis, PL 16, cols. 1320C–D. 50. See Cyprian, On Mortality, ch. 23, p. 218; PL 4, cols. 598A–599A. 51. See Ambrose, On Satyrus, p. 165A, paragraph 27; PL 16, col. 1299A. 52. Ibid., p. 161A, paragraph 3; PL 16, col. 1291B. 53. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus, sect. 1; paragraph 2, pp. 44 (Latin). 45 (English). 54. Cyprian, On Mortality, ch. 11, p. 207; PL 4, col. 589B. 55. See Plutarch, A Letter of Condolence to Appollonius, ch. 4, pp. 112 (Greek), 113 (English). 56. See Cyprian, On Mortality, ch. 15, p. 211; PL 4, col. 592B. 57. Ambrose, On the Death of Satyrus, p. 172A, paragraph 70; PL 16, col. 1312A–B. 58. Ibid., pp. 172A–172 B, paragraph 71; PL 16, col. 1312 B–C. 59. Ambrose, On the Belief in the Resurrection, p. 174A, paragraph 3; PL 16, cols. 1315C–1316B. 60. Ibid., p. 181B, paragraph 50; PL 16, col. 1328B. 61. Cyprian, On Mortality, p. 208, paragraph 12; PL 4, col. 590A–B. 62. For the gladiator metaphor, see Seneca, De Providentia, Book III, sect. 4, pp. 16 (Latin), 17 (English); and Book IV, sects. 4–8, pp. 26 and 28 (Latin), 27 and 29 (English). For the God-as-stern-father metaphor, see Book I, sect. 6, pp. 6 (Latin), 7 (English); Book II, sect. 5, pp. 8 and 10 (Latin), 9 and 11 (English); and Book IV, sect. 7, pp. 28 (Latin), 29 (English). Seneca can also say that misfortune is like a necessary yet painful surgery or like fire that tests gold; Christian consolers employed both of these metaphors. See Book III, sect. 2, pp. 14 (Latin), 15 (English); and Book V, sect. 10, pp. 40 (Latin), 41 (English). See also Gregg, Consolation Philosophy, pp. 164–165. 63. Cyprian, On Mortality, ch. 13, p. 209; PL 4, cols. 590A–B. 64. Ibid., ch. 20, pp. 215–216; PL 4, col. 596A. 65. Ibid., ch. 24, p. 219; PL 4, col. 600A. 66. Ambrose, On the Death of Satyrus, p. 162B, paragraph 10; PL 16, cols. 1293C–1294A. 67. Ibid., p. 165B, ch. 29; PL 16, col. 1299C. 68. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus, 7; 2–3, pp. 50 (Latin), 51 (English). 69. Beyenka, Consolation in Saint Augustine, p. 63. For a more recent study of Augustine’s Christian psychogogy, see Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of Souls.

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Notes to Pages 47–50

70. Seneca argues in De Providentia that while God wrote the decrees of fate, he is also subject to them. See Book V, sect. 8, pp. 38 (Latin), 39 (English). 71. Ambrose concedes that death entered the human race through Adam’s sin, although he argues that God gave it not as a punishment but as a remedy to the human condition so there would be an end to sin and evil. See On the Belief in the Resurrection, p. 181A, paragraph 47; PL 16, col. 1327C. 72. For example, see Ignatius of Antioch’s letter “To the Romans,” where he says that once the beasts have consumed his body, he will “truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ” (p. 114). Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, wrote to the Christians in Philippi, “Let us, therefore, become imitators of his [Christ’s] patient endurance, and if we should suffer for the sake of his name, let us glorify him”; “Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians,” p. 138. Judith Perkins has argued that the eventual triumph of Christianity in the ancient world may be attributed in large part to the ability of Christians to construct through their writings—especially through their martyrdom accounts—a representation of the self as soul/mind joined to a passible body that had great resonance with their pagan counterparts, many of whom were engaged in a similar effort to deconstruct the more ancient image of the human self as a soul/mind that had to control the body. See Perkins, The Suffering Self. By Perkins’s account, the effort of early Christian consolers to distance themselves from the Stoicism of much pagan consolation actually played a pivotal role in rendering Christianity appealing to pagans, who were similarly dissatisfied with the Stoic account of the nonsuffering self. 73. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, pp. xxx–xxxi. 74. Ibid., p. 94, ch. 7. 75. Ibid., p. 96, ch. 7. 76. Ibid., p. xliv. 77. Ibid., pp. xlvi–xlviii. 78. Kaylor, The Medieval Consolation of Philosophy, p. 99. 79. McNeill, A History of the Cure of Souls, p. 109. 80. See Davis, St. Gregory the Great: Pastoral Care, pp. 9–11. 81. Wranovix, “Parish Priests and Their Books,” p. 96. 82. Davis, St. Gregory the Great: Pastoral Care, p. 242 n. 1; Regulae pastoralis liber, PL 77, Prima Pars, Caput Primum, col. 0014A. 83. Davis, St. Gregory the Great: Pastoral Care, p. 10. 84. Ibid., p. 26; PL 77, Prima Pars, Caput III, cols. 0016C–0017B. 85. Ibid., p. 56; PL 77, Secunda Pars, Caput V, col. 0032C. 86. Ibid., pp. 122–126; PL 77, Tertia Pars, Caput XII, cols. 0066C–0069D. 87. Ibid., p. 122; PL 77, Tertia Pars, Caput XII, cols. 0067C–0067D. 88. Ibid., p. 123; PL 77, Tertia Pars, Caput XII, cols. 0068A–0068B. 89. Ibid., p. 123; PL 77, Tertia Pars, Caput XII, col. 0068B. 90. Ibid., pp. 123–134; PL 77, Tertia Pars, Caput XII, col. 0068C. 91. Ibid., pp. 124–125; PL 77, Tertia Pars, Caput XII, col. 0069A.

Notes to Pages 50–53

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92. Ibid., pp. 125–126; PL 77, Tertia Pars, Caput XII, cols. 0069C–0069D. 93. See the discussion of Gregory’s Moralia below. In a letter to Augustine of Canterbury, Gregory asserted, “All that we suffer in this mortal flesh through the infirmity of nature [i.e., the Fall] is ordained by the just judgment of God as a result of sin”; cited in Cohen, “Towards a History of European Physical Sensibility,” p. 57. The citation comes from Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. and ed. L. Sherley-Price (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1968), p. 78. 94. See Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe, p. 62. Gregory waited to revise and complete the Moralia until after he was consecrated bishop of Rome. See Markus, Gregory the Great, p. 15. 95. Gregory the Great, Moralia, Praefatio, Caput V:12, PL 75, cols. 0523D–0524A. 96. Ibid., Praefatio, Caput V:12, col. 0532A–0532B. 97. Ibid., Praefatio, Caput III:7, col. 0520A. 98. Ibid., Liber Secundus, Caput XVII:31, col. 0571B. 99. Isidore also drew on Seneca’s consolatory works and Augustine’s Colloquia. See Rigg, “Hoccleve’s Complaint,” p. 567. 100. Isidore makes no explicit reference to the Consolatio philosophiae in his work. 101. Isidore of Seville, Synonyma, Liber Primus, paragraph 7, PL 83, col. 0829B. 102. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 16, col. 0831C. 103. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 19, col. 0832B. 104. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 24, col. 833B. 105. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraphs 25–26, col. 833C. 106. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 27, col. 834A. 107. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 27, col. 834A. 108. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 28, col. 834B. 109. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 29, cols. 0834B–0834C. 110. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 30, cols. 0834C–0834D. 111. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 39, cols. 0836B–0836C. 112. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 53, col. 0839B. 113. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 54, col. 0839C. 114. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 59, col. 0840D. 115. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 62, col. 0841B. 116. Ibid., Liber Primus, paragraph 78, col. 0846A. 117. On the historical significance of the Synonyma, see Rigg, “Hoccleve’s Complaint,” p. 570; and Auer, Johannes von Dambach, p. 245. For two examples of editions that appeared in the German lands, see GW M15287 and ISTC ii00208500. 118. According to Sister Patrick Jerome Mullins, “Compunction of heart is the central theme of Saint Isidore’s spiritual teaching.” See Mullins, The Spiritual Life, p. 109. 119. Von Moos cites a study by G. Fourure, Les châtiments divins: Etude historique et doctrinale (Bibliothèque de Théologie Morale 5, Paris–Tournai 1959), which

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120.

121. 122. 123.

124.

125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131.

132.

133.

134. 135. 136.

Notes to Pages 53–57 argues that the medieval fathers of the church did not defend the misfortuneas-punishment thesis as a general and absolute rule. Von Moos concurs with this thesis but also notes that the treatment of suffering in the actual care of souls might have placed a greater emphasis on the conection between sin and suffering. Von Moos, Consolatio, p. 269, item 1268. Von Moos writes, “Die auf das seelenheil gerichtete Erklärung des Leidens als einem Zeichen göttlicher Vorherbestimmung und Gerechtigkeit bildet das Hauptthema jeder christlichen Consolatio über Unglücksfälle”; Consolatio, p. 268, item 1267. See Colish, “Peter Lombard,” p. 169. Peter Lombard, Magistri Petri Lombardi, Sententiae, Vol. 2, Book IV, Dist. 15, cap. 2 (80), p. 326.2–7. Auer, Leidenstheologie, p. 1. Auer argues persuasively that Gerard of Liege and not Peter of Blois (as the PL has it) was the author of this treatise. See pp. 21, 65. Auer also provides a revised version of the text (pp. 1–18) that I use below. An older version may be found at PL 207, cols. 989–1006. Ibid., p. 7. The reference occurs within the larger discussion of the Tertia tribulationis utilitas (which begins on p. 4) in the section on the Quintus modus purgationis. Ibid, p. 8. The reference occurs within the discussion of the Quarta tribulationis utilitas, which begins on p. 7. Ibid., p. 2 (Prima utilitas). Ibid., pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. The trend of offering numerous causae for suffering also continued in popular sermon collections from the period. See the Postilla Guillermi, http://daten. digitalesammlungen.de/bsb00042748/image_341. The ISTC lists 112 editions, sixty-three of which were published in the German lands. I am grateful to Anne Thayer for drawing my attention to this source. For biographical information on Johannes von Dambach, along with a consideration of his literary activity, see Auer, Johannes von Dambach, pp. 1–62; and Werner Schulz, “Johannes von Dambach,” Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, Vol. 3 (1992), cols. 336–337, http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/j/ Johannes_v_da.shtml. “Cur de tribulatione turbaris. Nonne consideras quod deus eternus per tribulationes maximum tuum bonum intendit.” Johannes de Tambaco, Consolatio theologiae, Liber II, Cap. I, XXIX Consideratio. Auer, Leidenstheologie, pp. 64–65. See GW M14755. See Auer, Johannes von Dambach, pp. 168, 353.

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137. According to one article, Dambach’s work was the “Hauptwerk” of the late-medieval German consolation literature. See “Trostbücher,” LexMA, Vol. 8, p. 1048. 138. Burrows, Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae, p. 41. 139. See McGuire, Jean Gerson: Early Works, pp. 5, 8. 140. See McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, pp. 190–196, 229–234, 274–278. 141. Ibid., p. 287. 142. Appel, Anfechtung und Trost, p. 33. 143. Miller, in Gerson, The Consolation of Theology, p. x. 144. McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, p. 300. 145. Gerson, The Consolation of Theology, pp. 54 (Latin), 55 (English). 146. Ibid., pp. 90 (Latin), 91 (English). 147. See Burrows, Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae, p. 65; on the influence of Gerson’s “humility theology” on the young Luther, see p. 72. Burrows argues that Gerson underwent a significant theological shift in the writing of the Consolatio theologiae, such that he abandoned reliance on human effort in salvation—facere quod se est—and adopted a more Augustinian stance that emphasized divine agency and the need for extreme humility and utter despair of self in order to receive divine grace (see pp. 68, 191, 194–195, 272–273). For an alternative point of view that stresses the ongoing importance of a minimal human contribution to salvation in Gerson’s theology, see McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, p. 300. 148. Gerson, The Consolation of Theology, pp. 158 (Latin), 159 (English). 149. Ibid., pp. 206 and 208 (Latin), 207 and 209 (English). 150. Ibid., pp. 208 (Latin), 209 (English). 151. Ibid., pp. 212 (Latin), 213 (English). 152. Ibid., pp. 214 (Latin), 215 (English). 153. In Book III, Volucer sings a song about Job in which he says that while Satan was able to afflict the Old Testament saint with flagellis (harsh blows), Satan can only act in this way against the elect when God permits it. Ibid., pp. 216 and 218 (Latin), 217 and 219 (English). On Gerson’s frequent references to the devil in his vernacular sermons, see Brown, Pastor and Laity, pp. 92–95; on Gerson’s unique brand of nominalism, see pp. 79–91. 154. Gerson, The Consolation of Theology, pp. 214 (Latin), 215 (English). 155. Ibid., pp. 218 (Latin), 219 (English). McGuire comments, “This is the God of Job, who gives and takes away all good things, without any explanation. Here is the reverse side of Gerson’s search for a loving, tender God: his experience of a God whose ways are harsh and inexplicable. . . . Gerson at this time felt closer to a God who beats us and breaks our bones than to one who embraces us with his warmth. . . . Long before John Donne’s ‘Batter my heart,’ Gerson expressed a similar desire to be taken by God.” McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, p. 303.

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Notes to Pages 60–61

156. Gerson, The Consolation of Theology, pp. 268 (Latin), 269 (English). 157. Ibid., pp. 278 (Latin), 279 (English). 158. McGuire argues, “The main theme of the Consolation of Theology appears as the centrality of hope, which will not confound or disappoint.” McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, p. 301. 159. Gerson, The Consolation of Theology, pp. 284 (Latin), 285 (English). 160. Burrows argues that Gerson did not simply wish to augment consolation via sacraments; he wished to transcend sacraments, although certainly not abolish them. Burrows makes a great deal of the lack of reference to the sacraments— especially the sacrament of penance—in the Consolatio theologiae: “The absence throughout this treatise of any direct reference to the sacraments—and particularly that of penance—can hardly be accidental, nor is it insignificant since this omission buttresses Gerson’s conviction that one must abandon all trust in self and in one’s own works, including the sacramental works of penance. . . . It would be too much to conclude from his avoidance of any reference to penance that he is here intent on developing an anti-sacramental position; indeed, Gerson’s conservative churchmanship warns against an interpretation expressed in such aggressive terms. But this striking thematic omission in a treatise specifically devoted to consolation, together with his peculiar defense of a heightened scrupulosity in self-accusation and distrust vis-à-vis one’s own works, suggests that Gerson’s appreciation of his pastoral responsibilities has shifted at this juncture. No longer is he simply content to advocate the sacraments as the pastoral means of dealing with sin or its inward effect, scrupulosity.” See Burrows, Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae, pp. 68, 70–71. Dambach also has little to say about the sacraments, although there is nothing in his work that indicates that he wished to transcend or dispense with them in the pastoral care of suffering Christians. He treats the sacraments especially in Book XII, chs. 1–2, of his Consolatio theologiae. 161. McClure, Sorrow and Consolation, p. 52. For an English translation of De remediis utriusque fortune, see Petrarch, Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Foul and Fair. McClure argues that in De remediis, Petrarch emerges as a “constructive Stoic healer”; see McClure, Sorrow and Consolation, p. 46. See also Panizia, “Stoic Psychotherapy.” 162. McClure, Sorrow and Consolation, p. 14. 163. Ibid., p. 164. 164. McClure has the following to say about the medieval Latin church’s approach to consolation: “In a word, particularly once the penitential and sacramental tradition coalesced, medieval pastoral care did not fully cultivate the consolatory realm explored by the classical orators and moralists. In spiritual sensibility, as in the practical cura animarum, the remedies of sin took precedence over the remedies of sorrow (itself linked to sin). The identity of the pastor as healer and consoler focused on that contritional sorrow and guilt.” Ibid., p. 14.

Notes to Pages 61–63

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165. Ibid., p. 163. Petrarch’s De remediis was translated into German as the Trostspiegel in Glück und Unglück and appeared in a 1532 edition in Nuremberg with 259 woodcuts. See Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, p. 61. The VD16 does not include this edition but does list three other vernacular editions from the late sixteenth century, all of which appeared in Frankfurt am Main: 1572 (P1729), 1584 (P1730), 1596 (P1731). Erasmus also authored a work of consolation that appeared in German-speaking Europe, but unlike Petrarch’s De remediis, the Epistola consolatoria in adversis (1528) drew very little on ancient pagan consolation, nor was it translated into German. 166. See chapter 3, “Patience,” in Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls. 167. See Kieckhefer, “The Notion of Passivity,” pp. 208–209. 168. Johannes von Paltz, Supplementum Coelifodinae, p. 442.21–26. For similar statements, see Angelus de Clavasio, Summa angelica, fol. CCVI r; and Steer et al., Die “Rechtssumme” Bruder Bertholds, Vol. 3, p. 1564.1–12. The Supplementum Coelifodinae was a work of devotion and instruction intended for well-educated clergy that was based on Paltz’s popular vernacular work, the Himlische Funtgrube (1490). 169. On the Christian Stoicism in late medieval consolation literature, especially in Dambach’s Consolatio theologiae, see Auer, Johannes von Dambach, p. 355. Kieckhefer concedes that the Stoic ideal of apatheia influenced the late medieval consolation literature, but he also notes that Christians parted from this ancient ideal in their belief in original sin, which meant that human beings could not root out their baser passions on the strength of their own intellectual and moral effort. Kieckhefer also notes an emphasis on charity toward others in need in the Christian sources that is not found in the ancient Stoic sources. Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, p. 78. 170. See Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague,” pp. 134–135, 143–145.

c h a p t er 3 1. On the division of late medieval German consolation literature between authors such as Dambach and Gerson, on the one hand, and mystics such as Eckhart, Suso, and Tauler, on the other, see “Trostbücher,” LexMA, Vol. 8, p. 1048. See also “Trost,” TRE, Vol. 34, p. 148. 2. Helmut Appel has asserted, “Das Trostschrifttum des Spätmittelalters steht durchgehend unter den Einfluß der ‘Deutschen Mystik’ des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts.” Appel, Anfechtung und Trost, p. 8. More recently, Alois M. Haas has explained, “Im Rahmen der mittelalterlichen Strategien zur Leidbewältigung kommt nun der sogenannten deutschen Mystik deswegen eine entscheidende Stellung zu, weil in ihr—aber auch anderswo, z. B. im Passionis-und Osterspiel—erstmals das christliche Zentralereignis—passio, mors et resurrectio Jesu Christi (Leiden, Tod und Auferstehung Jesu Christi)—zu einem in solchem

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3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

Notes to Pages 63–64 Ausmaß unerhörten, volkssprachlich geschilderten Geschehen werden konnte.” See Haas, “‘Trage Leiden geduldiglich,’” p. 128. Tobin, in his translation of Suso, Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, p. 36. Alois Maria Haas does not limit the influence of the Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit to Germany. He claims that it was “the most successful devotional book in the later Middle Ages.” See Haas, “Schools of Late Medieval Mysticism,” p. 154. Bernard McGinn concurs regarding the significance of Suso and his works for late medieval spirituality. He observes:”Given that there are more than five hundred manuscripts of his works, it is safe to say that no fourteenth-century mystic was more widely read and none was more representative of the many strands of the mysticism of the century than this Dominican friar.” McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 195. McGinn also notes (pp. 199, 201) that there are 232 extant manuscripts of the Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit and even more of the Latin version, Horologium sapientiae (Clock of Wisdom), which survives in more than 400 manuscripts. (There are an additional 200 manuscripts of the Horologium sapientiae in various vernacular translations and also numerous early printings.) McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 83. Ibid., p. 300. Ibid., pp. 320–340. On the use of art to spread the mystics’ messages, see pp. 301–314. On the Friends of God, see ibid., pp. 407–431. Auer, Johannes von Dambach, p. 110; Burrows, Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae, pp. 65–66. For an example of Gerson’s mysticism, see his “The Mountain of Contemplation” and “On Mystical Theology,” in McGuire, Jean Gerson: Early Works, pp. 75–127, 262–333. Marquard von Lindau, Das Buch der Zehn Gebote, p. 83.34–36. On Marquard’s involvement in the Friends of God movement, see McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, pp. 329, 431. See Marquard von Lindau, Der Hiob-Traktat. Haas asserts, “Die deutsche Mystik hat in ihrem Hinblick auf das Leiden die christliche Chance gesehen, zu Gott zu gelangen. Leiden ist Gnade.” Haas, “‘Trage Leiden geduldiglich,’” p. 151. See also Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe, p. 95. Cohen, “Towards a History of European Physical Sensibility,” p. 51. See also Cohen’s “The Animated Pain” and The Modulated Scream. For an interesting discussion of pain in various world religions and spiritualities, see Glucklick, Sacred Pain; Glucklick approaches his topic from the perspective of psychology and neurology, not theology. For an earlier study on pain in medieval Christianity, see Constable, Attitudes toward Self-Inflicted Suffering. Auer, Leidenstheologie, p. 82; for examples of this literature, see pp. 72–97. “Die Zwölf Meister zu Paris,” p. 1109.13–23.

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15. Auer, Leidenstheologie, p. 82. 16. Behaim, Letter from April 26, 1506, to his son, Friedrich. 17. See Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, p. 1. See also Seegets, Passionstheologie und Passionsfrömmigkeit, pp. 235–236, along with the following important collections of essays on late medieval Passion piety: Haug and Wachinger, Die Passion Christi; and MacDonald et al., The Broken Body. 18. Hamm views the intensification of Passion-centered piety as part of a larger process of “normative centering” (normative Zentrierung) in late medieval and early modern Europe that sought to address fears of chaos, disorder, and destruction, both in this life and in the next. (According to Hamm, a growing fear of demonic activity lay behind much of this anxiety.) Hamm defines normative centering as “the alignment of both religion and society towards a standardizing, authoritative, regulating and legitimizing focal point.” See Bast, The Reformation of Faith, pp. 3 (on demonic activity), 6 (on normative centering). It should be noted that Hamm applies the term “normative centering” to the later Middle Ages “with great caution and always with qualification,” as Christianity on the eve of the Reformation remained quite diverse; see p. 45. 19. On this point, see Oakley, The Western Church, p. 117. 20. Cousins, “The Humanity and the Passion of Christ,” p. 375. 21. Pope Gregory I urges the readers of the Pastoral Rule to meditate on the Passion and to imitate it. See Davis, St. Gregory the Great: Pastoral Care, pp. 125–126; Regulae pastoralis liber, Tertia Pars, Caput XII, cols. 0069C–0069D. See also Erwin, “The Passion and Death of Christ,” pp. 115–116. 22. See Chazelle, The Crucified God. 23. See Fulton’s extensive treatment of Anselm’s prayers in From Judgment to Passion, chap. 3, “Praying to the Crucified Christ,” pp. 142–192. On the importance of Anselm in the development of Passion piety, see also Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross, p. 76. 24. Cited in Cousins, “The Humanity and the Passion of Christ,” p. 377. For the original Latin, see Anselm, Oratio XX. Ad Christum, PL 158, col. 903B. For another English version, see the Ward translation, p. 95.62–66. 25. Anselm, Oratio XX. Ad Christum, col. 903C; Ward translation, p. 95.79–91. 26. Cousins, “The Humanity and the Passion of Christ,” pp. 378–379. See also Langer, “Passio und Compassio.” 27. Cousins, “The Humanity and the Passion of Christ,” pp. 380–381. 28. The Latin titles of these three treatises are, respectively, Lignum vitae, Vitis mystica, and Meditationes vitae Christi. Erwin notes that the Meditationes vitae Christi enjoyed the widest circulation of such works in the later Middle Ages. See Erwin, “The Passion and Death of Christ,” pp. 153–154, 164–165. For an English translation of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi, see Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ.

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29. I have followed the Cousins translation, p. 119. For the Latin, see Bonaventure, Lignum vitae, p. 68. 30. Bonaventure, Cousins translation, p. 158 (Lignum vitae, p. 80). 31. On the significance of Ludolf’s Vita Christi, see Bodenstedt, The Vita Christi, p. 17. On the popularity of both the Vita Christi and the Passio Christi, see Erwin, “The Passion and Death of Christ,” pp. 178–179, 195. Erwin notes that according to some scholars, Ludolf’s Vita Christi was as popular in the fourteenth century as Thomas á Kempis’s Imitatio Christi was in the fifteenth century. The former work also inspired a revival of Passion piety in the early modern period, directly influencing the spirituality of Ignatius Loyola and Teresa of Ávila. 32. Erwin, “The Passion and Death of Christ,” pp. 188, 203. 33. On the role of Mary’s compassion for Christ in late medieval Passion piety, see Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, pp. 199–200. 34. Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross, p. 123. For an example of Franciscan preaching on the Passion, see Marquard von Lindau, Deutsche Predigten, especially sermon 14, “Diss ist von dem liden v[e]nsers herren,” pp. 112–115. 35. Cousins, “The Humanity and the Passion of Christ,” pp. 386–387. 36. See Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, pp. 192–193. 37. Oakley, The Western Church, pp. 120–121. 38. Cohen, “Towards a History of European Physical Sensibility,” pp. 55–56. 39. See Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel. 40. See Cousins, “The Humanity and the Passion of Christ,” p. 387. 41. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, p. 12. 42. Erwin explains: “By the end of Thomas’s life (and Bonaventure’s) in 1274, the general outlines of the doctrines of the passion and death of Christ were in place: (1) the idea that Christ’s death (if not necessary in an absolute sense) was the ‘best’ way for God to accomplish and demonstrate the divine will to save humans; (2) the notion that the passion and death of Christ make satisfaction to God for both the guilt and the punishment of original sin, and (in some way) make further forgiveness and grace possible; (3) that an important part of this process is the love for Christ the passion must awake in the believer, and its corollary desire to be ‘like’ Christ.” See Erwin, “The Passion and Death of Christ,” p. 104. 43. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, p. 197. 44. Bossy, Christianity in the West, p. 49. See Dietrich Kolde’s comments to this effect in his Christenspiegel, pp. 169.8–170.3, 170.15–171.3; Brother Dederich [Kolde] von Münster, “A Fruitful Mirror,” p. 82. 45. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, pp. 199, 201; Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross, p. 103. 46. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, p. 78. 47. Ibid., pp. 197–200. 48. See Thomas F. X. Noble’s review in Theological Studies 65, no. 4 (December 2004): 861–864.

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49. See Arthur G. Holder’s review in Church History 73, no. 1 (March 2004): 197–199. 50. See Moeller, “Imperial Cities,” p. 70. 51. Richard Palmer argues that Christians always saw epidemics as punishment for sin, although they could entertain other possibilities in the case of endemic disease. See Palmer, “The Church, Leprosy and Plague,” p. 95. More recently, Mitchell Hammond has shown that Christians—especially very pious ones— did not always see plague as divine punishment, at least not for themselves. See Hammond, “Medicine and Pastoral Care,” p. 115. 52. On the change in attitudes toward death in the later Middle Ages as a result of plague, see Herlihy, The Black Death, p. 63. 53. Haas asserts, “Der eigentliche Meister der Passionsmystik ist der Konstanzer Dominikaner Heinrich Seuse.” Haas, “‘Trage Leiden geduldiglich,,” p. 146. 54. Duclow, “‘My Suffering Is God,’” pp. 202–203. 55. See Tauler’s Sermon 55 in Vetter, Die Predigten Taulers, p. 258.6–8. For an English translation, see McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 273. 56. Suso wrote and circulated the Vita and the Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit before 1362/63, but near the end of his life (d. 1366), he revised both works and gathered them along with two others in the Exemplar, so that posterity would have a corrected edition of the works he believed God had inspired him to write. See Suso, Exemplar, p. 133. Tobin provides English translations, Life of the Servant and Little Book of Eternal Wisdom. According to McGinn, the Vita is extant in forty-three manuscripts. See McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 199. 57. Richard Kieckhefer coined the term “auto-hagiography.” See Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, p. 6. 58. Suso nowhere claims that he is the Servant, and McGinn warns against reading this text as a simple autobiography. McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, pp. 195– 196, 203. 59. Life of the Servant, p. 84; Vita, p. 34.8–12. Here and throughout, I follow Tobin’s translation unless otherwise noted. I insert the original German from Bihlmeyer in brackets where it is important. 60. Life of the Servant, pp. 88–89; Vita, pp. 41–44. 61. Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, pp. 213, 214; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, pp. 203.7–10, 205.1–7. For an interesting discussion of the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux on Suso’s Passion mysticism, see Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, pp. 437–438. Bernhard is the most frequently cited authority in the Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit. 62. Ebner, Offenbarungen, p. 46.5–10; Revelations, p. 110. I follow Hindsley’s translation below. 63. Mechthild began work on Das fließende Licht der Gotheit around 1250 but did not complete it until shortly before her death, which took place either around

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64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

Notes to Pages 73–74 1282 or around 1294. See the Tobin translation, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, pp. 4–6. The Flowing Light, p. 155; Das fließende Licht, Buch IV, Kapitel 12, p. 126.95–98. I follow Tobin’s translations here and elsewhere unless otherwise noted. On the role of suffering in Mechthild’s Das fließende Licht see Schmidt, “‘Frau Pein.’” See The Flowing Light, p. 156; Das fließende Licht, Buch IV, Kap. 12, p. 127.99–101. See also Haas, “‘Trage Leiden geduldiglich,’” p. 130. The Flowing Light, p. 303; Das fließende Licht, Buch VII, Kap. 34, p. 282.19–23. See Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, p. 89. Ebner, Revelations, p. 133; Offenbarungen, p. 89.15–18. Life of the Servant, p. 110; Vita, p. 70.8–11. See Suso, Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, pp. 247, 252; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, pp. 250.24–5, 251.2–3, 258.25–27. See Mechthild, The Flowing Light, p. 181; Das fließende Licht, Buch V, Kap. 2, p. 154.15–17. See Mechthild, The Flowing Light, p. 303; Das fließende Licht, Buch VII, Kap. 34, p. 282.23–26. Ebner records that because of her great suffering, God told her that she would go directly to heaven and not spend time in purgatory—she would be purged of sin in this life. Ebner, Revelations, p. 90; Offenbarungen, p. 10.20–21. Thomas à Kempis also urged the readers of his famous devotional work De imitatione Christi to seek purgatorial suffering in this life in order to avoid or greatly reduce one’s time in purgatory itself. See The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 24, pp. 66–67; De imitatione Christi, Liber I, cap. XXIV, pp. 49.6–8, 25–27. See Suso, Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, p. 222; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, p. 215.27–29. See Vetter, Die Predigten Taulers, pp. 52.32–53.7; Johannes Tauler: Sermons, p. 57. Seeking consolation from God alone is a key theme in Eckhart’s Daz buoch der götlîchen trœstunge. See The Book of Divine Consolation, pp. 220–221; Daz buoch der götlîchen trœstunge, pp. 29.14–30.4. Thomas à Kempis emphasized the same in De Imitatione Christi. See The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chap. 10, p. 41; De imitatione Christi, Liber I, cap. 10, pp. 17–18. See Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe, p. 57. See Ebner, Revelations, p. 90; Offenbarungen, p. 10.9–11. Tauler says the same in Sermon 55. See Vetter, Die Predigten Taulers, p. 258.6–8. Cited in McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 273. See McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 219. Duclow, “‘My Suffering Is God,’” p. 194. McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 84. McGinn asserts, “When Eckhart says, ‘God’s ground and the soul’s ground is one ground,’ he is announcing a new form of mysticism” (pp. 84–85). For a discussion of the meaning of grunt (ground), see pp. 86–90.

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81. See discussion of Abgeschiedenheit and Gelassenheit in ibid., pp. 217–222, 267–269. 82. Johannes Tauler: Sermons, p. 46; Vetter, Die Predigten Taulers, p. 22.14–15. On the role of suffering in Tauler’s spirituality, see Pleuser, Die Benennungen und der Begriff des Leidens bei J. Tauler. See also Haas, “‘Die Arbeit der Nacht’”; and Otto, Vor- und frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption, pp. 104–110. 83. See Mechthild, The Flowing Light, p. 325; Das fließende Licht, Buch VII, Kap. 56, p. 302.2–8. 84. The Book of Divine Consolation, p. 215. (The Seneca citation is from Natural Questions, 3.12.); Daz buoch der götlîchen trœstunge, p. 20.12–16. 85. The Book of Divine Consolation, p. 216; Daz buoch der götlîchen trœstunge, p. 21.3–5. The resignatio ad infernum was a common motif in late medieval mysticism, and it served as the ultimate test of true releasement. See McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 289. See pp. 219–221 on the important differences between Eckhart and Suso’s notions of Gelassenheit, especially with respect to the status of the human self after union with the divine. 86. See The Book of Divine Consolation, p. 226; Daz buoch der götlîchen trœstunge, p. 40.11–14. 87. See Haas, “‘Trage Leiden geduldiglich,’” p. 145; and Haas, “‘Die Arbeit der Nacht,’” pp. 38–39. 88. Life of the Servant, pp. 101–102; Vita, p. 58.3–16. 89. Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, p. 50. 90. On the place of passivity in Tauler’s spirituality, see Kieckhefer, “The Notion of Passivity.” 91. Tobin translates Gelassenheit as “detachment.” Following McGinn, I have opted for “releasement.” 92. Life of the Servant, p. 98; Vita, p. 54.1–8. 93. Life of the Servant, p. 98; Vita, p. 54.18–22. 94. Life of the Servant, p. 97; Vita, pp. 52.10–53.4. 95. Life of the Servant, p. 98; Das fließende Licht der Gottheit, Buch V, Kap. 2, p. 154.5–9. 96. Bynum, “The Female Body,” p. 235. 97. McGinn writes, “The description of these self-induced tortures in chapters 15–18 constitutes one of the classic accounts of the human body being made the locus of identity with Christ through severe acts of asceticism (whether or not these are to be taken literally).” McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 214. See also Bynum, “The Female Body,” p. 184. 98. Life of the Servant, pp. 88–89; Vita, p. 41.3–5. 99. See Revelations, p. 95; Offenbarungen, p. 19.18–21. 100. Chesterton observed of Saint Francis’s asceticism, “There was nothing negative about it; it was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured

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fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug for gold. And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure.” Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi, p. 81. Margaret Ebner also claimed to receive the stigmata; Revelations, p. 112; Offenbarungen, p. 50.1–4. Bynum observes that only two medieval men claimed to receive the stigmata, while dozens of women did; “The Female Body,” pp. 185–186. 101. See McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 217. 102. According to Bynum, women were especially inclined to “somatize” their religious experiences in the later Middle Ages. See “The Female Body,” p. 190. Bynum explains that this was because their writing was highly experiential, having been influenced by their reading of vernacular romance literature, and also because they were expected to tend to the bodily needs of others in medieval society and thus had a closer connection to the human body and its physical processes than did medieval men. 103. Revelations, p. 89; Offenbarungen, p. 8.2–5. 104. Bynum observes that female mystics tended to experience less frequent healings than male mystics, at least in part because they wished to retain their sickness for the spiritual benefits it might bring. See “The Female Body,” pp. 188–189. 105. Revelations, pp. 96, 134; Offenbarungen, pp. 21.15–21, 89.20–26. 106. The Flowing Light, p. 94; Das fließende Licht, Buch II, Kap. 25, p. 64.55–60. Both Mechthild and Margaret Ebner believed that in some sense, God needs the soul as a place of abiding; God certainly desires human souls and their love in both the Flowing Light and the Revelations. 107. See Hindsley, Margaret Ebner: Major Works (listed under Ebner in the Bibliography), p. 61. 108. Revelations, p. 126; Offenbarungen, pp. 75.24–76.2. I am not aware of similar passages in Eckhart, Suso, or Tauler. Bynum suggests that male mystics’ experience of the divine typically yielded a deep sense of stillness or groundedness, while female mystical experiences typically resulted in heightened affectivity and sensuality. See “The Female Body,” pp. 191–192. Perhaps men were not inclined to experience divine presence as pain, while heightened affectivity among female mystics clearly included pain. But see Life of the Servant, p. 66. 109. McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 286. 110. The Flowing Light, p. 111; Das fließende Licht, Buch III, Kap. 5, p. 83.3–4. Mechthild sees this God-forsakenness as a kind of divine love with which God loves her. 111. Life of the Servant, p. 167; Vita, p. 142.22–30. 112. McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 286. 113. Sermon 39, Vetter, Die Predigten Taulers, pp. 161.13–19, 23–24. Cited in McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, pp. 286–287.

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114. McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, pp. 281, 286. 115. Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, p. 215; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, pp. 205. 32–206.11. 116. It is interesting to note that in Eternal Wisdom’s initial response to this charge, he makes a connection between the way the Father has treated him and the way he has treated his friends, even from the beginning of the world, asserting in both cases that the motivation for the treatment has been love. See Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, p. 237; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, p. 236.17–20. 117. Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, p. 237; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, p. 236. 20–22. 118. Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, p. 238; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, p. 237.7–19. 119. Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, p. 245; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, p. 247.21. 120. Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, p. 246; Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, p. 249. 24–25. 121. In his well-known letter correspondence with the nun Elsbeth Stagel, Suso emphasizes the importance of becoming “ein gotleidener mensch” and thus to overcome temptations to question God’s goodness and mercy. See Suso, “Heinrich Seuse, Dominikaner, an Elisabeth Stagel,” and the English translation of Tobin. 122. See Ruf, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskatalogue, pp. 676–729. 123. For a discussion of both parish and monastic libraries, see Buzas, Deutsche Bibliotheksgeschichte, pp. 17–94, 107–110. 124. McGinn notes that Suso and Tauler preached most of their sermons to nuns as part of their cura monialium as Dominican friars. McGinn, Harvest of Mysticism, p. 241. Nuns could thus be well prepared to provide care of suffering souls. See below for an example of such pastoral care. 125. I have searched the Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskatalogue Deutschlands und der Schweiz for libraries that contained the pastoralia discussed in chapter 1 and the works of consolation discussed in chapters 2 and 3. As a general rule, monastic and university libraries contained all three, while parish libraries, as one would expect, held only the first category, along with other works that were necessary for the celebration of the sacraments. I have confirmed this conclusion in conversation with Matthew Wranovix, who has worked on the parish libraries in the medieval diocese of Eichstätt and who is familiar with other local and regional studies of parish libraries throughout late medieval Germany. Henrik Otto has shown that the readership of Tauler’s Predigten was generally limited to monks and nuns of observant orders; it is in the libraries of such houses that the vast majority of extant manuscripts and print editions are to be found. There are only a very few examples of secular clergy and educated laypeople possessing the work in either manuscript or printed form. Otto cites evidence to suggest that the same was true for Suso’s Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit. See Vor- und frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption, pp. 51–76. One finds confirmation

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126. 127. 128. 129.

130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

135.

136. 137. 138. 139. 140.

Notes to Pages 80–83 for Otto’s argument regarding the ownership of Suso’s Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit in Hofmann, “Seuses Werke.” Where it is possible to determine provenance, extant editions originally belonged to libraries in convents or monasteries, in some cases having been brought there by members of the local nobility or upper class. (I am grateful to Steven Rozenski for drawing my attention to this source.) The works of Mechthild of Magdeburg and Margaret Ebner were only ever available in a few manuscript copies—there are, to my knowledge, no incunabula—while Tauler’s Predigten, although certainly well known in the later Middle Ages, came into their own especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Johannes von Staupitz, “Das alles vnnser leyden.” Ibid., p. 30.27–28. (I supply line numbers here and below; they do not appear in Knaake’s edition.) Ibid., p. 30.31–37. Franz Posset attributes this emphasis on spiritual sweetness in Staupitz especially to the influence of Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux. See Posset, The Front-Runner, pp. 51–59; Posset, “The Sweetness of God”; and Posset, “Christi Dulcedo.” Johannes von Staupitz, “Das alles vnnser leyden,” p. 31.2–3. Ibid., p. 31.5–11. Ibid., p. 31.24–32. Ibid., p. 31.33–38. For a discussion of how late medieval mystical literature influenced lay piety via adherents of the Devotio Moderna, see Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe, p. 21. Margaretha does not mention the child’s name in her undated letters, but from the language she uses, it seems rather likely that it was her sister-inlaw’s namesake, Catharina, who died in 1507. (I have thus dated this small collection of letters to 1507.) Margaretha speaks in one of her letters of Christ leading the deceased child to his “aller zirlichsten praut pets,” where she now enjoys God’s presence forever. Two other Kress daughters died before Margaretha passed away in 1511—Ursula (1493–1494) and Barbara (1497–1498)—but they were infants, and thus the bridal imagery she employs would seem better suited to Catharina, who was fifteen when she died (1492–1507). For information on the Kress family tree, see Biedermann, Geschlechtsregister, Tabvla CCLXXVII. Kress, undated letters, letter 2. Ibid., letter 4. See McGrath, Iustitia Dei, pp. 59–72. See Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 19–20. See Ozment, The Age of Reform, pp. 22–42; and McGrath, Iustitia Dei, pp. 186–207.

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141. Bast, The Reformation of Faith, p. 125. Even mystics such as Tauler who greatly emphasized human passivity allowed for human contribution to salvation. Kieckhefer writes, “Repeatedly Tauler insisted that one should become wholly passive, and allow God to act within oneself. But just as clearly he condemned ‘false inactivity’ and ‘inner idleness,’ and he acknowledged that, alongside passivity, some kind of active human effort was not only permissible but requisite.” “The Notion of Passivity,” p. 198. Kieckhefer observes that grace may do everything in Tauler, but it can be resisted. See p. 210. 142. The Flowing Light, p. 181; Das fließende Licht, Buch V, Kap. 3, p. 155.2–5.

c h a p t er 4 1. See Scribner, For the Sake of the Simple Folk, p. 33. 2. Tom Scott briefly treats this older view of Luther and the Reformation in “The Reformation between Deconstruction and Reconstruction,” p. 406. 3. See Ulinka Rublack, Reformation Europe, pp. 12–36, 197. 4. Some leading scholars even maintain that Reformation Studies is now captive to a secular confessionalism that is just as myopic and distorting as its theological predecessor. See Gregory, “The Other Confessional History.” I am sympathetic to Gregory’s perspective. 5. Karant-Nunn has recently observed that Luther’s “pastoral style” had an important influence on his clerical followers, decisively influencing their own approach to pastoral care. This influence took place especially through his many writings, which quickly became available in the early years of the Reformation. See Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, p. 211. 6. See Ulinka Rublack, Reformation Europe, pp. 31, 43. 7. On the importance of Luther for the distinctive shape of early modern Lutheran culture, see especially Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, pp. 19–21. 8. There are a number of recent works that deal with Luther’s theology of suffering, especially as it relates to divine passibility. Among the more important are: Ngien, The Suffering of God; Otto, Verborgene Gerechtigkeit; and Wolff, Metapher und Kreuz. Older treatments of Luther’s theology of the cross also examine suffering. See, for example, McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (1985); and von Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross. However, none of these works provides a careful analysis of how Luther’s new soteriology influenced his theology of suffering (The same is true of the 2011 edition of McGrath’s work). There is a dissertation that examines the evolution of Luther’s view of suffering in the Christian life: Terry, “Martin Luther on the Suffering of the Christian.” However, Terry pays little attention to Luther’s soteriological development and argues that there was no change in the reformer’s theology of suffering. I argue just the opposite in this chapter. 9. On the dating of the Dictata super Psalterium, see Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, p. 129.

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10. Luther may have preached this sermo on the day of the forty-two martyrs (March 10) in 1514. See Vogelsang, “Zur Datierung,” p. 118. According to Vogelsang, this sermon is the earliest homily we have from Luther’s own hand. 11. On the influence of late medieval Passion spirituality on Luther, see Erwin, “The Passion and Death of Christ.” 12. I use the abbreviated Latin title of Luther’s early lectures on the Psalms—Dictata—to distinguish them from his later Operationes in Psalmos (1519–1521). For a discussion of this latter work, see chapter 5. 13. This paragraph draws directly on Berndt Hamm’s discussion of faith in the theology of the Middle Ages and in the early Luther, in Bast, The Reformation of Faith, pp. 153–177. 14. See Hamm, “Naher Zorn und nahe Gnade.” Hamm argues that through his experience of Anfechtungen in Erfurt, Luther came to believe in the absolute futility of his own efforts to achieve salvation, an insight that was made uniquely possible by the spiritual environment of an Observant Augustinian monastery. Hamm maintains that already in Erfurt, Luther had experienced both the terrifying nearness of the God of wrath, which convinced him of his nothingness, and the consoling nearness of the God of grace, which persuaded him of his utter dependence on divine mercy in salvation, and thus he approached the Dictata with some of the most important features of his Reformation theology already in place. 15. For a stimulating discussion of the way Luther’s conception of faith in the Dictata integrated both Demut and Hoffnung and then how the two were decoupled in Luther’s subsequent lecture series and writings, see Hamm, “Die 95 Thesen.” 16. Luther entitled his reflection on the pot of Moab “Sermo de Martyribus ex eodem psalmo” (“A Discourse on Martyrs from the Same Psalm”). While he mentions various kinds of trials faced by Christians, Luther is especially concerned with persecution at the hands of non-Christians. Elsewhere in the Dictata, he speaks of spiritual martyrdom, that is, putting to death of the flesh. See WA 55/2: 37.19–38.3 (LW 10: 35). Later in the Dictata, he acknowledges that Christians rarely experience persecution anymore, and therefore they must inflict it on themselves. See WA 55/2: 405.641–647 (LW 10: 373). Unless otherwise noted, I will be using the English translation provided in the LW. 17. In this discourse, Luther identifies Moab with human pride. See WA 55/2: 328.504, (LW 10: 297) and 436.70 (LW 10: 407). Luther argues that God is able to use this pride to produce humility in the saints by subjecting them to all manner of assaults that stem from human arrogance. See the discussion below on the importance of humilitas in Luther’s early soteriology. 18. WA 55/2: 317.208–219 (LW 10: 287). 19. WA 55/2: 317.215–217 (LW 10: 287). 20. WA 55/2: 317.223–225 (LW 10: 287).

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21. For God being the artificinam coquinae, see WA 55/2: 319.250–251 (LW 10: 288). For Christ being the cocus, see WA 55/2: 317.203–204 (LW 10: 287) and WA 319.268–269 (LW 10: 289). It should be noted that elsewhere in the Dictata, Luther says that God does not afflict anyone directly but chooses to withdraw from Christians and causes his creatures to inflict harm, thus maintaining his undisturbed repose in summe bonus (the highest goodness). WA 55/2: 45.14–15 (LW 10: 40). In Luther’s discourse on the pot of Moab, it is the un-Godly who cause hardship for Christians. They are the instruments, so to speak, that Christ uses to cook the saints. 22. WA 55/2: 319.272–274 (LW 10: 289). 23. See WA 55/2: 319.255 (LW 10: 289). 24. WA 55/2: 319.274–275 (LW 10: 289). Luther here offers a string of scriptural quotations to support his assertion: Hebrews 12:8, Romans 8:17, 2 Corinthians 1:6–7, 2 Timothy 2:11–12, and 2 Timothy 3:12. 25. WA 55/2: 167.2–8 (LW 10:139) and WA 211.57–64 (LW 10: 179). 26. For Luther’s inclusion of physical illness in the spiritual “cooking” that Christians endure, see WA 55/2: 209.17–19 (LW 10:177) and WA 860.219–226 (LW 11: 379). 27. WA 55/2: 318.247–249 (LW 10: 288). 28. There is an enormous literature on the concept of humilitas fidei in the Dictata. The discussion that follows draws especially on the following works, among which there is considerable disagreement: Bizer, Fides ex auditu; Damerau, Die Demut in der Theologie Luthers; Oberman, “Wir sein pettler”; zur Mühlen, Nos extra nos; Steinmetz, Luther and Staupitz; McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (1985 and 2011); and Bast, The Reformation of Faith, pp. 153–178. 29. WA 55/2: 24.7–8 (LW 10: 27). See also WA 55/2: 272.105 (LW 10: 238). 30. See Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, p. 133. 31. WA 55/2: 438.133–135 (LW 10: 404). 32. On the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux’s understanding of self-accusation on Luther, see zur Mühlen, Nos extra nos, p. 43. Posset maintains that this influence was mediated to Luther through Staupitz, whose similar emphasis on self-accusation played such an important role in Luther’s early theology. As part of his (not altogether convincing) larger effort to argue for ongoing continuity between Staupitz and Luther, Posset asserts that Luther continued to stress the importance of self-accusation in his theology well into the 1520s and beyond. Posset, The Front-Runner, pp. 180–181, 256. 33. WA 55/2: 36.17–22 (LW 10: 33–34). 34. WA 55/2: 54.20–21 (LW 10: 48). 35. The complicated nature of humilitas fidei in the Dictata is readily apparent in the contrast that Luther makes between Gilead and Moab in his discourse on the pot of Moab. See WA 55/2: 321.310–315 (LW 10: 290). Here humility seems to precede faith but also to be part of it. Following Bizer (Fides ex auditu, p. 20), McGrath shows how in much of the Dictata, Luther equates faith and humility

312

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

50.

Notes to Pages 91–92 and also says that humility must proceed from faith. See McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011) p. 158. Zur Mühlen argues that humility is an essential part of faith for Luther in the Dictata. See zur Mühlen, Nos extra nos, p. 45. See also Bast, The Reformation of Faith, p. 169. WA 55/2: 177. 46–50 (LW 10:146). On Luther’s rejection of the concept of merit in the Dictata, see WA 55/2: 52.7–12 (LW 10: 46) and WA 177.29–32 (LW 146). See WA 55/2: 662.549–555 (LW 11: 170). WA 55/2: 665.639–666.652 (LW 11: 173–174). Here Luther says that grace produces good works in the Christian through faith or the indwelling Christ. Zur Mühlen, Nos extra nos, pp. 45, 91. For a helpful discussion of faith and humility in the Dictata, see Bast, The Reformation of Faith, pp. 167–177. See WA 55/2: 639.270–275, 278–279 (LW 11:146). McGrath argues that Luther began moving toward the position that humilitasfides was a gift of grace in the final months of his lectures on the Dictata. McGrath cites Luther’s treatment of Vulgate Psalm 118:11 (119:11) (WA 55/2: 896.152–157) as evidence but concedes that the move away from the basic theological presupposition of the via moderna—facere quod in se est—was not decisive at this point. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011) 171. See WA 55/2: 751.115–122 (LW 11: 264). See Luther’s distinction between Iudicium as self-accusation and Iustitiam as the grace of faith given gratis by the Lord. WA 55/2: 828.35–38 (LW 11: 346). See WA 55/2: 400.500–502, 438.143–144 (LW 10: 368, 404). See also WA 55/2: 876.72–877.103 (LW 11: 396, 397). See below for a discussion of Luther’s reliance on the soteriology of the via moderna in the Dictata. Steinmetz downplays Luther’s dependence on the via moderna—though not its language—in this latter section of the Dictata. See Steinmetz, Luther and Staupitz, p. 88. Still, it seems clear enough that Luther here thinks in terms of a human preparation for grace, which was a hallmark of via moderna soteriology. See Oberman, “Wir sein pettler,” p. 241; Steinmetz, Luther and Staupitz, p. 88; Pesch, Hinführung zu Luther, pp. 100–101; and Hamm, “Naher Zorn und nahe Gnade,” p. 133. Oberman, “Wir sein pettler,” pp. 241, 250. See Steinmetz, Luther and Staupitz, p. 80. Luther can speak of the inmost being of the sinner being enlightened by the “lumine sancto” (holy light)—i.e., the Word—in order to show the sinner his or her depravity. WA 55/2: 273.136–138 (LW 10: 239). Here I follow McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011) pp. 96–120. While conceding that much of Luther’s mature theology of salvation may be discerned in the Dictata, McGrath cites compelling evidence to demonstrate Luther’s continued adherence to the soteriology of the via moderna. See especially pp. 117–119.

Notes to Pages 92–95

51. 52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

313

On the place of the via moderna in Luther’s education, see pp. 53–63, 72–92. See also Oberman, Luther, pp. 119–123. See Oberman, “Wir sein pettler,” p. 250; and Steinmetz, Luther and Staupitz, p. 88. McGrath explains, “Luther’s early understanding of justification (1513–14) may be summarised as follows: humans must recognise their spiritual weakness and inadequacy, and turn in humility from their attempts at self-justification to ask God for his grace. God treats this humility of faith (humilitas fidei) as the precondition necessary for justification under the terms of the pactum (that is, as the quod in se est, demanded of humans), and then fulfills God’s obligations under the pactum by bestowing grace upon them.” According to McGrath, human beings are able to make this response to God without the help of special grace. McGrath, Iustitia Dei, p. 220. WA 55/2: 55.9–12 (LW 10: 48). See WA 55/2: 318.247–249 (LW 10: 288) and WA 883.111–113 (LW 11: 404). Here the redemptive quality of suffering does not include rendering penance for the penalty of sin. WA 55/2: 62.1–5 (LW 10: 51). Rupp, The Righteousness of God, p. 154. WA 55/2: 64.26–65.3 (LW 10: 54). WA 55/2: 275.213–276.216 (LW 10: 242). See WA 55/2: 36.28–30 (LW 10: 34). WA 55/2: 884.120–124 (LW 11: 404). WA 55/2: 55.20–22, 57.5–7 (LW 10: 49). Horst Beintker argues that while Luther referred to inner and outer trials as Anfechtungen, the former constituted a higher form of suffering for him. See Beintker, Die Überwindung der Anfechtung, pp. 86–87. WA 55/2: 57.7–58.1 (LW 10: 49). WA 55/2: 58.3–4 (LW 10: 49). The LW notes that the image of the bent palm tree may be found in Aristotle and Plutarch. See n. 17. The image of a tree made sturdy by blowing wind may also be found in Seneca’s De providentia; see pp. 32 (Latin), 33 (English). WA 55/2: 58.12–59.2 (LW 10: 50). I am aware of no evidence to suggest that Luther had read Dambach’s Consolatio theologiae. WA 55/2: 384.13–22 (LW 10: 351). WA 55/2: 856.120–122 (LW 11: 375). As in the Dictata, God is the ultimate agent behind all suffering in the Römervorlesung. See WA 56: 300.9–11 (LW 25: 288) and WA 305.10–11 (LW 25: 292). On the two kinds of suffering, physical and spiritual, see WA 56: 306.9–20 (LW 25: 293). On justification as a process, see WA 56: 49.21–23 (LW 25: 43, M. 2), WA 70. 23–24 (LW 25: 63, M. 8), and WA 258.19–20 (LW 25: 245). As in the Dictata,

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72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

94. 95. 96.

Notes to Pages 95–96 tribulation follows immediately after justification. See WA 56: 305.10–14 (LW 25: 292). On the role of suffering in the process of justification to strip the believer of all sense of pride and proprietorship, see WA 56: 159.4–9 (LW 25: 137). See LW 25: 137, n. 7. WA 56: 157.1–2 (LW 25: 135). WA 56: 207.7–11 (LW 25: 191–192). WA 56: 159.12–16 (LW 25: 137). WA 56: 198.21–21 (LW 25: 137). WA 56: 304.3–4 (LW 25: 291). See WA 56: 50.16–17 (LW 25: 44, M. 5), WA 300.9–302.15 (LW 25: 288–289), and WA 304.9–10 (LW 25: 291). See WA 56: 304.20–26 (LW 25: 291) and WA 305.10–14 (LW 25: 292). See WA 56: 305.14–16 (LW 25: 292). In the Dictata, Luther criticizes those who seek to make easy the way to heaven by excessive reliance on indulgences. See WA 55/2: 384.13–22 (LW 10: 351). In the Römervorlesung, Luther assails a similarly lax Christianity, this time focusing on the veneration of cross relics. See WA 56: 301.18–20 (LW 25: 288–289). WA 55/2: 343.10, 344.1 (LW 10: 313). WA 55/2: 138. 8 (LW 10: 119). On this influence, see the introduction by Jean Leclerq in Luibheid’s translation of Pseudo-Dionysius, pp. 25–32. WATR 4: 647.11–12 (no. 5082b). Cited in Posset, The Front-Runner, p. 90. WA 55/2: 179.82–95 (LW 10: 148) and WA 720.70–721.94 (LW 11: 231–232). WA 55/2: 179.91–92 (LW 10: 148). WA 56: 392.32–393.3 (LW 25: 383). WA 56: 413.18–26 (LW 56: 404–405). See zur Mühlen, Nos extra nos, pp. 51, 174. For two instances of Luther speaking of humility and (et) faith, rather than humility of faith, see WA 56: 218.7–15 (LW 25: 204) and WA 284.13–14 (LW 25: 271). Luther hinted at this meaning of faith in the (later) Dictata but did not develop it as fully as in the Römervorlesung. On the importance of faith in the divine promise in the Römervorlesung, see Grane, Modus Loquendi Theologicus, pp. 74–75. There were late medieval precedents for this more affective and existential understanding of faith in the sermons of Stephan Fridolin and Johannes von Staupitz. See Bast, The Reformation of Faith, p. 162 n. 27. WA 56: 44.24–25 (LW 25: 38, M. 14). See WA 56: 45.15–16 (LW 25: 39, M. 15) and WA 26.13–19 (LW 25: 40, M. 21). See WA 56: 419.21 (LW 25: 411). See also Grane, Modus Loquendi Theologicus, pp. 74–75; and zur Mühlen, Nos extra nos, pp. 51, 174.

Notes to Pages 96–98

315

97. WA 56: 158.10–14 (LW 25: 136). On the importance of alien righteousness in the Römervorlesung, see McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011) p. 182; and McGrath, Iustitia Dei, p. 224. 98. See WA 56: 36.11–23 (LW 25: 30, M. 20) and WA 278.1–2 (LW 25: 265). 99. See WA 56: 227.18–228.2 (LW 25: 212). 100. WA 56: 7.1 (for the marginal comment in the following LW citation, see n. 1 after the word bonis) (LW 25: 5–6, M. 10, p. 6). 101. WA 56: 274.11–14 (LW 25: 261). On Luther’s break with the soteriology of the via moderna, see McGrath, Iustitia Dei, p. 221. 102. See McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011) p. 182. 103. WA 56: 89.15–18 (LW 25: 80, M. 4). 104. See WA 56: 198.21–23 (LW 25: 181), WA 202.18–20 (LW 25: 186), and WA 254.18–24 (LW 25: 241). See also Damerau, Die Demut in der Theologie Luthers, p. 203. 105. Hamm asserts, “für die berufliche, menschliche, theologische und kirchenkritische Entwicklung Luthers in den eintscheidenden Jahren 1505 bis 1524 keine andere Person eine ähnlich wichtige Bedeutung gewonnen hat wie sein Ordensvorgesetzter, Förderer, theologischer Lehrer, Seelsorger und väterlicher Freund Staupitz.” Hamm, “Johann von Staupitz,” p. 31. 106. Berndt Hamm has argued that there was a trend toward emphasizing divine mercy and divine agency in much of late medieval theology; Luther was not alone in this emphasis, nor was he the originator of it. Bast, The Reformation of Faith, p. 41. 107. On the influence of German mysticism on Luther, see Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik”; Appel, Anfechtung und Trost, pp. 106–109; Iserloh, “Luther und die Mystik,” pp. 61–67; Oberman, “Simul Gemitus”; Ozment, “Eckhart and Luther”; Ozment, The Age of Reform, pp. 239–244; Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, pp. 137–144; and Hamm, “Wie mystisch war der Glaube Luthers?” 108. On Tauler’s influence on Luther, see Moeller, “Tauler und Luther”; Otto, Vorund frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption, pp. 183–215; and Ozment, Homo Spiritualis. Damerau argues that already in 1516, Luther’s understanding of humility was quite different from Tauler’s: the mystic saw it as a virtue that God rewards, while the Wittenberg professor did not. See Damerau, Die Demut in der Theologie Luthers, pp. 202, 237. 109. Vogelsang argues that Luther was especially attracted to Tauler’s emphasis on inner spiritual trials in his understanding of Anfechtungen. See Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” 42–43. 110. See Hamm, “Johann von Staupitz,” pp. 32–34. See also Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, pp. 81–82. Brecht notes that Gerson was also helpful to Luther in his Anfechtungen. Leppin says the same in his biography of Luther, Martin Luther, p. 42. 111. See Hamm, “Wie mystisch war der Glaube Luthers?” p. 277.

316

Notes to Pages 98–99

112. Ibid., p. 282 (my translation). Otto has noted important differences between Tauler’s treatment of Anfechtungen in his Predigten and Luther’s interpretation of this treatment in his marginal comments on the mystic’s sermons. Unlike Luther, Tauler does not discuss sin and fear of election to damnation as causes of Anfechtungen; rather, he presents the experience of spiritual assaults as a necessary and God-ordained step on the path to full experience of God. See Otto, Vor- und frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption, pp. 192–201. 113. WA 56: 378.13–14; LW 25: 368. 114. See Lohse, “Luther und Bernhard von Clairvaux.” Lohse argues that behind Augustine, Bernard was “die zweite Autorität” for Luther’s early theology. See also Bell, “Luther’s Reception.” Posset maintains that Bernard “had a greater impact on Luther than Augustine” See The Read Luther, p.2. 115. Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, p. 137; Iserloh, “Luther und die Mystik,” p. 62; Hamm, “Wie mystisch war der Glaube Luthers?” p. 245. Sven Grosse has argued that Luther was not as diametrically opposed to Dionysian mysticism as scholars have maintained, even as late as 1520. See Grosse, “Der junge Luther,” pp. 216–217. 116. WA 56: 299.27–300.8 (LW 25: 287–288). See also Hamm, “Wie mystisch war der Glaube Luthers?” pp. 273–275. 117. On Luther’s denouncement of Dionysian mysticism in the Operations in psalmos, see AWA 2: 294–295, n. 16. See also Froehlich’s introduction in the Luibheid translation of Pseudo-Dionysius, pp. 40–44. 118. WA Br 1, p. 79, lines 58–64 (LW 48: 35–36). 119. Volker Leppin confirms the sacramental nature of this language in “‘Omnen vitam,’” p. 13. 120. WA Br 1: 79.61 (LW 48: 36). On the Theologia Deutsch, see Zerchele, “Die ‘Theologia Deutsch.’” It should be noted that, unlike Tauler’s sermons, the Theologia Deutsch was not especially well known in the later Middle Ages. There are only eight extant manuscripts, all from the second half of the fifteenth century. However, the work enjoyed a much wider print distribution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 392. 121. The WA lists two extant editions of the 1516 version (WA 1, p. 153) and nine of the 1518 version, two of which are the same edition. (WA 1, pp. 376–378). Benzing lists eighteen extant German editions and one extant Low German edition of Luther’s preface to the 1518 version. See Benzing, Lutherbibliographie, I, pp. 24–26. 122. WA 1: 378.21–23; Theologia Germanica, p. 54. 123. See chapter 5, note 52; and Hamm, “Die 95 Thesen,” p. 106. 124. On Luther’s rejection of Tauler’s concept of Grunt, see Ozment, Homo Spiritualis, pp. 87–216. Ozment argues that Luther embraced the “soteriologically de-substantial character of the self” and believed that human beings could only become “spiritual” through faith; see pp. 121, 214. For an alternative point of view

Notes to Pages 99–100

125.

126. 127.

128. 129.

130. 131. 132.

317

that argues for continuity between the theological anthropology and soteriology of the mystics and Luther, see Hoffman, Luther and the Mystics, pp. 131–180. For a more recent and somewhat better documented restatement of this argument, see Hoffmann, Theology of the Heart, pp. 77–88. See also the appreciative though critical treatments of Ozment’s thesis in Grane’s Modus Loquendi Theologicus, pp. 122–124; and Otto’s Vor- und frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption, pp. 207–211. See Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” p. 49; Leppin, “Mystik,” p. 60; and Otto, Vor- und frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption, pp. 201–206. In the Römervorlesung, Luther states that the only way for a soul to reach the uncreated Word is first to be purified through the created Word, but he then observes that no soul could become pure enough to be worthy of such union in this life. WA 56: 300.3–8 (LW 25: 288). See Oberman, “Simul Gemitus,” p. 231; and Hamm, “Wie mystisch war der Glaube Luthers?” p. 255. See Hamm, “Wie mystisch war der Glaube Luthers?” p. 273. A few pages later (p. 275), Hamm asserts, “Ein unmittelbarer mystischen Kontakt zwischen dem Innersten der Seele und den verborgenen Geheimnissen Gottes ist daher für Luther keine christliche Möglichkeit mehr.” On Luther’s ongoing praise for Tauler, see Moeller, “Tauler und Luther,” p. 158. Hamm and Leppin argue in their book Gottes Nähe that Luther was deeply indebted to the medieval mystical tradition and that his theology may be best understood as a new (and admittedly radical) development in the history of this movement. See especially p. vii. For an alternative point of view, see Otto, Vor- und frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption, p. 214. Otto argues that Tauler was important for Luther during a critical phase of his theological development—the 1510s and ’20s—but then the mystic soon lost his meaning for the Wittenberg reformer, certainly by the early 1530s. Unlike Hamm and Leppin, Otto does not comment on the possibility of a modified mysticism in the later Luther; he simply notes that the Wittenberg reformer distanced himself from Tauler in the early 1530s. See Ozment, The Age of Reform, pp. 239–244; Oberman, “Simul Gemitus”; and Oberman, Luther, p. 80. See Kolb, Martin Luther, p. 28. Here I draw on Hamm’s concepts of Glaubensmystik, radikale Deszendunzmystik, Wortmystik, and Kreuzesmystik in “Wie mystisch war der Glaube Luthers?” pp. 243, 255, 274, respectively. See Hamm’s discussion of the union of the Christian’s soul with Christ in the midst of the Christian community on pp. 247–248. See also his favorable yet cautionary assessment of Finnish Lutheran scholarship on p. 253. On this scholarship, see Braaten and Jenson, Union with Christ. In “Wie mystisch war der Glaube Luthers?” Hamm argues that many of the defining features of Luther’s modified mysticism—and Hamm does not shrink from calling Luther a mystic—may also be found in Staupitz’s own brand of non-Neoplatonic mysticism. See pp. 255–256.

318

Notes to Pages 100–103

133. It appears that Luther did not consult his notes for the Dictata as he prepared Die sieben Bußpsalmen. See WA 1, p. 154. 134. Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, p. 143. 135. WA 1: 154 (LW 14: ix). WA 1 provides the 1517 text, the LW a 1525 edition with minor revisions. None of the quotations provided below underwent revision in the 1525 edition; therefore, I have provided the LW reference along with the WA. See WA 18: 479–530 for a critical edition of the 1525 edition. 136. WA 1: 154 (LW 14: x). 137. WA 1: 161.2–7 (LW 14:142). 138. Luther states explicitly that faith is a gift from God but remains unclear on the origin of humility. See WA 1: 212.29–213.11 (LW 14:196–197). 139. WA 1: 212.33–213.2 and WA 5–9. Cited in Hamm, “Die 95 Thesen,” p. 94. 140. WA 1: 183.30–184.10 (LW 14: 163). 141. WA 55/2: 888.15–889.21 (LW 11: 410). 142. WA 55/2: 889.24–31, 33–36 (LW 11: 410–411). 143. See WA 55/2: 889.39–40 (LW 11: 411). 144. WA 1: 159.23–24, 160.27–31 (LW 14: 140, 142). My translation. 145. On the dating of Luther’s Hebräervorlesung, see Hamm, “Die 95 Thesen,” p. 93 n. 11. I follow Hamm and Bayer’s dating of this lecture series. 146. See Bizer, Fides ex auditu, p. 165; and Pesch, Hinführung zu Luther, p. 109. 147. We do not have Luther’s own notes from the Hebräervorlesung, only those from students, which were not published until the twentieth century. 148. Sven Grosse has argued that Luther’s humility theology was not simply a “Vorstadium der reformatorischen Rechtfertigungslehre . . . Die Demutstheologie ist nichts anders als die mystische Theologie, und in deren Grenzen bleibt Luther.” See Grosse, “Der junge Luther,” p. 232. See chapter 5 for a discussion of the ongoing importance of humility in Luther’s theology in the Operationes in psalmos. 149. WA 57/3: 101.19–22 (LW 29: 112–113). 150. WA 1: 225.29–30 (LW 31: 11). 151. WA 57/3: 151.9–15 (LW 29: 155). 152. WA 57/3: 156.20–157.4 (LW 29: 160). 153. On faith as a divine gift in the Hebräervorlesung, see WA 57/3: 233.12 (LW 29: 235). 154. WA 57/3: 222.5–9 (LW 29: 224). 155. In the Hebräervorlesung, faith also causes sacramental absolution to become efficacious for the individual. WA 57/3: 170.1–8 (LW 29: 172). On the importance of this point in Luther’s theological development, see Bizer, Fides ex auditu, p. 165; and Pesch, Hinführung zu Luther, p. 109. Faith also constitutes the primary fruit of meditating on the Passion. See WA 57/3: 209.15–22 (LW 29: 210). 156. WA 157/3: 129.25 (LW 29: 136). Luther also employs the language of God’s alien or strange work (Isaiah 28:21) in the Römervorlesung to refer to God’s use of

Notes to Pages 103–105

319

suffering to accomplish holy ends. See WA 56: 376.8–9 (LW 25: 365). Such divine work is “alien” in the sense that it is not proper to God’s good and loving nature. 157. WA 57/3: 188.13–16 (LW 29:189). 158. WA 57/3: 132.1–5 (LW 29: 138). 159. WA 57/3: 236.1–3 (LW 29: 238). 160. WA 57/3: 236.4–7 (LW 29: 238). Luther had also referred to Abraham’s faith in Die sieben Bußpsalmen. See WA 1: 171.33 (LW 14: 152). 161. For a fuller treatment of Luther’s break with late medieval penitential theology, see Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys, pp. 51–58; and Rittgers, “Embracing the ‘True Relic.’” I know of just one article that directly examines the connection between Luther’s theology of suffering and his view of penance: Rupp, “Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.” 162. See Bagchi, “Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses,” p. 332. Bagchi attributes Luther’s concern to protect against spiritual laxity in the indulgence controversy especially to the influence of Tauler. See pp. 341, 351. Bagchi also shows that Cardinal Cajetan had misgivings about indulgences and their influence on lay piety. See p. 349. 163. Portions of the following section are taken from my article, Rittgers, “Embracing the ‘True Relic’ of Christ.” It should be noted that Luther was not entirely satisfied with the way he had expressed himself in the Ninety-Five Theses. The theses do not necessarily represent his own theological convictions about indulgences and related topics at this stage in his development, at least not in every point. See Shaffern, The Penitent’s Treasury, pp. 5–6; and Wicks, Luther’s Reform, pp. 94–95. I do not find compelling Wicks’s argument (p. 108) that Luther is the author of another treatise on indulgences from 1516 or 1517 that takes a much milder position on the contested practice. (See Tractatus de indulgentiis per Doctorem Martin ordinis s. Augustini Wittenbergae editus, WA 1, pp. 65 ff. The WA attributes the treatise to Luther.) I follow Posset in attributing this treatise to the collective efforts of Staupitz, Wenceslaus Linck, and perhaps Luther, albeit as editor. See Posset, The Front-Runner, pp. 216–217. 164. See thesis 5, WA 1: 233.18–19 (LW 31: 26). 165. See WA 1: 233.10–11 (LW 31: 25). The argument of the Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum in a nutshell is that indulgences dissuade Christians from taking up a life of true penitence—that is, hatred of self and various mortifications of the flesh; see theses 3 and 4, WA 1: 233.14–16 (LW 31: 25–26)—and therefore they have to be opposed. For an illuminating discussion of Tauler’s influence on Luther’s understanding of contrition in the opening thesis of the Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, see Leppin, “‘Omnen vitam.’” Hamm concedes that there is much in Luther’s indulgence theses that may be traced back to late medieval mystical and renewal movements, but he still maintains that the theses are reformatorisch (reformational) in nature and not simply

320

Notes to Pages 105–106

because of their assault on papal jurisdiction over departed souls (see note 166 below). Hamm maintains that Luther’s soteriology is also reformational in this work or, more accurately, that his soteriological assumptions at this stage in his development are reformational, both because he denies salvific significance to penitence and because he no longer views faith as a compound of humility and hope, as in the Dictata. Hamm argues that the penitence that Luther enjoins in this work is an outgrowth of faith-as-hope-and-trust and thus has to do with the horizontal plane of the Christian’s existence, not with his or her vertical relationship with God, in which there is no place for considerations of merit. Hamm concludes by stating that Luther would soon reintegrate a penitential element into his understanding of faith, but this element would no longer consist of contrition; rather, it would focus on the external word of of absolution, regardless of whether it was pronounced by a priest or a layperson. See Hamm, “Die 95 Thesen,” especially pp. 109–114. 166. See thesis 8, WA 1: 233.25–6 (LW 31: 26). Bagchi notes that the theological faculty of the University of Paris remained silent on the issue of the pope’s jurisdiction over souls in purgatory. He writes, “The silence of the Paris faculty over the role of the pope in this process, even per modum suffragii, is deafening.” See Bagchi, “Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses,” p. 347. Thus, Luther was by no means alone in placing limits on papal jurisidiction over departed Christian souls. Hamm argues for the radical nature of Luther’s curtailment of papal authority in the Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum. See Hamm, “Die 95 Thesen,” p. 91. 167. Luther had made this argument several times between the Dictata (1513–1515) and the Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum (1517). See Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, pp. 183–190. 168. See thesis 40, WA 1: 235.16–17 (LW 31: 29). 169. WA 1: 238.18–21 (LW 31: 33). 170. WA 1: 239. 171. See Edwards, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther, pp. 163, 169. Brecht calls Ein Sermon von Ablaß und Gnade Luther’s “first great literary achievement.” See Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, p. 208. 172. See WA 1: 244.25–30. 173. WA 1: 244.15–19. 174. WA 1: p. 245, lines 21–23, quotation at line 21. 175. See WA 1: 244.34–245.4. See also the next two notes. 176. Luther had already asserted in a sermon on February 24 (St. Matthias’s Day), 1517, that the penalty of sin was removed when the guilt of sin was forgiven. WA 1: 141.18–19. Cited in Bagchi, “Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses,” p. 332. 177. See note 14 above. 178. WA 1: 244.40–245.4. In the Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute (1518), Luther writes against those who believe that their sins can be forgiven

Notes to Pages 106–107

179. 180. 181.

182.

183.

184. 185. 186.

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through their own sorrow for sins and works of satisfaction. WA 1: 542.34–38 (LW 31: 103). WA 1: 245.5–12. WA 1: 245.26–20. See note 82 above for Luther’s critique of devotion to cross relics in the Römervorlesung. Similarly, in the Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute, Luther assails those who go on pilgrimages to view sacred relics but who do not welcome the suffering and crosses that made the bones and relics of the martyrs holy in the first place. See WA 1: 613.35–37 (LW 31: 226). In Auslegung deutsch des Vaterunsers für die einfältigen Laien, Luther compared Christians who sought to avoid trials to knights who fled from attack or combat. WA 2: 124.9–11 (LW 42: 72–73). In Ein Sermon von der Betrachtung des heiligen Leidens Christi, Luther criticized people who carried on their persons symbols of Christ’s suffering, hoping thereby to protect themselves from hardship, an action that Luther argued was contrary to Christ’s nature. WA 2: 136. 19–20 (LW 42: 7). In the Tessaradecas consolatoria pro laborantibus et oneratis, Luther again criticized people who venerated the relics of Christ but rejected the suffering that Christ blessed with his own blood. WA 6: 118.38–119, 6 (LW 42: 143). Luther frequently referred to suffering and the cross as true relics. See Rupp, The Righteousness of God, p. 69; and Terry, “Martin Luther on the Suffering,” p. 141. For discussions of the Tessaradecas consolatoria, see Strohl, “Luther’s 14 Consolations”; Leroux, Martin Luther as Comforter, pp. 1–44; and Ngien, Luther as Spiritual Adviser, pp. 48–80. Luther also criticized popular fascination with relics and avoidance of divinely imposed suffering in his Sermon von den Heiltumen. Luther would still allow prayers to the Virgin and other saints as late as November 1519. See Eyn Sermon von der bereytung zum sterben. WA 2: 696.24–27 (LW 42: 113). But already in his 1516–1517 sermons on the Decalogue (published in 1518), he expressed skepticism about the according of special powers to saints. WA 1: 412–417. Luther eventually sought to abolish the cult, primarily because he thought it had no basis in Scripture and detracted from the unique mediatory role of Christ and the glory of God the Father. As with other forms of popular piety, Luther also thought the cult promoted superstition and dissuaded Christians from taking up the cross. See Rieske-Braun, “Glaube und Aberglauge”; and Strohl, “Luther’s 14 Consolations.” See also Luther’s discussion of the saints in the Smalcald Articles (1537) in Kolb and Wengert, The Book of Concord, pp. 305–306. For additional discussions of Luther’s view of the saints, see Kolb, For All the Saints, pp. 11–19; Heming, Protestants and the Cult of the Saints, pp. 53–65; and Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination, pp. 34–46. See Pro veritate inquirenda, WA 1: 630.5–6, thesis 1. WA 1: 630.7–8, thesis 2. My translation. WA 1: 630.13–14, thesis 5. My translation.

322

Notes to Pages 107–109

187. On the importance of Pro veritate in Luther’s theology and especially its emphasis on certainty of forgiveness via faith in the divine promise, see Bayer, Promissio, pp. 166, 169, 343. For a more recent statement of this argument in English, see Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology, pp. 44–58. 188. WA 1: 631.17–18, thesis 15. My translation. Luther similarly insisted in Ein Sermon von dem Sakrament der Buße that forgiveness could not be based on the worthiness of one’s contrition or works of satisfaction. Neither provided the firm assurance of forgiveness that the troubled conscience needed, because both were based on human effort. Only faith in God’s promise to honor the word of absolution spoken by his priests could furnish sinners with the certainty of forgiveness that they required. See WA 2: 716.7–12. 189. See Luther’s Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute, WA 1: 541.7, 544.7–8. On Luther’s discovery of peace for his conscience in the Resolutiones, see Bizer, Fides ex auditu, pp. 113–114. 190. WA 1: 555.36 (LW 31, 126). 191. This belief led Luther to reject the traditional idea that one Christian could suffer vicariously for another and thus procure merit—that is, satisfaction for sin—that could be transferred from one “spiritual account” to another; this kind of “family support” that the living had been able to offer the departed in purgatory had no place in his theology. See Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, p. 249. 192. See WA 1:560.26–30 (LW 31: 133), WA 561.28–29 (LW 31: 135), and WA 562.22 (LW 31: 137). The fifteenth-century theologian Wessel of Gansfort held a similar view of purgatory. See Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead, p. 29. 193. WA 1: 560.9–11 (LW 31, 133). 194. See Luther’s Widerruf vom Fegefeuer, WA 30/2:360–390. See also Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead, p. 35. 195. See WA 1: 557.33–558.8 (LW 31: 129). 196. WA 1: 557.25–27 (LW 31: 128). 197. WA 1: 557.7–10 (LW 31: 128). 198. Mechthild, Margaret Ebner, and Thomas á Kempis could each treat suffering as a this-worldly purgatory. See chapter 3, note 72. 199. Here I take issue with Terry’s argument that Luther had a largely consistent view of suffering from the Dictata forward. (See Terry, “Martin Luther on the Suffering,” pp. iv, 400.) I believe that crucial changes took place in Luther’s soteriology after the Dictata and that these changes produced an important shift of emphasis in his understanding of suffering in the Christian life. Terry does not discuss the Reformation breakthrough but seems to favor quite an early date and therefore argues for consistency in Luther’s view of suffering over time. 200. Hamm asserts, “the Reformation brings a late-medieval dynamic to a conclusion: The minimization of human capability so common around 1500 becomes a total incapacity coram deo, while the late-medieval maximization of God’s

Notes to Pages 109–112

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mercy is radicalized to the doctrine of the soteriological efficacy of God alone.” Bast, The Reformation of Faith, p. 126. 201. For overviews of the scholarship of Luther’s Reformation breakthrough(s), see Lohse, Der Durchbruch; and Lohse, Der Durchbruch: Neuere Untersuchungen. Volker Leppin has referred to the debate about Luther’s Reformation breakthrough as “einer der lebhaftesten Debatten . . . die die moderne kirchenhistorische Forschung erlebt hat.” See Leppin, “Lutherforschung,” p. 25. See also Pesch, Hinführung zu Luther, pp. 91–116. 202. See the discussion of this important point in the treatment of the Operationes in psalmos in chapter 5. 203. See WA 56: 49.21–23 (LW 25: 43, M. 2) and AWA 2: 299.20–300.9. See also McGrath, Iustitia Dei, p. 227. 204. It must be stressed that Luther did not apply his new soteriology consistently in this period. See Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, pp. 93–94.

c h a p t er 5 1. On the centrality of the theology of the cross to Luther’s Reformation agenda, see von Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, pp. 12–13, 166; and McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011) p. 230. 2. Oberman, Luther, p. 242. 3. WA 55/2: 927.1046–1047 (LW 11: 451). See also WA 3: 246.19–23 (LW 11: 451, n. 41) and WA 55/2: 725.35–43 (LW 11: 236). 4. See Kolb, “Luther on the Theology of the Cross,” pp. 445–446. 5. Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, p. 36. 6. Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, pp. 218–220. 7. WA 1: 613.23–32 (LW 31: 225–226). 8. I have not followed the LW translation of the Latin quae facta sunt. The LW reads: “which have actually happened.” I take the reference to be to Creation, as in Romans 1:20. 9. WA 1: 354.17–20; StA 1: 215.10–13 (LW 31: 40). 10. Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 29; McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011) p. 214; von Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, p. 20. Gerhard Forde has argued that in the Disputatio Heidelbergae habita, Luther limits the suffering caused by the cross to spiritual adversity; bodily trials are not in view. See Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, p. 86. While it is true that in the Disputatio Heidelbergae habita, the Christian’s cross refers especially to the preaching of the law and its work to convict the conscience of sin, there is no place in the text itself that suggests that Luther adopted Forde’s more restrictive understanding of suffering. It is more likely that Luther continued to work with a more expansive definition of suffering that included any means God might use to reduce the Christian to nothing, which is the position taken by Althaus, McGrath, and von Loewenich.

324 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

Notes to Pages 113–114 WA 1: 357.6–7; StA 1: 201.27–202.1 (LW 31: 44). WA 1: 363.28–29; StA 1: 210.9–10 (LW 31: 55). WA 1: 363.34; StA 1: 210.15 (LW 31: 55). WA 1: 364.15–16; StA 1: 211.4 (LW 31: 56). Mandel, Theologia Deutsch, p. 32.14. For an English translation, see The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther, p. 77. See theses 12–18, WA 1: 354.3–16; StA 1: 214.23–215.9 (LW 31: 40). Luther believed in limited free will in the Dictata. See WA 55/2: 23.3–7 (LW 10: 26); WA 55/2: 231.157–162 (LW 10: 197); and WA 55/2: 934.1237–1255 (LW 11: 458). See also Kolb, Martin Luther, p. 29. It should be noted that as in the Dictata, Luther does not say in the Disputatio Heidelbergae habita that humility is a gift of grace; it is a response to the preaching of the law, which was also the case in the Dictata. Similarly, Luther refers to humility and fear of God as totum meritum, “our entire merit” (WA 1: 357.17; StA 1: 202.9–10 [LW 31: 44]) and also says that the humility that the law produces in human beings acquires grace, much as in the Dictata (WA 1: 361.3; StA 1: 206.29 [LW 31: 51]). However, in the Disputatio Heidelbergae habita, humility and the fear of God are clearly the work of God, something that Luther does not say in the Dictata. Luther asserts, “Sic itaque opera deformia, quae Deus in nobis operatur, id est, humilia et timorata sunt vere immortalia, quia humilitas et timor Dei est totum meritum” (In this way, consequently, the unattractive works which God does in us, that is, those which are humble and devout, are really eternal, for humility and fear of God are our entire merit). WA 1: 357.15–17; StA 1: 202.8–10 (LW 31: 44). See Edwards, Printing, Propaganda,and Martin Luther, pp. 163–164. For an important treatment of Luther’s Eyn Sermon von der Betrachtung des heyligen leydens Christi within the context of late medieval Passion piety, see Erwin, “The Passion and Death of Christ,” chap. 5, p. 81. See also Tomlin, “The Medieval Origins of Luther’s Theology of the Cross.” Tomlin discusses the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux on Luther, arguing for a strong continuity between the former’s Passion piety and the latter’s theology of the cross. See also Appel, Anfechtung und Trost, pp. 116–119. For a more recent treatement of Luther’s Eyn Sermon von der Betrachtung des heyligen leydens Christi, see Ngien, Luther as Spiritual Adviser, pp. 1–28. WA 2: 137.10–12 (LW 42: 8). WA 2: 137.34–35 (LW 42: 9). WA 2: 138.15–22 (LW 42: 10). I have not followed the LW translation in the final line of the quotation. The LW rendering reads, “The real and true work of Christ’s passion is to make man conformable to Christ, so that man’s conscience is tormented by his sins in like measure as Christ was pitiably tormented in body and soul by our sins.” The German reads, “dan das eygene naturlich werck des leydens Christi ist, das es yhm den menschen gleych

Notes to Pages 114–115

24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

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formig mache, das wie Christus am leyb unnd seel jamerlich in unsern sunden gemartert wirt, mussen wir auch ym nach alßo gemartert werden im gewissen von unßuernn sunden.” I have offered a more literal translation that expresses the important shift in the concluding lines from the third-person singular to the second-person plural. WA 2: 139.16 (LW 42: 11). For an interesting discussion of how baptism comes to replace the sacrament of penance as the means of grace that governs Luther’s soteriology, see Trigg, Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther, p. 145. Luther’s “rediscovery of a vigorous theology of baptism” (Trigg, p. 2), which is especially evident in the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), had important implications for Luther’s theology of suffering, although Trigg does not address this issue. The daily mortification of the old Adam that Luther always believed was necessary in the Christian life flowed from baptismal grace; it was not an attempt to merit grace. See WA 2: 139.1–4, 19 (LW 42: 11). WA 2: 140.27–30 (LW 42: 13). Luther’s emphasis on the wounds of Christ may be traced back to the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux. See Vogelsang, “Luther und die Mystik,” p. 39; and Lohse, “Luther und Bernhard von Clairvaux,” pp. 286–287. They may also be traced back to the influence of Staupitz, who mediated Bernardine Passion spirituality to Luther. See Rost, “Der Gedanke der Gleichförmigkeit,” p. 5. WA 2:140.30–141.7 (LW 42: 13). See the following works on the importance of Christ as sacramentum et exemplum in Luther’s theology: Iserloh, “Sacramentum et exemplum”; Elze, “Das Verständnis der Passion”; Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, pp. 223–234; Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, p. 222; and Lienhard, Luther, p. 25. Luther had already employed this Augustinian distinction in the Lectures on Romans and the Lectures on Hebrews (see Terry, “Martin Luther on the Suffering,” pp. 129, 144, 147; and Iserloh, “Luther und die Mystik,” pp. 79–80). However, he adapted the distinction to suit his purposes of differentiating his new soteriology from late medieval Passion piety. See Elze, “Das Verständnis der Passion,” pp. 146–151. Augustine, De Trinitate, Liber IV, Caput III, sect. 6, line 1; PL 42, col. 0891. See Elze, “Das Verständnis der Passion,” p. 142 n. 67. WA 2: 141.11–13 (LW 42: 13). In the Epistel Sanct Petri gepredigt und ausgelegt (1522/23), Luther argues that Scripture presents Christ’s life and suffering to Christians first as a gift (geschenck) and then as an example (exempel). The gift provides believers with forgiveness of sin and Christ himself—“das hewbt stueck und das best ym Evangelio” (the chief article and the best part of the gospel)—so that they are empowered to follow in Christ’s footsteps. WA 12: 372.16 (LW 30: 117). See also Operationes in Psalmos, WA 5: 639.13–16.

326

Notes to Pages 115–116

33. See WA 2: 141.35–36 (LW 42: 14). Luther makes it clear in the Epistel Sanct Petri gepredigt und ausgelegt that as Christians imitate Christ and suffer, they participate in Christ’s suffering, and Christ participates in theirs. See WA 12: 279.1–12 (LW 30: 23). 34. Luther made the same point using different language in the Sermo de duplici iustitia. He argued that the gift of “alien” (aliena) righteousness—that is, Christ’s righteousness—serves as the “basis, the cause, the source of all our own actual [actualis] righteousness.” WA 2: 146.16–17 (LW 31: 298). The Christian comes to possess Christ and all of Christ’s benefits through faith, and it is Christ himself who daily drives out the old Adam. WA 2: 146.32–33 (LW 31: 299). As in Ein Sermon von der Betrachtung des heiligen Leidens Christi, Luther also exhorts the Christian to become active in the slaying of the old Adam through cooperating with alien righteousness. See WA 2: 146.36–37 (LW 31: 299). This cooperation consists largely of crucifying selfish desires and seeking the good of the neighbor in all things in imitation of Christ. The agent in this active righteousness is “the spiritual person” (spiritualis hominis), whose very existence depends on faith in Christ. WA 2: 147.8–9 (LW 31: 300). That is, the agent is the new Adam (or Eve) who has no existence apart from the union with Christ. There is no question here of Christians either needing or being able to take up the cross of their own accord to merit divine mercy. Christ is the ultimate source of both alien and proper righteousness. 35. The titles of the German works are as follows: Von der Christlichen hoffnung, ein tröstlich leer für die kleinmütigen Martin Luthers; Vom Glawben, Was er sey; Der zwey vnd zwengtzigste Psalm Dauids, von dem leyden Christi. There were also two German translations of Luther’s lectures on Psalms 1–9. See Benzing, Lutherbibliographie, pp. 63–65. See also discussion in AWA 1: 297–364. 36. See Damerau, Die Demut in der Theologie Luthers, pp. 303–305; Knuth, Zur Auslegungsgeschichte von Psalm 6, p. 252; Grane, Modus Loquendi Theologicus, pp. 147–150; Blaumeiser, Martin Luthers Kreuzeztheologie, p. 485. Each of these scholars takes issue with Bizer’s account of Luther’s Reformation breakthrough, according to which a theology of faith and Word took the place of an earlier theology of humility. Each sees this account as flawed and simplistic. These scholars provide a helpful corrective to Bizer, but they also tend to ignore or downplay the crucial issue of agency, that is, of who produces the humility, God or human beings themselves. The switch from human to divine agency in Luther’s understanding of humility is of no small consequence for his soteriology. 37. Grane concedes that in 1518, Luther developed a new understanding of how divine grace meets a person—through the Word—but Grane insists that this discovery did not diminish the importance of humility in Luther’s theology. See Grane, Modus Loquendi Theologicus, p. 147. 38. AWA 2: 299.20–300.17. See also the note on “primae gratiae infundendae” on p. 300.

Notes to Pages 116–118 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

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See WA 5: 603.14–20. WA 5: 606.1–2. All translations of the Operationes are my own. Lienhard, Luther, pp. 25, 116. See WA 5: 607.8–12. Lienhard, Luther, p. 116. See also Wolff, Metapher und Kreuz, pp. 95, 105, 150, 167, 239–240, 260–261. In reference to Luther’s understanding of Psalm 22:1, Wolff argues, “Dieser Kreuzesschrei gewinnt gegenüber der Tradition bei Luther unvergleichlich an Intensität. Während man traditioinell bemüht ist, zu Christi in die Worte von Ps. 22, 2 [Psalm 22:1] gekleideten Gottverlassensein Distanz zu wahren, erreicht nach Luther der am Kreuz schreiende Sohn in seiner Gottverlassenheit die größte soteriologische Nähe zum Gottlosen. Der Gekreuzigte wird jedem Gottes verlassenen, Verfluchten, Sünder, Gottelästerer und Verdammten ähnlich.” See p. 167. WATR 5: 188.19–189.3 (no. 5493; September 1542). Cited in Wolff, Metapher und Kreuz, p. 167. See especially Ngien, The Suffering of God. See Lienhard, Luther, chap. 2. See ibid., chaps. 4 and 7. See also Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, pp. 179–198; and Bayer and Gleede, Creator est Creatura. On some of the problems attending Luther’s novel Christology, see Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 198; and Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, p. 229. See WA 31/1: 63b.21 and 27–28. See Hamm, “Johann von Staupitz,” pp. 32–33. Staupitz referred Luther to the crucified Christ and his wounds especially as the young monk sought to know the hidden counsels of God in his struggles with fears that he had not been predestined to salvation. WA 1: 362.11–19; StA 1: 208.10–18 (LW 31: 52–53). Bernard McGinn has argued that Luther’s emphasis on seeking God in the crucified Christ marks a decisive break with the way late medieval mystics contended with the experience of divine dereliction and damnation. The mystics embraced this dereliction, confident of attaining God through his absence; Luther fled the divine absence for the revealed God of the cross. See McGinn, “Vere tu es Deus absconditus.” See Disputatio Heidelbergae habita, WA 1: 362.28–29; StA 1: 208.27 (LW 31: 53). AWA 2: 318.20–319.3. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (1985) p. 174. Dictata: WA 55/2: 179.82–95, 720.70–721.94 (LW 10: 148, 11: 231–232). Hebräervorlesung: WA 57/3: 129.25 (LW 29: 136). Pro veritate: WA 1: 630.13–14, thesis 5. See De servo arbitrio/On the Bondage of the Will (1525), WA 18: 784.36–40, 785.3–6, 12–16 (Rupp and Watson, Luther and Erasmus, pp. 330–331). See also Kolb, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross,” pp. 80–81.

328

Notes to Pages 118–120

58. See Otto, Verborgene Gerechtigkeit, pp. 265–271. In “Luther’s Theology of the Cross,” Kolb argues that from the late 1510s forward, Luther was deeply engaged with the problem of how to reconcile the existence of evil with the goodness and omnipotence of God. Kolb can even refer to the theologia crucis as “Luther’s version of a theodicy.” (See pp. 80, 82). Kolb’s point is that Luther offers a kind of antitheodicy in the theology of the cross, for the reformer believed that human reason could never reconcile evil and suffering with God’s goodness and omnipotence; the Christian simply had to trust what the Word revealed about God’s true character—that God was good despite appearances to the contrary. Kolb’s use of the term “theodicy” is understandable here, for Luther does have important things to say to the modern preoccupation with the problem of evil. But Luther almost certainly did not understand this problem in the same way post-Enlightenment philosophers and theologians have, for the possibility of God’s nonexistence was simply not a live option for him, as it is in modern debates about God and suffering. As Kolb has stressed, Luther was not interested in justifying the ways of God to human beings. (See Kolb, Bound Choice, pp. 62–63.) Therefore, one must qualify the term “theodicy” when applied to Luther’s sixteenth-century context, lest one retroject a philosphical problem of the present into the past. On the implausibility of modern-style atheism for sixteenth-century intellectuals, see Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief. See also Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 25–26, 388–389. 59. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, (2011) p. 224. Althaus, Theology of Martin Luther, p. 33. 60. Von den guten werkenn, WA 6, pp. 197–200. 61. I have not followed the LW here. The LW reads, “The great thing in life. . . .” The WA and the CL read, “Hie ist kunst . . .” (WA 6: 208.10; CL I: 233.5). I have opted for the more literal translation. I have also opted for “to expect better from him” in place of the LW “to expect better at his hands. . . .” The WA and the CL read, “und bessers sich bey ym vorsehn” (WA 6: 208.11–12; CL I: 233.7). There is no mention of God’s hands. 62. WA 6: 208.10–18; CL I: 233.5–14 (LW 44: 28). 63. WA 6: 208.26–27; CL I: 233.24 (LW 44: 28). 64. See WA 6: 209.6–23; CL I: 234.1–20 (LW 44: 29). 65. Lohse has argued that Bernard of Clairvaux directly influenced Luther’s emphasis on the pro me nature of the gospel. See Lohse, “Luther und Bernhard von Clairvaux,” 276. 66. On the importance of Luther’s rediscovery of baptism in his new emphasis on certainty, see Trigg, Baptism, p. 145. 67. On the importance of suffering as a tentatio probationis of faith in Luther, see Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe, pp. 84–85. Mennecke-Haustein demonstrates that the proving of faith took logical precedence over the production of virtue in Luther’s understanding of suffering. The testing of faith through suffering is also an important theme in the Operationes, despite the strong emphasis on humility

Notes to Pages 120–121

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

78. 79.

80.

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noted above. Luther teaches that the primary purpose of suffering is to move the Christian to trust in God alone and thus to be made pure. See AWA 2: 303.10–13. See LW 30, pp. ix–xi. WA 12: 273.4–12 (LW 30:17). WA 12: 381.32–382.2 (LW 30: 126–127). See note 67 above. For bibliographical information, see Benzing, Lutherbibliographie, pp. 87–91. WA 7: 57.3–6 (LW 31: 354). WA 7: 57.14–18 (LW 31: 355). See Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe, pp. 84–85. Luther clearly saw a “horizontal” dimension to the purification that suffering achieves in the life of the Christian. See his comments to this effect in Epistel Sanct Petri gepredigt und ausgelegt, WA 12: 374.13–14 (LW 30: 119). For Luther’s assault on the notion that God is a “huckster or journeyman” (ein trewdler odder tagloner) with whom human beings must barter through good works in order to obtain grace, see Luther’s Von den guten werckenn, WA 6: 210.19–22; CL I: 235, 17–20 (LW 44: 31). See Luther’s Genesisvorlesung (1535–1545), WA 43: 617.32–35 (LW 5: 274). See Tappert, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, pp. 36–37, 67. (These pages contain references to the original Latin and German in the WA and the WABr. The same is true of subsequent references to this source.) See discussion of attitudes toward healing in the late Reformation in chapter 8 below. For treatments of the attitude of Luther and other reformers toward miracles, see Soergel, “Miracle, Magic, and Disenchantment”; Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination; and Walker, “The Cessation of Miracles.” Luther was critical of the sacrament of extreme unction already in the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae) (1520). He argued (1) that the Epistle of James, the traditional prooftext for this sacrament (5:13–16), was not an apostolic epistle; (2) that the anointing was to have been for the sick and not the dying; and (3) that experience shows that the promise of James 5 is rarely fulfilled, which cannot be true of a sacrament. Luther furthermore maintained that extreme unction was exclusively a rite of the early Church that was no longer valid for the church of the sixteenth century, which must welcome suffering. However, Luther did concede that prayers made in true faith could heal sickness, for faith could do anything. See WA 6: 569.38–570.24 (LW 36: 121). On Luther’s fervent prayers for Philipp Melanchthon during a serious illness and the latter’s recovery, see LW 50: 207–212, especially p. 209 n. 17. In the 1540s, Luther remarked at table, “Wir haben drey todt wiederumb lebendig gebethen, mich, meyne Kethe vnd Philippum, welchem zu Weinbeer schon die augen gebrochen waren.” WATR 5: 129.31– 33, no. 5407. On Luther’s prayers for the deliverance of Friedrich Myconius from death and the latter’s recovery, see WABr 9: 302–303, no. 3566. On the healing of Melanchthon and Myconius, see Hoffman, Theology of the Heart, pp. 46–52.

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Notes to Pages 121–125

81. See Luther, Tröstung für eine Person in hohen Anfechtungen, WA 7: 785.3–7 (LW 42: 183). See also Tappert, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, p. 69. 82. See Tappert, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, pp. 86, 91, 93, 95. For a brief discussion of Luther’s emphasis on God working through the instrumentality of others to console those suffering various Anfechtungen, see Mennecke-Haustein, Luthers Trostbriefe, p. 24. 83. One of the central arguments of Mennecke-Haustein’s book, Luthers Trostbriefe, is that unlike the late medieval tradition of the cure of souls, Luther placed a strong emphasis on the goodness and importance of food, drink, music, joviality, and the company of others—in short, externality in general—for those undergoing Anfechtungen. See especially pp. 268–275. 84. See Terry, “Martin Luther on the Suffering,” pp. 207–228. 85. On the plight of private confession in the German Reformation, see Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys. 86. See Luther’s comments to this effect in Von den guten werckenn, WA 6: 208.10–18; CL I: 233.5–140 (LW 44: 28). See also Terry, “Martin Luther on the Suffering,” p. 390. 87. WA 1: 236.16–19 (LW 31: 31). 88. See WABr 6: 454.22–27. 89. See Luther’s comments to this effect in his famous Invocavit Sermones, WA 10/ III: 61d.32–62d.33 (LW 51: 98–99). 90. See Pro veritate inquirenda, WA 1: 630.7–8; and Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum, WA 1: 534.17 (LW 31: 89, paragraph 4). 91. See Pro veritate inquirenda, WA 1: 630.13–14. 92. See Luther’s discussion of grace and gift in Rationis Latomianae confutatio, where he maintains that faith, the gift, heals the corruption of the human body and soul by effecting repentance and the mortification of the flesh. Faith does not merit forgiveness of sins, which comes exclusively through grace. WA 8: 105.36–108.18, 111.33–34 (LW 32: 226–230, 235). See also Luther’s statement in the Operationes that Christians must become what God is: righteous. AWA 2: 259.12–14. Berndt Hamm argues, “Man kann im Sinne Luthers nicht nachdrücklich genug davon sprechen, dass der wahre Christenglaube eine lebensverändernde göttliche Kraft im Geiste der Gottes- und Nächstenliebe ist.” Hamm, “Wie mystisch war Luthers Glaube?” p. 253. 93. WA 12: 273.13–23 (LW 30: 17). 94. AWA 2: 179.22–180.3.

c h a p t er 6 1. I am not aware of evidence to suggest that Luther’s view of suffering was shaped by any of the figures I will consider in this chapter. The development of his ideas about suffering appears to have been more influenced by his reading of

Notes to Pages 125–127

2. 3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

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ancient and medieval theologians and mystics and by his contact with figures such as Staupitz. It was these sources that shaped his reading of Scripture, the primary source for his thinking about suffering in the Christian life. For publication information on Zwingli’s Pestlied, see Z I: 62–66. See Lutz, “Huldrych Zwingli,” p. 70. See also the treatment of Zwingli’s Pestlied in Lutz, Ergib dich ihm ganz, pp. 197–205; and in Potter, Zwingli, pp. 69–70. On Zwingli’s use of the traditional causae, see Lutz, Ergib dich ihm ganz, pp. 215–216; on suffering testing faith, see p. 272 n. 245. See also Zwingli, Wer Ursache gebe zu Aufruhr, which was directed to evangelical Christians in Mülhusen who were suffering persecution at the hands of Catholic authorities. Zwingli specifically connects this persecution with the testing of faith. See Z III: 375.28– 30, 376.4–10. See Zwingli, Auslegen und Gründe der Schlußreden, Z II: 129.26–130.3. This work appeared in full in two editions and in part in eight editions; there were also three Latin editions. See Z II: 4–12. For the two sixteenth-century editions, see Z III: 2–3. Der Hirt, Z III: 16.8–17.20, 65.20–66.29. Pipkin translation, pp. 88–89, 122–123. In article 57 of his Auslegen und Gründe der Schlußreden, Zwingli argues that a person who believes the gospel is already saved and has no need of further purging of sin, including through suffering. See Z II: 426.19–21, 427.4–15. See Büsser, “The Spirituality of Zwingli and Bullinger,” p. 311. See note 4 above. See also the discussion of Zwingli’s letter to Johannes Wanner (October 29, 1526) in Lutz, “Huldrych Zwingli,” p. 75. For the importance of divine providence in Zwingli’s theology, see Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, pp. 86–97; and Stephens, Zwingli, pp. 45–49. See also Zwingli’s Sermonis de providentia dei anamnema and the Hinke translation. On the unmediated and consoling ministry of the Holy Spirit to all Christians in Zwingli’s thought, see Hamm, Zwinglis Reformation der Freiheit, pp. 44–47. See Locher, Zwingli’s Thought, pp. 173–178; Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, pp. 48, 111–118; and Lienhard, Luther, chaps. 4, 5, 7. In the Fidei Christianae expositio, Zwingli writes, “Passum credimus Christum, cruci suffixum sub praeside Pilato; sed quod passionis acerbitatem homo sensit, non etiam deus, qui ut est aoratos [Greek], hoc est invisibilis, sic est et analgetos [Greek], hoc est nulli passioni aut affectioni obnoxius.” See p. 49; Bromiley translation, p. 252. See also Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, pp. 111, 117. W. P. Stephens observes, “The humanity of Christ does not have the vital place in Zwingli’s theology that it has in Luther’s, even though it is indispensable for our salvation, for the stress is on the divinity which saves us and in which we are to put our trust. At points a sense of the genuine humanity of Christ is missing.” Stephens, Zwingli, p. 60. For a similar passage, see Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingl, p. 117.

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Notes to Pages 127–129

14. On Zwingli’s relationship with Erasmus, see Locher, Zwingli’s Thought, pp. 233– 255; and Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingl, 9–17. Erasmus authored a work of consolation in 1528, the Epistola consolatoria in adversis, which appeared twice in Basel and twice in Cologne. It is not clear what kind of influence this work had on Zwingli’s approach to consolation. In any case, it contains little of the Platonism that is so typical of Erasmus’s other works, especially the Enchiridion militis christiani, and therefore it cannot be seen as an important source for the dualism that informs Zwingli’s theology. On Zwingli’s relationship with Augustine, see Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingl, pp. 19–21; and Stephens, Zwingli, pp. 21–23. Stephens also argues for the important influence of Scholasticism and its philosophical realism on Zwingli’s eucharistic thought. See Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingl, p. 6. On the centrality of divine freedom in Zwingli’s thought, see Hamm, Zwinglis Reformation der Freiheit, especially pp. 34–47. 15. See Locher, Zwingli’s Thought, p. 173; Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, pp. 114, 117; and Stephens, Zwingli, pp. 56–60. See also Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 198; and Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, p. 229. 16. At a pivotal moment in the Sermonis de providentia dei anamnema, Zwingli asserts that all he wishes to say in this work rests on his understanding of the nature and character of the supreme deity. He then goes on to provide a series of long quotations from Seneca to express this understanding. See Z VI/III: 106.14–109.16; Hinke translation, pp. 151–153. A little later in the treatise, Zwingli attributes pagan wisdom about God’s nature and character to divine illumination. Z VI/III: 110.12–23; Hinke, p. 154. 17. Büsser, “The Spirituality of Zwingli and Bullinger,” p. 310. 18. See discussion of Leo Jud and Heinrich Bullinger in chapter 8. I do not wish to suggest here that there were no evangelical works of consolation and devotion available in Zurich during the 1520s, just that Zwingli produced very few of them, especially in comparison with Luther and Luther sympathizers in other German-speaking cities during the same time. 19. For a fuller discussion of Lazarus Spengler and his theology of consolation, see Rittgers, “Productive Misunderstanding”; and Rittgers, “‘Got neher machen.’” 20. WATR 2: 296.28–297.2. Cited in Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, p. 204; on Spengler’s relationship with Luther, see especially pp. 171–182. For other works on Spengler, see Hamm, “Spengler, Lazarus (1479–1534),” TRE 31: 666–670; von Schubert, Lazarus Spengler; and Grimm, Lazarus Spengler. For critical editions of Spengler’s works, see the three volumes of Lazarus Spengler Schriften edited by Hamm et al. that are listed in the abbreviations. A planned fourth volume has not yet been published. 21. On the membership of this sodalitas, see Grimm, Lazarus Spengler, pp. 25, 33; and Strauss, Nuremberg, p. 160. Strauss discusses the role of Scheurl and Nützel in the spread of the Ninety-Five Theses on p. 161.

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22. Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, pp. 102–106. 23. The full title of the work is Schutzrede und christliche Antwort eines ehrbaren Liebhabers der göttlichen Wahrheit der heiligen Schrift mit Anzeigung, warum Dr. Martin Luthers Lehre nicht als unchristlich verworfen, sondern vielmehr als christlich gehalten werden soll. Although Spengler intended the Schutzrede for discussion in the Nuremberg circle of humanists, a printer in Augsburg obtained a copy of it and, according to the council secretary, published it without his knowledge. 24. LSS I: 89.5–11. 25. Ibid., p. 100.2–6. 26. See Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys, pp. 60–62. Spengler’s work against the papal bull excommunicating Luther was entitled In bullam pontificis romani (fall 1520). 27. The German title of the work is Eine tröstliche christliche Anweisung und Arznei in allen Widerwärtigkeiten. For information on the two editions, see LSS I: 225. 28. These themes include the following: life is a valley of tears and trials for all human beings, especially Christians, and therefore one should expect one Anfechtung after another (pp. 229.22–25, 230.9–19); suffering and adversity ultimately come from God, who sends them to accomplish his good purposes, which include growth in patience and fear of God (p. 231.4–10); the Christian must follow in the Savior’s footsteps (1 Peter 2:21), bearing the cross patiently, which is the only way to find God (pp. 227.25–229.5); the Christian must accept divinely imposed suffering with gratitude (p. 231.13–16), and also realize that such suffering is always light in comparison with what the sinner deserves (p. 232.1–6); suffering has many positive benefits, including the prevention of future sin (233.7–8), the slaying of the sinful nature (especially pride) (p. 227.11–15), the magnification of God’s glory (John 9:3) (pp. 235.15–236.2), and the testing of faith to see if the Christian trusts in God alone or not (p. 236.13–18). Citations are from LSS I. 29. Ibid., p. 236.19–26. 30. “Ich waiß wol, das anfechtung und tru[e]bsal von Got zu unserm nutz, fu[e]rderung und hail gesendet werden und das ein ygkliche betru[e]bnuns, so der schmertzen derselben in einem rechten glauben und vertrauen zu Gott angenomen und geduldet wirdet, die sund reynigt und abwescht.” Ibid., p. 231.4–7. 31. “Ettliche menschen werden darumb von Got durch kranckhait, trübsall, widerwertikayt und leyden gegayselt, damit dieselben beschwerden, als ein puß von Gott verordent, die mackel yrres sündigen, strafflichen begangen lebens abwasch und außtilg.” Ibid., p. 231.20–23. 32. Abtilgen can mean “cancel,” “destroy,” or “pay off.” In the present context, “cancel” makes the best sense. See Götze, Frühneuhochdeutsches Glossar, p. 5; Grimm, Vol. 1, Spalte 140; and Anderson et al., Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Vol. 1, pp. 435–438. 33. “Wiewol wir nun auß götlicher gerechtikayt ewiger straff und peen wirdig wern, geduldet uns doch der gütig hymelisch Vatter als arme, dörftige personen,

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34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44. 45. 46.

Notes to Pages 131–132 uberschattet uns auch mit dem taw seiner gruntlosen parmhertikayt und schickt uns dann dieses, dann jhenes leyden, schmertzen und widerwertikayten zu, das er unser sündtlich verschulden damit abtilge.” LSS I: 232.1–6. See the discussion of Spengler’s view of purgatory in Rittgers, “Productive Misunderstanding.” WA 1: 239. Both Nuremberg editions were printed by Jobst Gutknecht in 1518. See editions G and H. WA 1: 245.21–23, quotation at line 21. WA 1: 244.40–245.4. See Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, p. 178. It should be noted that Spengler does not cite Luther’s Ein Sermon von Ablaß und Gnade in any of his edited works. See the “Außerbiblische Zitate” indexes in LSS I, II, and III, pp. 492, 488, 425, respectively. On the orality of early modern German culture, see Scribner, “Oral Culture.” Edwards, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther, pp. 163–164. On Spengler’s misunderstanding of Luther in the Schutzrede, see Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, pp. 178–179. Hamm argues that Spengler’s soteriology was influenced especially by Johannes von Staupitz, who still allowed minimal room for human merit in his theology of salvation. See discussion of Staupitz below. Moeller, “Die deutschen Humanisten,” p. 54; “The German Humanists,” p 29. In the original German version, Moeller refers to “ein produktives Mißverständnis” in the early years of the Reformation between humanists and Luther. I have translated this phrase as “a productive misunderstanding,” rather than as “a constructive misunderstanding,” as in the English version. There is no reference to Spengler’s Tröstliche christliche Anweisung in the WA; therefore, we cannot know if Luther ever read it. For a brief discussion of Albrecht Dürer’s misunderstanding of Luther’s theology in the early 1520s, see Rittgers, “Productive Misunderstanding.” On this admiration and the general influence of Staupitz on Spengler’s early theology, see Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, pp. 60–68, 106–108. It should be noted that the critical edition of the Tröstliche christliche Anweisung cites Staupitz’s Lenten sermons as the source of Spengler’s comments regarding the salvific nature of suffering. See LSS I: 231 n. 80 and 89, and p. 232 n. 96. Posset also comments on Staupitz’s influence on Spengler’s consolation pamphlet; The Front-Runner, p. 189. However, no scholar has examined this specific borrowing from Staupitz in detail, nor has anyone related it to the larger issue of Spengler’s understanding of Luther’s theology of suffering. On Staupitz’s visits to Nuremberg, see Posset, The Front-Runner, pp. 162–190. See Staupitz, Concionum epitomae, pp. 15–42. I have taken ablegung in the sense of Erlass (“remission”). For this meaning, see Götze, Frühneuhochdeutsches Glossar, ablegen, p. 3.

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47. Staupitz identifies two higher forms of suffering in this sermon: suffering for the sake of eternal merit, and thus one’s reward in heaven, and suffering motivated by the love of God with no thought of merit or reward. The title of the sermon is Von den Graden des leydens Vnuerdinter Widerwertigkait Wie die ordenlich Vnd Volkommenlich mogen gesetzt werden. Staupitz places a strong emphasis on the priority of grace at all stages of salvation but still allows for the connection between patient bearing of suffering and the reduction of poena. He argues that “Der erst grad das der mensch solch vnschuldig leyden annimpt Vnd gedultiglich tregt fur ain puß vnd ablegung seiner sunden. Dieses leiden also anzunemen Ist wol nit Vnschicklich oder unchristenlich, dem menschan aber gegen den nachfolgenden zwayen graden nit gleich verdinlich. Dann so der sunder dieses leiden der gestalt annimpt Vnd got pit das er Ime das setz fur ein puß vnd genungthuhung [sic] seiner sunden, das ist allein ain bezalung der schulden Vnd sonden die der mensch vff sich hat, dann also nimpt er das leyden dorumb an das er In erstatung der bezalung gemachter sundtlicher schulden dester eher Vnd on lange pein des fegfewrs zu got komen mag.”Von den Graden, p. 21. See also Johannes von Staupitz, Das alles vnnser leyden, pp. 31–32. 48. See also Posset, The Front-Runner, pp. 186, 189; and Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, pp. 172–173. Hamm explains that Spengler’s notes on these sermons were not an exact recording of their content; rather, they were “eine stark auswählende und komprimierende schriftliche Fixierung von Lieblingsgedanken undthemen, die Spengler bei Staupitz ausgesprochen fand und dann in seine eigene Sprache umsetzte.” 49. Posset, The Front-Runner, pp. 180–181, 256. Spengler was also reading Luther through the lens of Bernard of Clairvaux, another important source of Luther’s early humility theology. There are numerous references to Bernard in the Tröstliche christliche Anweisung, especially his treatment of Psalm 91. See LSS I: 225. 50. See Bast, The Reformation of Faith, p. 124; and Steinmetz, Misericordia Dei, p. 96. Steinmetz explains that Staupitz limits the role of merit to growth in grace; one cannot merit the initial infusion of grace: “The viator may—and, indeed, must— merit the increase of grace, and can even earn eternal life (i.e., beautitudo), but he cannot merit justifying grace. Justifying grace is a gratuitous gift of God which antedates all merit and makes it possible.” Spengler, following Staupitz, appeared to view suffering as a means of meriting the increase of grace. 51. It should be noted that when Spengler wrote the Tröstliche christliche Anweisung in 1521, Staupitz was no longer vicar general of the Observant Augustinians. He was now the abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Salzburg, having received permission from Rome to leave the Augustinians. There never was a public rift between Luther and Staupitz, although shortly before the latter’s death in 1524, he did express certain reservations about Luther’s efforts to reform the church, even as he made clear his ongoing affection for Luther, along with his own dedication to the cause of the evangelical gospel. See Posset, The Front-Runner, pp. 326–327.

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Notes to Pages 133–136

52. In his inventory of the St. Sebald Church in Nuremberg, the late medieval Kirchenmeister Sebald Schreyer mentions “Excerpta de summa confessorum,” almost certainly a reference to the work by Johannes von Freiburg. See Caesar, “Sebald Schreyer,” p. 101. 53. See Aho, Confession and Bookkeeping. 54. See Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, chap. 5: “Bürgerliche Religion und christlicher Glaube,” pp. 183–203. 55. See note 47 above. 56. LSS I: 227.6–10. 57. For a discussion of Spengler’s desire to grow nearer to God through suffering, see Rittgers, “‘Got neher machen.’” 58. On the persistence of concern for merit in early modern Protestant burgher piety, see Velten, Das selbst geschriebene Leben, p. 219. 59. Luther makes this case in several places, the most important for the present context being Von den guten werckenn. See WA 6: 208.10–18; CL I: 233.5–14 (LW 44: 28). Spengler had read this work. 60. See in LSS I: Warum Luthers Lehre not und nutz sei, p. 258.19–20; Die Hauptartikel, durch welche gemeine Christenheit bisher verführt worden ist, p. 312.9–11, 22–28. See also Spengler’s popular poem/song Durch Adams Fall ist gantz verderbt, pp. 401–405. 61. See Wie sich eyn christenmensch in tru[e]bsal und widerwertigkayt tro[e]sten und wo er die rechten hilf und ertzney derhalben suchen soll (1529), in LSS II: 386.8–17. 62. See in LSS I: Ein kurzer Begriff und Unterrichtung eines ganzen wahrhaften christlich Wesens, p. 288.10–13; Ein kurtzer Begriff, wie sich ein wahfhafter Christ in allem seinem Wesen und Wandel gegen Gott und seinen Nächsten halten soll, p. 420.2–3. 63. See Ein kurzer Begriff und Unterrichtung, LSS I: 290.15. 64. See ibid., pp. 288.26–289.2, 27–29. 65. See Wie sich eyn christenmensch, LSS II: 386.8–17. 66. See ibid., p. 378.18–19. 67. Ibid., p. 367. Both editions appeared in 1529 in Nuremberg. For the German title, see note 61 above. Spengler wrote a third work of consolation. See note 151 below. 68. Ibid., p. 368.15–20. 69. See note 66 above. 70. Wolff, Metapher und Kreuz, p. 341, and Kolb, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross.” 71. See Schütz Zell, Den leydenden Christglaubigen weyberen, p. 5. McKee provides an English translation of this work in Church Mother, pp. 50–56. I provide my own translation unless otherwise indicated. On Schütz Zell, see McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, Vol. 1; McKee, Church Mother; and Stjerna, Women and the Reformation, pp. 109–131, 243–246. 72. McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, Vol. 1, pp. 465–476. 73. Ibid., pp. 424, 428.

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74. Ibid., pp. 81, 106, 111–115. 75. Ibid., p. 266. 76. For other examples of this eclectic evangelicalism in the early decades of the German Reformation, see Rittgers, “Private Confession.” 77. McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, Vol. 1, pp. 56–57. 78. Editions appeared in Strasbourg and Augsburg, both in 1524. McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, Vol. 2, p. 3. 79. Ibid., p. 5. 80. Ibid., p. 6. 81. Ibid. p. 6. 82. Ibid., p. 9. 83. Ibid., 12. 84. Ibid., p. 11. 85. Mechthild of Magdeburg, Tobin translation of The Flowing Light, p. 4. 86. McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, Vol. 2, p. 11. Here I have followed McKee’s translation, pp. 54–55. Also cited in Stjerna, Women and the Reformation, p. 120. 87. See Stjerna, Women and the Reformation, pp. 126, 127, 128. 88. See ibid., p. 131. 89. There is little evidence of direct interaction with mystical texts in the evangelical consolation literature considered in this chapter. 90. Robert Kolb has argued in a number of places that Luther’s colleagues, students, and followers by and large failed to keep the theology of the cross at the center of their own evangelical theology. Owing to its highly counterintuitive and paradoxical nature, the theologia crucis was soon reduced by lesser minds to but one subject among many others in the overall evangelical theological agenda. On this agenda, the cross referred primarily to human suffering and the fact that Christians should bear their afflictions patiently and faithfully; the cross no longer provided an all-encompassing orientation for the interpretation of the Bible and life in a fallen world. Kolb lays the blame for this marginalization of the cross especially at the feet of Melanchthon. See the following works by Kolb in which he makes this larger argument about the displacement of the cross from the center of evangelical theology: “God’s Gift of Martyrdom,” pp. 401, 408; “Luther on the Theology of the Cross,” p. 444; “Luther’s Theology of the Cross,” pp. 70, 73. In these articles, Kolb is primarily thinking of evangelical dogmatic textbooks; he does not deal with devotional literature. I believe that the latter contains a great deal of Luther’s theology of the cross. The cross is not limited to human suffering in this literature; it remains a way of interpreting the totality of God’s interaction with human beings and thus is seen as a source of wisdom for how Christians should understand and cope with suffering. I have not examined the dogmatic works of the theologians under consideration in this and subsequent chapters to see if the theology of the cross also appears there. I simply wish to make the case that from the perspective of evangelical

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91.

92.

93.

94. 95.

96. 97.

98.

Notes to Pages 139–140 devotional and consolatory works, the theologia crucis is more important and present than one might expect from reading Kolb’s work. For biographical information on Huberinus, see Franz, Huberinus–Rhegius– Holbein, pp. 3–4. See also ADB 13: 258–259 and NDB 9: 701. In the mid-1540s, Huberinus left Augsburg and its theological conflicts for a post in the territory of Öhringen. For publication statistics, see Franz, Huberinus–Rhegius–Holbein, pp. 213–224, 266. Huberinus’s work of consolation appeared under a number of different titles and was typically published together with other devotional works, some written by him, some by others. The most common title was Wie man den sterbenden trösten und im zusprechen solle. For a treatment of this and other works of consolation by Huberinus, see Franz Huberinus–Rhegius–Holbein; and Resch, Trost im Angesicht, pp. 162–172. Rhegius’s Seelenärtzney für die Gesunden und Kranken zu disen Gefährlichen Zeyten went through 121 editions in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and was translated from the original High German into nine different languages. It frequently appeared with another work by Huberinus, Tröstung aus göttlicher Schrift, which was very similar to Wie man den sterbenden trösten. The two works by Huberinus and Rhegius were also frequently published with Holbein’s dance-of-death images. See Franz, Huberinus– Rhegius–Holbein, pp. 130–144, 214. For a recent treatment of Rhegius and his Seelenärtzney, see Rittgers, “Christianization through Consolation.” The VD16 lists nine editions of Eyn kurtzer außzug der heyligen schrift. There was also a 1525 edition in Wittenberg that does not appear in VD16. See ADB 13: 258; and Franz, Huberinus–Rhegius–Holbein, pp. 148–149. This work was Huberinus’s earliest consolation writing. For this meaning of wunderlich, see Baufeld, Kleines frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, p. 252, definition 2, seltsam. “Got der almechtig/ handelt alzeyt wunderlich mit seynen außerwelten/ hie ynn dysem leben/ Dann offtmals erschreckt er sie/ entzeucht yhnen sein gnad eusserlich/ stellet sich gegen yhnen/als wo[e]l er sie verlassen/ zu[e]rnet mit yhnen/ wo[e]lle yhr gar keyn acht mehr vnd auffsehen zu yhn haben/ wo[e]lle sie der welt/ dem todt/ ya dem teuffel gar vbergeben/ dz nichts by yhnen scheynet/ dann eyttel betru[e]bnis/ hertzen leyd/ verzweyffelung/ Gottes gestrenger zorn/ vnd ewige verdamnuß.” Eyn kurtzer außzug, fol. Aii r. For this meaning of klumsen, see Grimm 11, Spalte 1301, Klünseln, 4. “So stehet doch der breu[e]tgam hynder der wand/ vnd sicht zur klumsen hineyn/ zu seyner aller liebsten braut/ lernet sie mit der that erfaren/ das keynem menschen mu[e]glich sey/ das er ihm selbs/ aus seyner not vnd angst/ ynn seynem grossen schrecken vnd beku[e]mmernis helffen mu[e]g vnd tro[e] sten.” Huberinus, Eyn kurtzer außzug, fol. Aii r. Briesmann became an important adviser to the Duke of Prussia and was instrumental in the spread of the Reformation to Livland. He later became Pfarrer of

Notes to Pages 140–144

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the cathedral in Königsberg and in 1546 was named president of the bishopric of Samland and the curator of the university. See NDB 2: 612–613. 99. “So du aber sprichts/ Auch ich kan nicht lenger tragen/ es ist yhe nicht yn meynem vermo[e]gen. Antwort. Recht also/es stehet nicht yn deynem vermo[e]gen/ auch nicht yn menschlicher krafft/ sondern Got mus es thun/ vnd er wils auch thun/ denn er ist trew.” Briesmann, Etliche trostspru[e]che, fol. Bv r–v. 100. For brief biographical introductions to Linck, see NDB 14:571–2 and OER 2: 425–426. 101. “Es stecket auch vnser heyl also tieff im leyden vnd willen gottes verporgen/ das wir mu[e]ssen dahyn kum[-]en/ als sey wir gantz von Got verlassen/ wie vnser lieber herre Christus am creutze sprach/ O Got mein Got wie hast du mich so verlassen/ dem bildnuß des suns Gottes mussen wir gleichfo[e]rmig werde[-]. . . .” Linck, Wie sich ein Christen mensch im leyden trösten sölle, p. 89. 102. “Also findet allwegen der glaube einen verporgenen schatz im leyden . . . / Es verbirgt Gott vnser heyl/ leben vn[-] seligkeyt vnter dem creutz/ vnd gantz widerwertigen formen/ auff das die gottlosen menschen solchs nicht erkennen vnnd die frum[-]en außerweleten also vrsach haben/ jren glauben zu vben/ Sie sehen vnd fu[e]len zorn vnd leyden vnnd nichts destminder glauben sie gnade vn[-] freu[e]de/ geben also dem willen gottes raum in seinem wercke.” Ibid., p. 88. 103. “Darumb lerne Gottes art und weyß wol erkennen, dann wen er gen hymel will füren, den fürt er vor gen hell.” Huberinus, Wie man den sterbenden trösten und im zusprechen solle, p. 235. 104. Brenz was preaching on Romans in early 1527, and this work appears to have been an excerpt from these sermons. It was printed with others in Brenz’s Ettlich Tractetli, of which there are four extant editions in the VD16. Brecht also lists a Low German edition from 1531 by the printer Heinrich Ottinger zu Meydeburg. See Brecht et al., Johannes Brenz: Frühschriften, Teil 2, pp. 11–12. The German title of the work is Ain Außzug auß dem 8. Capitel S. Pauls zu[o] den Ro[e]mern von dem Leyden und go[e]ttlicher Fürsehung. For brief biographical introductions to Brenz, see TRE 7: 170–181, NDB 2: 598–599, and OER 1: 214–215. 105. One became pious or righteous by taking hold of Christ by faith, who, according to Brenz, is alone pious and righteous. Brenz writes that “der glaub Christum gentzlich faßt und annympt.” Brenz, Ain Außzug auß dem 8. Capitel S. Pauls zu[o] den Ro[e]mern, p. 13.18–21. 106. Ibid., p. 14.6–14. 107. Ibid., p. 18.11–12. 108. Ibid, p. 19.1–18. 109. See NDB 9: 70. 110. “Man sol aber hie wissen/ das bey dem creutz verstanden werden soll/ alles das/ so vnserer fleischlichen sinligkeit vnd altem Adam entwider/ vnd schmertzlich sein mag Als so sein/ verlierung zeiticher gu[e]tter/ entsetzung der ehren/

340

111.

112.

113. 114. 115. 116. 117.

118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

123. 124.

Notes to Pages 144–147 kranckheit des leibs/ armu[o]t/ hunger/ durst/ frost/ hitz/ veruolgung vmb das Euangelion/ der zeitlich todt/ u. welche wir alle auff vns nemen/ das ist/ so sie vns zu[o]steen/ willig vnd gedultig leiden sollen/ wo[e]llen wir anderst rechte ju[e]nger Christi sein.” Heyden, Wie man sich in allerlay nötten, fol. B4 v. On Luther’s view of saints, see chapter 4, note 183. On the ever more radical rejection of Mary as a saint in sixteenth-century Lutheranism, see Kreitzer, Reforming Mary. See Brenz, Ein sermon von den heyligen, p. 6.14–20. In addition to the Ulm edition listed in the VD16 (B 7873), Brecht lists two other editions: a second Ulm one and also an Augsburg edition, both apparently from 1523. See pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 6.26–7.4. Ibid., p. 7.17–18. Ibid., p. 14.30–31. Huberinus, Eyn kurzer außzug der heyligen schrift, fol. Aiii r. “Ja sprichstu das exempel [of saints’ intervention] sichstu woll/ hast aber keyn zusagen darbey/ keyn wort daran gehefft/ darumb bistu vngewiß/ obs von Got geschicht oder nicht/ hie aber zu Gott ruffen/ hastu nicht allein viel der exempel/ sondern auch darbey/ das wort/ die tro[e]stlich zusagung/ darumb ist es besser hoffen auff God dann auff den menschen.” Huberinus, Eyn kurzer außzug der heyligen schrift, fol. Aiii v. See Heming, Protestants and the Cult of the Saints, pp. 37–38. Rhegius, Seelenärtzney, pp. 244–245. Ibid., p. 244. Briesmann, Etliche trostspru[e]che fur die blo[e]den/ schwachen gewissen, fol. Bvii v. “Dann die menschlich natur ist noch so schwach vnd krafftloß/ das sie ymmer etwas sichtlichs vor augen wil haben/ damit sie sich zu Got einer hilff kecklich versehen mu[e]ge/ vnd wann sie nichts der gleichen entpfindet/ helt sich Got fur eynen feynd/ wo[e]lle nicht anderst dann nur mit yr zu[e]rnen/ vnd alle gnad vnd gu[e]tte von yr abwenden.” Huberinus, Eyn kurtzer außzug der heyligen schrift, fol. Biii v. Ibid., fols. Biii v–Biiii v. “Zu[o]letst mu[o]st du dich auch gar nichts mit ainander verlassen auf dise deine krankhait, das du wöltest verhoffen, Got wurde solchen deinen schmertzen ansehen und dir dardurch gnedig sein und deine sünd verzeyhen. Da wird schlecht nichts drauß; da ist kain andere bezalung, kain andere gnu[o] gtüung für deine sünd, dann das ainig leyden und sterben Jesu Christi, deines seligmachers. Gott der Herr sicht auch sonst nichts an, im gefelt auch sonst nichts, dann sein lieber sun. Dann derselb ist das lamb Gottes, welchs der welt sünd auf sich nimpt. Er ist auch das ainig genu[o]gsam opfer für aller welt sünd.” Huberinus, Wie man den sterbenden trösten und im zusprechen solle, p. 232.

Notes to Pages 147–150

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125. In his Trostliche vnnderricht zwen/ welche in haimsu[o]chung der Krancken vnd sterbenden/ zu[o]geprauchen sein, the Augsburg preacher Michael Keller asserts that God sends illness to punish the un-Godly, but “zu[o]r züchtigung vnd briefung” of believers. See fol. Aiii r. 126. This sermon, Auß was ursach glück und unglück entstee, was published along with another one, Wie das holtz des Creutzes behawen und am weichsten angegriffen werden soll, as Zwo christenlichen sermon in 1527. The VD16 contains only one edition of Zwo christenlichen sermon (B 7953, Ulm), but it was also published with other works of Brenz in Etlich Tractetli, of which there are five extant editions. (See note 104 above.) For the parallels between Brenz’s sermon, Auß was ursach glück und unglück entstee (1526/27), and Spengler’s 1529 pamphlet regarding the nonpenal nature of suffering, compare pp. 386.8–387.6 in Spengler’s work (LSS II) with p. 10.13–36 of Brenz’s sermon. Spengler does not cite Brenz’s sermon in his 1529 pamphlet, and it does not appear in the “Außerbiblische Zitate” index in the critical edition of Spengler’s works (see LSS II: 488–489). However, this index does list another work by Brenz, Wie man sich in mittelmäßigen Stücken der Zeremonien halten soll, which Spengler cites by name in Verteidigung der Bestrafung Hans Hühnerkopfs (Fall 1528) (see LSS II: 354.15–16). Wie man sich in mittelmäßigen Stüken der Zeremonien halten soll appeared along with Auß was ursach glück und unglück entstee in Etlich Tractetli; in fact, according to the VD16, this is only place it appeared. It is therefore quite certain that Spengler had access to Etlich Tractetli, which means that he had most likely read Auß was ursach glück und unglück entstee and then drew on it in his 1529 work of consolation. 127. Brenz, Auß was ursach, p. 10.12–18. 128. Ibid., p. 10.25–36. Urbanus Rhegius also urges Christians to see their suffering as nothing but “a fatherly rod” (ain vätterliche ru[o]dt) that only works for their good. See Seelenärtzney, p. 244. 129. “Dann die zway ding seind nicht weyt vonainander, gelauben in Christum und hitzlich begeren zu[o] glauben. . . . Derhalb glaub vest in Christum, oder aber beger aufs wenigst in in zu[o] glauben; klag im deinen unglauben und zweyfel nit, du bist vor im fromb und ain gesegnets kind Gots, der nit vergeblich unser schwachayt auf seynen lieben son Christum gelegt hat.” Rhegius, Seelenärtzney, pp. 257–258. 130. Ibid., p. 258. See also note j on p. 258, which provides a quotation on doubt and weak faith from another version of this work: “Und wann du schon mainst, du seyest in verzweyflung, so verzweyfel dannocht nit; dann es ist noch kain verzweyflung, so du nit wilt verzweyflen und ist dir layd, das du zweyfel hat.” 131. See Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys, pp. 39–40. 132. Claudia Resch has found a similar lack of attention to late medieval sources in early Reformation works of consolation for the sick and the dying. See Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 208.

342

Notes to Pages 150–151

133. The two works are Vom Zorn vnd der Gu[e]tte Gottes and Wie man den sterbenden trösten und im zusprechen solle. 134. In his Wie man sich in allerlay nötten, the Nuremberg schoolmaster Sebaldus Heyden indicates an awareness of how much learned evangelical consolation literature there already was in the early 1530s; he feels the need to justify his lay contribution. See fols. A v–A2 r. 135. See especially Caspar Huberinus, Eyn kurtzer außzug der heyligen schrift. 136. “Denn es ist ja nicht mu[e]glich/ eyn trostlose seele zu erquicken/ es geschehe denn durch Gottes wort vnd werck.” Briesmann, Etliche trostspru[e]che, fol. Aii r. 137. “Du kanst es aber nicht glewben [i.e., that suffering comes from God’s gracious will]/ du hettest denn odder habest sonst bereyt/ Gottes wort ym hertzen/ durch wilches du erkennest den gnedigen willen Gotes/ vnd seyn wolgefallen vber dich.” Ibid., fol. Aii v. 138. Frymire emphasizes that for Luther and his clerical followers, the preaching and hearing of the Word was akin to the sacraments—God acted through the means of the Word to convey grace. See Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, p. 27. 139. “Vnd damit dir das hailig wort gottes auch in das hertz getriben werde/ vnd nit ymmerzu[o] auff der zungen bleybe kleben/ So schickt dir Gott ain creutz/ das selbig gewürtzet dir dann sein hailigs wort/ das es dir anhept schmecken/ vnd kompt dir also auch in das hertz. Da kanstu dann recht mit vmbgeen/ da waystu es dann recht zu[o] fu[e]ren vnd zu[o] brauchen/ Dann es nitt wol müglich ist/ das ainer das wortt Gottes recht fasse/ vnd damitt wol wisse vmb zu[o] geen/ wa es jm nit zu[o]vor durch creutz vnd leiden in sein hertz getruckt wirt. Diser edel schatz das hailig wort gottes/ mu[o]ß ymmer zu[o] genützt vnd gebraucht werden mit ernst/ sonst verrost er bald vnd wirt vngeschmach.” Huberinus, Vom Zornn vnd der Gu[e]tte Gottes, fol. Liiii r. 140. This sermon, Wie das holtz des Creutzes, was published along with another one, Auß was ursach glück, as Zwo christenlichen sermon in 1527. VD16 contains only one edition of this work (B 7953, Ulm), but it was also published with other works of Brenz in Etlich Tractetli, for which we have five extant editions. (See note 104 above.) 141. “Wer nun in seinem creutz sich das gnedig wort Gotts, der sicht auch den sun Gottes.” Wie das holtz des Creutzes, p. 3.24–25. 142. “Aber ein christ spitzt die augen, gedenckt nit so vil an das creutz als an den sun Gottes (an das wort), an welchem wirt erfunden hundertfeltig mehr, dann verloren ist. Es darff nit redens darvon: fyndt man den sun Gottes am creutz, so fyndt man eyn schatz aller gu[e]ter.” Ibid., p. 4.11–15. 143. See n. 105 above. 144. In his Wie sich ein Christen mensch im leyden trösten sölle (1528), Wenzeslaus Linck emphasizes that the suffering Christian must not lose sight of the fact that he is united (verleybt) with Christ and therefore bears Christ’s righteousness in the midst of adversity: Christ is his, and he is Christ’s. Linck stresses the

Notes to Pages 151–154

145.

146. 147.

148.

149. 150. 151.

152.

153. 154.

155.

343

role of baptism in effecting this union and in prefiguring the role that suffering and death to self will play in the Christian’s life. See pp. 90–91. Linck’s fellow Nuremberger, schoolmaster Sebaldus Heyden, similarly argues that owing to the union that the Christian enjoys with Christ via baptism, “Alles vnglu[e]ck vnd leyden/ das vns widerferet oder zu[o]stet/ das dasselb auch Christum beru[e]rt.” Heyden, Wie man sich in allerlay nötten, fol. B r. “Damit er zu[o] versteen gibt, das der glaubigen leyden seyn aygen leyden sey.” Brenz, Ain Außzug auß dem 8. Capitel S. Pauls zu[o] den Ro[e]mern, p. 14.36–37. Sebaldus Heyden draws the same conclusion from Acts 9:4 in his Wie man sich in allerlay nötten. See fol. B r. On Keller, see NDB 3: 181. See also Roth, “Zur Lebensgeschichte des M. Michael Keller.” “Sihe mein Bru[o]der oder Schwester/ wie ain groß hayligthumb du worden bist/ dieweyl sich Christus in yetz angezognen worten selbs dein so groß vndd hoch annymbt/ vnd spricht/ er leyde in dir/ vnd sey in dir kranck/ Dann dieweyl er spricht/ ich bin kranck gewesen/ So ho[e]restu ye/ das er sich deiner kranckhait annymmet/ als wa[e]re er selbst kranck/ Wer wolt dann nicht geren mit Christo selbs krannck sein? Wer wolt nicht gern mit dem demu[e]tigisten gehorsam/ die schwachhait mit Christo dulden?” Michael Keller, Trostliche vnnderricht zwen, fol. Av r. For a discussion of evangelical Bescheidenheit, see Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, chap. 5: “Bürgerliche Religion und christlicher Glaube,” pp. 183–203. See also Spengler’s Tugendschrift. On Agricola, see NDB 1: 100–101. Agricola, Der Neuntzigeste Psalmus, fol. Aiv v. For example, see Lazarus Spengler’s 1530 work of consolation for Markgraf Georg of Brandenburg, the ruler of Ansbach and Kulmbach, whose relatives from Electoral Brandenburg sought to pressure him into abandoning his support for the Protestation delivered by evangelical princes and cities at the 1529 Diet of Speyer. See LSS III: 274–296. See chapter 8 below for further examples. “Es hat Gott aus hertzlicher barmhertzickeyt bey vnsern tagen/ seyn wort vnd Euangelion/ so klar erscheynen lassen/ als es sind der Aposteln zeyt nie gewesen/ durch geringe arme leutte/ als seynes thewren schatzes werckgezeuge ero[e]ffnet . . .” Ibid, fols. Biiii v–C r. Ibid., fols. B v–Bii r. “Und das ist das recht fegfewer, dardurch Got seine lieben hailigen fürt und sy probiert wie das gold im fewer.” Huberinus, Wie man den sterbenden trösten und im zusprechen solle, p. 235. A little earlier in same treatise, Huberinus says that it is the Christian’s faith that is proved as gold in fire, not the Christian’s whole person, as is implied here: “Der glaub mu[o]ß schlechts probiert werden, wie das gold im fewr.” See p. 229. Vom Zornn vnd der Gu[e]tte Gottes, fol. Kvii v.

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Notes to Pages 154–156

156. “In Summa/ all sein thu[o]n vnd züchtigung/ so er vns anthu[o]t ist dahin gericht/ das er vns damit demu[e]tig mache/ vnsern alten Adam dempffe/ vnd to[e] dte/ vnserm willen breche/ auff das der new Adam in vns erstehe/ sein [God’s, not the new Adam’s] will allein geschehe/ vnd vns als gu[o]ts zu[o] jm versehen sollen.” Huberinus, Vom Zornn vnd der Gu[e]tte Gottes, fol. Kvi v. 157. Linck, Wie sich ein Christen mensch im leyden trösten solle, p. 89. 158. “Hierumb ye mer du leydest vnd stirbest/ ye gewiser halts darfu[e]r das du der su[e]nden abgestorben seyest vnd Gotte lebest in Christo Jesu. . . .” Linck, Wie man Christenlich die krancken tro[e]sten mu[e]ge (1529, V), in van der Kolk, Wenzeslaus Linck, p. 128. The introduction to this text lists five editions, four of which were printed with works of consolation by Brenz and Melanchthon. 159. Rhegius, Trostbrieff an alle Christen zu Hildesheym, fol. Av v–Avi r. 160. “Gott berufft euch yetzt durchs Euangelion das er will euch from vnd selig machen/ vnd von der su[e]ndigen wellt absondern/ das yhr gefess der ehren mu[e]get werden.” Ibid., fol. Avi r. 161. “ein newe gescho[e]pffte ynn Christo werden/ wie vns die tauff antzeigt.  .  . . Denn wer auss dem wasser vnd geist soll widder geborn werden/ der muss ein newer mensch werden/ den alten abtzihen/ Dieser wellt vnd der su[e]nd absterben/ sich ynn rechter gelassenheit/ dieser wellt vortzeihen vnd Christo nachfolgen.” Ibid., fols. Avi r–Avi v. 162. On the importance of these letters for understanding Grebel’s theology, see Bender, Conrad Grebel, p. 171; and Goertz, “‘A Common Future Conversation,’” p. 77. 163. “Wass wir nit gelert werdend mit claren sprüchen und bispilen sol unns alls wol verbotten sin alss stünd ess gschriben dass tu[o] nit.” Wenger, Conrad Grebel’s Programmatic Letters of 1524, p. 18.69–70 (English, p. 19.69–70). 164. Ibid., p. 14.20–22; English, p. 15.20–22. Here and below, unless otherwise noted, I follow Wenger’s translation. 165. Ibid., p. 16.28–37; English, p. 17.28–37. Wenger translates das faltsch schonen as “false sparing.” I have opted for “false forbearance,” following the Williams and Mergal translation, p. 74. 166. Wenger, Conrad Grebel’s Programmatic Letters, p. 24.147; English, p. 25.147. 167. It should be noted that Anabaptists such as Hans Hut (c. 1490–1527) had their own version of an expansive definition of suffering, but it differed significantly from the traditional view. Hut advocated something called “the gospel of all creatures,” in which the patterns and rhythms of death and rebirth in nature provided testimony to the necessity of following the “bitter Christ” through suffering and death in order to arrive at the resurrected life in heaven. See discussion in Williams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 1268–1269. 168. See Dyck, “The Suffering Church,” p. 14. See also Gregory, Salvation at Stake, pp. 197–249. It should be noted that one can find a similar emphasis on dying for the faith in the works of Luther and his fellow reformers. See Kolb, “God’s

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Gift of Martyrdom”; and Kolb, For All the Saints. See also Leroux, Martin Luther as Comforter, pp. 81–131. 169. See Kreider, “‘The Servant Is Not Greater Than His Master,’” p. 19. On the centrality of the “suffering church” in Grebel’s thought, see Bender, Conrad Grebel, p. 202. 170. See Goertz, “‘A Common Future Conversation,’” p. 87. 171. Wenger, Conrad Grebel’s Programmatic Letters, p. 28.184–89; English, p. 29.184–89. 172. “Christus mu[o]ss noch mer liden in sinen glideren er aber wirt sy sterken und fest erhalten biss zu[o] dem End/ Got geb dir und unss gnad. Wann unsere hirten sind ouch also grimm und wüttend wider unss scheltend unss bu[o]ben an offenlicher Cantzel und Satanas in angelos lucis conversos, wir werden ouch mit der zitt sächen die verfolgung durch sy über unss gan darumm so bitt für unss by gott.” Ibid., p. 40.307–312. My translation. 173. Goertz, Konrad Grebel, p. 54. 174. Müntzer, Von dem getichten glawben, pp. 221.1–2, 222.21–23. 175. Goertz asserts, “Beide predigten nicht den ‘süßen’ sondern den ‘bitteren’ Christus, dem sie in Anfechtung und Leiden nachfolgten.” See Goertz, Konrad Grebel, p. 53. 176. See Bender, Conrad Grebel, p. 199; Friedmann, The Theology of Anabaptism, p. 56; and “Sweet or Bitter Christ,” Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, pp. 668–669. 177. For brief biographical introductions to Müntzer, see OER 3: 99–102, NDB 18: 547–550, and ADB 23: 41–46 (correction, ADB 45: 669). 178. On the influence of late medieval German mysticism on Müntzer, see Schwarz, “Thomas Müntzer und die Mystik.” According to Schwarz, Müntzer had purchased a copy of Tauler’s sermons in 1508 and knew the Theologia Deutsch; he may have also been familier with Suso’s works. Müntzer regularly employed mystical terms such as abgrund and gotesvriunde, although he did not cite the mystics by name. See pp. 284–285, 291. See also Ozment, Mysticism and Dissent, pp. 61–97; and Packull, Mysticism, pp. 29–31. 179. See Goertz, Konrad Grebel, p. 54. 180. Müntzer made the same argument in Hochverursachte Schutzrede. See especially pp. 325.9–10, 326.9–10. 181. See Müntzer, Von dem getichten glawben, p. 218.5–8. 182. See ibid., p. 223.29–32. Müntzer is more willing than Grebel to allow for internal suffering in his definition of Christian bitterness—they did not always mean the same thing by the “bitter Christ.” 183. “Sich an, du außerwelter bruder, das 16. Capittel Mathei durch und durch in allen worten! Do wirstu finden, das niemant in Cristum glawben kan, er muß yme zuvorn gleich werden.” Ibid., p. 224.1–3. 184. Packull writes with regard to the Allstedt reformer, “Müntzer’s understanding of justification also proved to be genuinely pre-Reformation. It was literally

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Notes to Pages 159–160

conceived of as a deification process leading through the preparatory inner cross to the unio mystica. Justification was one and the same movement of cleansing from and punishment of sin. . . . Suffering was the means of purification, and Müntzer insisted over and over again that the ‘bitter Christ’ had to be experienced first before the ‘sweet Christ’ would bring comfort. Müntzer therefore turned cross mysticism [i.e., Tauler’s mysticism] into the normative way of salvation, and in this regard formulated most of the theological currency to be used by early South German Anabaptists.” Packull, Mysticism, p. 31. 185. This the argument of Packull’s book, Mysticism and the Early South GermanAustrian Anabaptist Movement. Packull maintains that Müntzer was the primary transmitter of a popularized version of mysticism to early Anabaptists in southern Germany and Austria. See especially pp. 177–178, 184. 186. See Edwards, Printing, Propaganda, and Luther, pp. 26–27; and Zorzin, Karlstadt als Flugschriftenautor, pp. 79–83. 187. For brief biographical introductions to Karlstadt, see OER 1: 178–180 and NDB 2: 356–357. 188. Karlstadt attacks false forbearance especially in Ob man gemach faren, und des ergernüssen der Schwachen verschonen soll, in sachen so gottis willen angehen. 189. On Karlstadt’s relationship to mysticism, see Hasse, Karlstadt und Tauler; and Leppin, “Mystische Erbe.” See also Otto, Vor- und frühreformatorische TaulerRezeption, pp. 241–254. Ronald Sider asserts that Karlstadt was not a true spiritualist because he allowed for mediated knowledge of God. See Sider, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, pp. 299–300. 190. As Sider has explained, “If it is correct to say that Luther’s mature theology found its center, although by no means its sole emphasis, in the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Christ’s reconciling death, it is equally true to say that Karlstadt’s Orlamünde theology had as its primary emphasis the doctrine of regeneration and sanctification.  .  . . His central theme was the divinely wrought supernatural rebirth of the egocentric self.” Sider, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, pp. 212–213. 191. Missive vonn der allerhochste tugent gelassenheyt (1520), which is extant in seven editions; and Was gesagt ist: Sich gelassen. Vnnd das wort gelassenhait bedeüt, vnd wa es in hayliger schryfft begryffen (1523), which is extant in two editions. On the number of extant editions of both German works, see Zorzin, Karlstadt als Flugschriftenautor, pp. 283, item 24, and 293, item 54. 192. Cited in Sider, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, p. 218. See Karlstadt, Anzeyg etlicher Hauptartickeln Christlicher leere, p. 66.13–21. 193. Sider, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, p. 301. 194. Hasse asserts, “Auch wenn Karlstadt besonders in den Jahren 1517 bis 1519 den Gedanken einer Bereitung des Menschen aus eigenen Kräften und Werken für den Empfang der göttlichen Gnade strikt abgelehnt und bekämpft hatte, konnte er Taulers Verständnis einer Bereitung des Menschen durch Leiden

Notes to Pages 160–164

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nachvollziehen. Allerdings wirkt immer Gott allein diese Bereitung. Auch Tauler lehnt selbstgemachts Leiden und äußerliche Übungen ab.” Hasse, Karlstadt und Tauler, p. 70. 195. In the Missive vonn der allerhochste tugent gelassenheyt, Karlstadt asserts, “Fur das ander trostet mich/ das yglich betrubnus/ sunde abweschet/ so der schmertzen ym glauben gedultdet/ vnd in hoffnung zu gott angenumen ist.” See fol. Aiii r. 196. Sider provides the following translation of an important statement to this effect in Was gesagt ist: Sich gelassen: “Christ demands of his disciples a kind of fitness which is beyond all natural powers. He wants us to renounce all that we possess . . . But that is impossible for every [human] reason, as Christ confessed when he said, ‘What is impossible with men is possible with God.’ A man cannot give up his goods for God’s sake unless God especially and miraculously bestows such a renunciation on him.” Sider, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, p. 221. 197. See Luther’s Wider die himmlischen Propheten, WA 18: 139.13–26 (LW 40: 149). 198. See Karlstadt’s Anzeyg etlicher Hauptartickeln Christlicher leere, p. 93.21–24, 26–28, and p. 94.4–7; Furcha translation, pp. 368–369. I have followed Furcha’s translation. 199. Luther makes this argument in his Sermon vom Leiden und Kreuz (1530), WA 32: 29.22–29 (LW 51: 198–199). The Lutheran reformer Justus Menius did the same in his Der Widdertauffer Lere vnd Geheimnis (1530). See Oyer, Lutheran Reformers, pp. 182–183. 200. For a brief treatment of this work, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 73–77. 201. Linck, Wie man Christenlich die krancken tro[e]sten mu[e]ge, pp. 122–123. On Linck’s role in the famous Nuremberg debate about confession and absolution, see Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys, pp. 92, 139, 173. 202. Bugenhagen, Vnnderricht deren so in kranckheiten vnd tods no[e]tten ligen, fol. Aiii r. 203. “Dieweyl nun des volks vil ist und dye dyener des evangeliums nit an allen enden sein künden, habe ich dise klaine underricht geschriben für die ainfeltigen, damit ayn yeder, so lesen kan, den krancken auß dem wort Gotes zu[o] sprechen kan und inen trost geben in der nodt.” Rhegius, Seelenärtzney, p. 243.

c h a p t er 7 1. On the Reformation as re-Christianization, see Hendrix, “Rerooting the Faith.” Hendrix drops this term in Recultivating the Vineyard, preferring the less polarizing (but also less accurate) “Christianization” to refer to the totality of Christian reform in the sixteenth century. 2. The following paragraph draws on material from Jeffrey P. Jaynes’s article on church ordinances in OER 1: 345–351. 3. The origins of the five families have been traced back to the following sources: (1) Bugenhagen’s 1528 Braunschweig Church Ordinance, (2) Osiander and

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

Notes to Pages 164–165 Brenz’s 1533 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance, (3) Brenz’s 1536 Württemberg Church Ordinance, (4) Bucer’s Church Ordinances for Strasbourg (1534) and Hesse (1539), and (5) the 1563 Palatine Church Ordinance that was influenced by the 1550 London Church Ordinance of Johannes a Lasco. See Jaynes, “‘Ordo et Libertas’,” p. 88. See the discussion in Jaynes, “‘Ordo et Libertas’,” pp. 83–91. See also OER 1: 347; and Sprengler-Ruppenthal, “Kirchenordungen II/1,” TRE 18: 670–703. SprenglerRuppenthal uses the language of church-ordinance families but does not employ the customary five-family grouping, instead choosing to provide a territory-byterritory analysis in which she lists numerous important church ordinances. To my knowledge, no one has done a comprehensive study of the church ordinances that provides reliable statistics on overall numbers of publication. Many of the church ordinances have been published, thanks in large part to the efforts of the late Emil Sehling and his successors. Aemilius Ludwig Richter also published a number of church ordinances. See the Bibliography for full references. In citations from Sehling and Richter below, “a” refers to the lefthand column on the page, while “b” refers to the right-hand column. In addition to Jaynes, several other scholars have examined the church ordinances. See Kittelson, “The Confessional Age”; Ozment, The Reformation, pp. 151–164; and Ozment, Protestants, pp. 89–117. On the role of church ordinances in the organization of the church and enforcement of moral discipline, see Brecht, Kirchenordnung und Kirchenzucht; Deetjen, Studien zur Württembergischen Kirchenordnung; and Estes, Christian Magistrate. For a discussion of the connection between church ordinances and confessionalization, see Schilling, Religion, Political Culture. On church ordinances and patriarchalism, see Roper, Holy Household. On the importance of postils in the dissemination of ideas in the Reformation, see Frymire, Primacy of the Postils. Frymire notes that secular officials could support the production and distribution of postils in their lands; see p. 34. Patrick Ferry similarly observes that the Saxon church ordinances and visitation ordinances required pastors to possess postils. See Ferry, “Confessionalization and Popular Preaching,” p. 213. See Introduction, notes 5–7. I know of no scholarly work on the role of apprenticeships in the formation of evangelical pastors, although the importance of such practical training has been noted for the lower clergy on the eve of the Reformation. See McLaughlin, “The Making of the Protestant Pastor,” p. 62; and Dykema, “Handbooks for Pastors,” p. 151. Riegg provides a very brief discussion of the persistence of the apprenticeship model in the Reformation period. See Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft und Mobilität, p. 47. Hsia and Cameron have suggested that the evangelical clergy was quickly transformed into a highly educated elite. See Hsia, Social Discipline, p. 15; and Cameron, The European Reformation, p. 393. More recent scholarship maintains that

Notes to Pages 165–166

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this change took place rather slowly. Dixon and Schorn-Schütte argue in the introduction to Protestant Clergy, “Well into the early decades of the seventeenth century, the general level of learning among Protestant pastors consistently remained much lower than has previously been assumed”; see p. 23. Kaufmann makes the same case in his article, “The Clergy and the Theological Culture,” maintaining, “Even in the closing decades of the sixteenth century numerous examples can be found of Lutheran pastors who became preachers without ever having attended a university”; see p. 125. Elsewhere, Schorn-Schütte argues that owing to educational reforms in the 1580s, some 80 percent of the evangelical clergymen in Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel attended university between 1585 and 1630. However, this did not mean that they earned a degree, and only a small number completed an advanced course of theological studies. See SchornSchütte, “The Christian Clergy,” pp. 722–723, 731. Karant-Nunn has argued that by 1575, half of the Saxon clergy had attended an institution of higher learning, usually the University of Wittenberg. She further maintains that by 1617, “virtually every pastor had spent several years in advanced study.” Karant-Nunn does not specify how much formal theological study was included in this higher training. See Karant-Nunn, “Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism,” pp. 626–627. Karant-Nunn has recently restated her argument that higher training for the majority of Lutheran clergy emerged only in the early seventeenth century. See Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, p. 75. Against the recent scholarly emphasis on the lack of theological training among evangelical pastors, it should be stressed that theology was certainly present in the general arts curriculum of universities and also in the curriculum of the Latin schools that the majority of future pastors attended. See Riegg, Konfliktbereitschaft und Mobilität, pp. 45, 54–55, 323. Beyond this, future pastors could also receive theological training in the residential colleges where many lived as stipend holders. On the stipendiary system in Tübingen, see Methuen, “Securing the Reformation”; on Hesse, see Heinemeyer, “‘Pro studiosis pauperibus’”; on Heidelberg, see Wolgast, “Das Collegium Sapientiae.” I am grateful to Amy Nelson Burnett for drawing my attention to these sources. Kaufmann has also stated that many university students lived in circumstances that approximated a monastery in terms of there being a set regimen of prayer and Scripture reading. See Kaufmann, Geschichte der Reformation, p. 104. 11. See Zeeden, Katholische Überlieferungen, pp. 83–86. 12. For an older treatment of the sections of the evangelical church ordinances that deal with ministry to the sick, see Hardeland, Geschichte der Speciellen Seelsorge, pp. 326–337. For a more recent treatment, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 132–136. 13. Resch asserts, “Dem Besuchen und Trösten von Kranken- und Sterbenden wird in nahezu jeder Kirchenordnung ein Sonderkapitel zugestanden.” Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 134.

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Notes to Pages 167–168

14. One frequently encounters the expectation in the church ordinances that evangelical pastors must fulfill their obligation to visit and console the sick, the clear implication being that their late medieval predecessors had been lax in this duty, a problem that apparently persisted into the Reformation period. Both the 1544/45 Calenberg-Göttingen Synodal Constitutions and the 1570 Livland Church Ordinance depict the visitation of the sick as a special opportunity to minister to Christ himself (Matthew 25:35–36). Sehling 6: 875a, 5: 102a. The 1581 Hoya Church Ordinance exhorts pastors to remain home as much as possible so that parishioners will have an easy time finding them when the sick and suffering need them; parishioners should not have to look in the local pub for their pastor. Sehling 6/I, 2: 1164a. Resch notes that the church ordinances insist time and again that evangelical pastors must visit the sick and the dying not just once but on an ongoing basis until they either recover or pass away. See Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 135. 15. Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 133–134. 16. Sehling 1/I: 269b–270b. 17. Sehling 1/I: 91. 18. See the 1540 Brandenburg Church Ordinance (Sehling 3: 74b–75b), the 1542 Pommern Church Ordinance (Sehling 1/I: 362a–365a), the 1552 Mecklenburg Church Ordinance (Sehling 5: 208a–209b), the 1556 Kurpfalz Church Ordinance (Sehling 14: 170a–171a), the 1566 Hessen Church Ordinance (Sehlng 8: 326a–327b), and the 1580 Herr August Duke of Saxony Church Ordinance (Sehling 1/I: 370a). 19. “Lieber freund, weil euch unser herr gott mit schwacheit eurs leibs heimgesucht, damit ir es gottes willen heimstellet, solt ir wissen. Zum ersten, das solche unsers leibes krankheit uns von gott dem herrn umb keiner ander ursachen, denn allein umb der sünden willen zugeschickt wird, und das die erbsünde, welche von Adam auf uns geerbet, den tod und alles was in des todes reich gehört, als gebrechen, krankheit, elend, jamer etc. mit sich bringet, denn wo wir on sünde blieben, so hette auch der tod, viel weniger anderlei krankheit, an uns nichts schaffen mögen.” Sehling 1/I: 269b. This is a difficult passage to translate accurately, as the relationship between sünden and erbsünde is not entirely clear. Similarly, the precise referent for the final subjunctive clause is also unclear— does it refer to original or actual sin? I have taken sünden to refer to actual sin(s) and the final clause to refer to original sin. Therefore, I have rendered the last two lines in the pluperfect tense, because the reference appears to be to the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden. I do not believe that the authors intended to say that death would have no dominion over Christians if they could remain without sin at the present time, although this reading is more literal than the one for which I have opted. This simply does not make theological sense, given that death is the result of original sin in the minds of Jonas and Cruciger. 20. “Zum andern, wenn aber unsere gewissen der gestalt von sünden gereiniget, und mit gott dem vater durch den glauben versünet sein, mus auch die sünde

Notes to Pages 168–172

21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

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aus unser natur und wesen ausgefeget und vertilget, und wir endlich von allen sünden gereiniget, und in göttlicher gerechtigkeit und reinigkeit volkomen werden, damit wir mit gott ewig leben sollen.” Sehling 1/I: 270a. “So schicket uns unser lieber herr gott krankheit, ja auch den tod zu, nicht der meinung, das er mit uns zörne, und uns verderben wolt, sondern aus grossen gnaden, das er uns in diesem leben zu warer busse und glauben treiben, und endlich aus der sünden, darin wir noch stecken, und aus allem unglück, beide leiblich und geistlich, frei machen will.” Sehling 1/I: 270a. Sehling 1/I: 269b–270b. On the the plight of private confession in the German Reformation, see Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys. See Burnett, Teaching the Reformation, pp. 51, 246. See also the Catechismus . . . der Statt Basel, which contains provisions for voluntary private confession and absolution of the sick and dying; pp. 127, 130. I am grateful to Philipp Wälchli for sharing an electronic version of the relevant sections from this source with me. The extant church ordinances from Zurich do not include private confession and Communion. See “Bewilligung . . . der stadt Zürich,” p. 832, items 13 and 14. I am grateful to Philipp Wälchli for drawing my attention to this source. See Otto Heinrich’s 1547 Church Ordinance in Sehling 14: 110b. See also the 1556 Kurpfalz Church Ordinance in Sehling 14: 139b–140b. See the section entitled Von besuchung der krancken in the 1563 Kurpfalz Church Ordinance in Sehling 14: 401a–404a. It does not mention private confession or the Lord’s Supper. However, Sehling notes that a 1563 synod allowed both on a voluntary basis. See pp. 46–47. Sehling 3: 6. Sehling 3: 76a. Sehling 3: 76b. See chapter 1 note 70. See Kirchenordnung des Noppus (Regensburg, 1543) in Sehling 13/III: 410a; Kaspar Löners Kirchenordnung (Nördlingen, 1544) in Sehling 12/II: 315b; the Herzogtum Pfalz-Neuburg Generalartikel von 1576 in Sehling 13/III: 196a. Sehling 3: 77b. Sehling 3: 77a. Sehling 3: 77a. For a brief treatment of Dietrich’s Agend-Büchlein für die Pfarrherrn auff dem Land, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 191–196. For brief biographical introductions to Dietrich, see ADB 5: 196–197, NDB 3: 699, and OER 1: 485. “Was antwortest du mir? Bekennest du dich, du seiest ein armer sünder und habst deine lebtag wider Gott und sein wort und dein eigen gewissen vil böses tun und zu tun im sinn gehabt? Ist dir solches auch von herzen leid, das du

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38. 39.

40.

41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53.

Notes to Pages 172–177 woltest, du hettest es nit tun, und gedenkst es auch, wo Gott dir das leben weiter gönnet, nit mer zu tun, sonder dich fleißiger nach Gottes wort und willen zu halten?” Sehling 11: 509a. Sehling 11: 509b–510a. “Ja, sprichtu, ist es dann Gottes will, das ich so elend da krank lig und solche schmerzen leid? Wie kan er so umbarmherzig sein, das er mir nit hilft? Ists doch unmöglich, das ichs könne lenger zukommen.” Sehling 11: 511a. “Denn solches ist nicht ein henkerstrafe, der das leben nimbt .  .  . Es ist ein vatersstrafe, der also das kind strafet, das es fürtan vor dem bösen sich hüten und also in des vaters gunst und gnaden bleiben sol, auf das der vater nit zu weiterm zorn und heftiger strafe verursachet werde.” Sehling 11: 512b. Sehling 11: 513a–513b. Sehling 11: 513b. “Wiewol die leiblich kranckheit nicht alweg tödtlich ist, und vil aus der kranckheit, durch Gottes gnad widerumb gnesen, yedoch, hat die kranckheit von wegen der sünd, ein solche natur, das sie nicht allein den leib, sonder auch die seel, beschweret, und jagt in das gwissen, die forcht deß todts und ewigen verdamnus.” Richter II: 20b–21a. “Zum andern die kranken auch nicht allein gegen die schmerzen und schwacheit des leibs, sonder auch allerley inwendige anfechtung des herzen trösten; denn die zwey stück sein beiderley nötig bey kranken leuten, damit sie sich in ihrer krankheit guts zu Gott versehen lernen und desto besser zu friede und gedult begeben mögen.” Sehling 6/I, 1: 170a. See the 1544 Merseburger Synodal Instruction (Sehling 1/II: 18b). See also the 1540 Brandenburg Church Ordinance (Sehling 3: 77a) and the 1543 Church Ordinance for Schwäbisch Hall (Richter II: 20b–21a). For Melanchthon’s treatment of suffering in the Unterricht der visitatoren an die pfarrherrn im kurfürstenthum zu Sachsen, see Sehling 1/I: 158a. On the importance of this treatment in the subsequent church-ordinance literature, see the brief comment in Sprengler-Ruppenthal, Gesammelte Aufsätze, p. 472. For Osiander’s treatment of suffering in his Lehrartikel, see AOG 3: 153.1–12. On the influence of the 1533 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance in the German Reformation, see Sehling 11: 122–125. See also TRE 18: 683–686. AOG 5: 44 n. 51. AOG 5: 97.19–22. I am working with the version of the church ordinance found in the critical edition of Osiander’s works rather than the one found in Sehling 11. The former is more faithful to the original than the latter and also has a more sophisticated critical apparatus, including line numbers. AOG 5: 97.34–98.2. AOG 5: 98.4–7. See AOG 5: 105.8–13. This emphasis on Christ’s presence in the Christian’s suffering is curiously absent from other treatments of suffering in the evangelical

Notes to Pages 177–179

54.

55.

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

61. 62.

63.

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church ordinances. Osiander’s mention of it here is unique in the church-ordinance literature. At the beginning of his treatment of the lessons to be learned in the rechte schul of suffering, Osiander makes the following general observation, which demonstrates his desire to stress the goodness of God: “Man lernt aber manicherley unter dem kreu[e]tz und tru[e]bsal, welliches doch alles dahyn dienet, das man Gottes gutten und gnedigen willen gegen uns erkenne. Davon wo[e]llen wir dir fürnembsten stu[e]ck anzaygen.” AOG 5: 100.11–13. “Etliche aber lernen nicht ire sünde, die in Gott vorhyn vergeben und zugedeckt hat, sunder die blossen güte Gottes gegen ine im kreutz erkennen. . . .” AOG 5: 101.19–20. “Und diser art ist der mayste und gröste tayl des leydens aller christen; dann Gott hat vil grössern lust zu geben, zu helfen und zu erretten, dann wir zu bitten und anzurüffen.” AOG 5: 101.25–26. Osiander makes a distinction between God directly causing (verordnen) suffering and God simply permitting (verhengen) suffering to occur and then working indirectly through creaturely means. See AOG 5: 98.24–25; 99.1–2, 14–17, 20. “Und auff das wir sollichen seinen guttenwillen erlernen [mögen], so schickt er uns ein kreutz und zwingt uns gleich, ine anzurüffen, auff das er uns erhöre und helfe, damit wir seinen gutten und gnedigen willen gegen uns erlernen and dardurch getröst, gesterckt und zu dancksagung bewegt werden.” AOG 5: 101. 29–33. Osiander uses similar language earlier in his discussion of the school of suffering, as he seeks to help pastors persuade those who have sought help from cunning folk to return to Christian means of dealing with adversity. Osiander says that the reason people turn to superstition is that they fail to understand how good God is and how eager he is to help. See AOG 5: 100.21–28. “Dann wer wolt nicht gern ein zeytlang blind sein, wann er das darin erleben solt, das in Christus selbs wunderbarlich solt mit seinen heyligen henden gesund machen?” AOG 5: 101.35–102.1. “Darumb sollen die diener des worts hierzu stettigs vermanen, biß doch der glaub und das anrüffen, das so gar in der christenheyt erloschen ist, widerumb angericht werden.” AOG 5: 102.8–10. Sehling 11: 124. See Osiander, Wie und wohin ein christ die grausamen plag der pestilentz fliehen soll, AOG 5: 391.22–392.3. Elsewhere, Osiander specifically mentions the sins of “unglaub, ungehorsam und undanckbarkait” as causes of the plague; AOG 5: 393.4–5. This account of the divine purposes in suffering was clearly aimed at persuading the common folk to suffer properly, i.e., Christianly. Osiander no doubt believed that his message about God and suffering held true for all baptized Christians—his audience was exclusively made up of such—but probably

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64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

72.

73.

Notes to Pages 179–181 only in a conditional way. Those who remained unpersuaded and who rejected the evangelical means of coping with suffering could only interpret adversity as divine wrath, both because they lacked faith to see it any other way and because this is what suffering in fact became for the baptized who suffered un-Christianly. When commenting on the intersection of anticlericalism and state-sponsored confessionalization, Karant-Nunn writes, “State goals neatly coincided with and reinforced the pastorate’s rising self-esteem as ministers intensified their efforts at indoctrination and moral reform, for largely spiritual reasons, we must assume.” She neither explores nor revisits these spiritual reasons in the remainder of her article. See Karant-Nunn, “Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism,” p. 616. It should be noted that in The Reformation of Feeling, Karant-Nunn makes much of the Lutheran emphasis on consolation, even suggesting that this emphasis might well have made both clergy and laity in Lutheran lands a little less gloomy than their counterparts in other confessions, especially Reformed Protestantism. See p. 251. Jürgen Lortz notes that this perspective cannot be documented expressis verbis in the relevant sources. AOG 5: 102 n. 293. AOG 5: 103.18–20. For example, see the 1542 Calenberg-Göttingen Church Ordinance, which was authored by Anton Corvinus. Sehling 6/I, 2: 768a–769a. Luther sought to refute alleged Anabaptist restrictiveness with respect to suffering in his Sermon vom Leiden und Kreuz (1530). I am grateful to John Frymire for providing me with an electronic version of Eck’s Christenliche vnderricht mit grund der gschriftt. On this treatise, see AOG 5: 60; and Pfeiffer, “Die Brandenburg-Nürnbergische und die kurbrandenburgische Kirchenordnung.” AOG 5: 87.5–9, 144.19–21. “Christus hat gelitten/ Darumb so[e]llen wir auch leyden/ das wir dardurch des leydens vnnd verdienens Christi tailhafftig werden: wie er geleert hat/ nit allein gedultig leyden/ was vns got zu[o]schickt/ sonder das wir von vns selber so[e] llen das creutz/ das ist peenlich werck annemen/ vnd jm nach volgen/ vnd ist die geschrifft vol.” See Eck, Christenliche vnderricht, fol. 39 r. It should be emphasized that according to Eck, suffering renders satisfaction for the penalty of sin by accessing Christ’s merit, not simply of its own accord. See Concilium Tridentium, Sessio XIV, Cap. IX, Canons XII and XIII, in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 2, pp. 709.35–41, 718.13–26. See also Bradley and Kevane, The Roman Catechism, Part Two, Chap. Four, Penance, 75 “Sufferings as Satisfaction,” p. 294. “Man mus aber hie merken, das Got unser trübsal nicht eben darumb mit dem ewigen leben vergleichen wil, das wirs also mit gedult getragen und gelitten haben, sonder darumb, das er uns solchs zugesagt und verheissen hat; denn

Notes to Pages 181–183

74.

75. 76.

77.

78.

79.

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die gedult ist nicht unser, sonder Gotts werk, so er durch seinen Geist in uns wirken mus, wie man sihet zun Galateren am 5. [22]. Ist nhu gedult sein werk, und wil solch sein eigen werk umb seiner zusagung willen in uns krönen und mit dem ewigen leben vergleichen, so haben wirs nicht verdienet und bleibt also allenthalben war, das man aus gnad durch den glauben und nicht durch eigene werke selig wirt, Ephe. am andern [8 f.].” Sehling 6/I, 2: 769a–769b. I have taken “vergleichen” to be equivalent to “vergelten” (reward). See Grimm, Bd. 25, Spaltung 454, Entry 4. On Corvinus, see NDB 3: 371–372. The 1552 Church Ordinance for Mecklenburg reproduces Melanchthon’s Examen ordinandorum in its entirety; this was the first time the Wittenberg reformer’s enormously influential work was published. See Sehling 5, pp. 132– 134. CR XXIII provides the 1558 Examen in both German and Latin. See cols. XXI–CX (German) and 1–102 (Latin). Melanchthon’s treatment of suffering (“Warumb die Christliche Kirche vnter das Creutz gelegt sey, vnd vom trost der betrübten Christen”/“Quare Ecclesia subiecta est cruci? Loci consolationum”) may be found on cols. LXXVI–LXXXII and 75–81. Sven Grosse notes that this treatment draws directly on the important discussion of adversity in the 1543 edition of Melanchthon’s Loci communes theologici, which was entitled “De calamitate seu de cruce, et de veris consolationibus.” See Grosse, Gott und das Leid, pp. 58–59. The 1535 edition of the Loci also included a section on suffering, “De afflictionibus seu de cruce toleranda” (CR XXI, pp. 528–536), as did Melanchthon’s later German translation. The treatment of suffering in this German edition bore the title “Von Trübsal und Creutz zu tragen” and may be found in Melanchthon, Philipp Melanchthon Heubtartikel Christlicher Lere, pp. 406–417. See NDB 1: 456–457. “Dieser schein macht die vernunft irr, das zu gleich gottes volk im leiden und elend ist, wie andere heidnische völker, die christliche lere öffentlich verachten, als heiden und türken etc. Darum is hoch nötig, die leut wol zu unterrichten, das sie wissen, warum die kirch unter das creuz geleget.” Sehling 5: 177a. “Denn gott helt seine regel, euserliche sünden straft er auch mit leiblichen plagen, alle menschen zu erinnern, das er weise und gerecht sei, und habe einen ernsten, warhaftigen, grossen zorn wider die sünd.” Sehling 5: 177a. Melanchthon provides the following summary statement of why the church suffers: “Und ist in summa göttlicher rat und will, das die kirche unter dem creutz sei. Und ist solchs durch göttliche weisheit und gerechtigkeit also [179a] beschlossen, wenn wir gleich nicht alle ursachen betrachten können. Doch ist die furnemst ursach klar, nemlich, das gott wil das die sündige natur zerbrochen werde.” Sehling 5: 178b–179a. “Zum dritten, so wir nu vergebung der sünden empfahen, sol der glaub fur und fur stercker werden und festiglich schliessen, das dich gott erhören wolle, sei bei dir und sterke dich. Und sol diese hoffnung leuchten, das gott das elend

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80. 81. 82.

83. 84.

Notes to Pages 183–186 auch in diesem leben gnediglich lindern wolle oder ganz wegnemen. Und ob du gleich in diesem leben nicht ganz erledigt wirst, so bistu dennoch ein erbe ewiger selikeit.” Sehling 5: 179b. See Sehling 5: 180a. For a discussion of how God could effect healing indirectly through natural medicine, see Veit Dietrich’s Abendbüchlein, Sehling 11: 509a. The 1537 Visitationsartikel for Freiberg, Wolkenstein, and Rochlitz call for extreme unction to be abolished (Sehling 1/I: 466b), as do the CalenbergGöttingen Synodalkonstitutionen of 1544/45 (Sehling 6/I, 2: 875b), the 1556 Reformationsmandat of Otto Heinrich (Sehling 14: 112a), and the 1574 Christliche Instructio des Thomas Stieber for the Herrschaft Wolfstein (Sehling 13: 582b). See AOG 5: 106.10–18. For a discussion of the role of angels in ministering to suffering Christians, see chapter 8 below.

c h a p t er 8 1. See Musculus, Vom Creutz vnd Anfechtung, fol. Aii v. 2. Kolb lists sixteen editions of Spangenberg’s Vom Christlichen Ritter in his edition and translation of the work. See Spangenberg, A Booklet of Comfort for the Sick, & On the Christian Knight, p. 11. I have found additional editions in the VD16. 3. The VD16 lists six editions, four of which are also in the HAB. The HAB contains four additional editions that are not in the VD16; therefore, I have listed the total number of editions as ten. The earliest Latin edition is from 1553, the earliest German from 1555. 4. Traugott Koch lists twenty-five editions in her Johann Habermanns “Betbüchlein”, pp.149–159, but Christopher Brown has shown that there were fifty-nine editions before 1600. See his “Devotional Life in Hymns,” p. 248. 5. For publication statistics on postils by Huberinus, Simon Muesel, and Simon Pauli, see Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, pp. 456 (no. 83), 458 (no. 161), and 458 (no. 166), respectively. 6. In a consolation letter from 1538, Schwenckfeld accuses his opponents of wanting to have “einen Christum one Creutz.” See Hartranft and Johnson, Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum, Vol. 6, p. 352.39. In his Catechismus vom Worte des Creützes, Schwenckfeld says that his opponents want “ainen honigsu[e]ssen Christum/ ain Euangelium one Creutz/ vnd das himmelreich one mu[e]he vnnd arbait” and that they prefer “ainen halben oder halbierten Christum” to the full bitter Christ. See Hartranft and Johnson, Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum, Vol. 9, pp. 472.1–3, 478.26–33. On Schwenckfeld, see McLaughlin, Caspar Schwenckfeld.

Notes to Pages 186–189

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7. The collection, which appeared in late 1537 or early 1538 in Augsburg, consisted of two treatises—Tröstung aines der vndter dem Creütz Christi steht and Ain Trostbu[e]chlin/ allen Krancken betru[e]bten vnd gefangen nützlich—along with a few other pieces. For publication statistics, see Hartranft, Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum, Vol. 5, pp. 804–806. 8. For publication statistics, see Hartranft and Johnson, Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum, Vol. 6, p. 651. It is important to note that Schwenckfeld’s collection of consolation writings and his Deutsch Passional were less radical in tone and theology than some of his other, less popular works; they are essentially Augustinian in theology. It should also be stressed that even in his criticism of Lutheran spiritual laxity, Schwenckfeld remained decisively evangelical in his approach to suffering: while he insisted that a Christian had to follow the narrow way of the (narrowly defined) cross to enter heaven, he maintained that suffering was not meritorious; it was not a penance for sin. See Schwenckfeld, Catechismus vom Worte des Creützes, p. 484.1–18. 9. See Huberinus, Vom Christlichen Ritter, fol. Sii r.; Dietrich, Wie die Christen zur zeyt der verfolgung sich tro[e]sten sollen, pp. 198.33–199.2; Mathesius, Drey Predigten, fol. A7 v.; Hunnius, Postilla, fol. 266; and Habermann, Betbüchlein, fol. Ziii r. 10. On this fear and the way it motivated preachers of the late Protestant Reformation to clear the way of every conceivable threat to the gospel in their postils, see Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, p. 221. 11. On Erasmus Sarcerius, see ADB 33: 727–729 and OER 3: 483. See also Rhein and Wartenberg, Reformatoren. Sarcerius later served as a pastor in Leipzig and then as superintendent for the Mansfeld churches. 12. Commenting on the persecution that Lutherans had experienced from “papists,” Sarcerius asserts, “Nach dem solch Creutz/ verfolgung vnd widerwertigkeit/ ein gewis zeichen ist/ das wir die reine Lere/ vnd alles was dran hanget/ die rechten Sacrament/ vnd gebrauch derselbigen/ auch den rechten Gottesdienst/ haben.” Creutzbüchlein, fol. Cviii r. 13. On Weller, see ADB 44: 472–476 and Nobbe, “Hieronymus Weller.” 14. The German title is Antidotvm: oder Geistliche Ertzney/ fu[e]r die Christen/ so Anfechtung vnnd Geistliche tru[e]bsal haben. For publication information see note 3 above. 15. The German title is Trost oder Seelenartzneibuch. 16. The German title is Creutz vnd Trostbu[e]chlein/ Für Krancke/ lange siechende/ auch sterbende Leutt. 17. On Vogel, see Simon, Nürnbergisches Pfarrerbuch, p. 238. See also Adam, Vitae Germanorum Theologorum, pp. 660–663. 18. For basic biographical information about Pitiscus, see the entry for his Creutz vnd Trostbu[e]chlein in OKHABW. 19. For information on Otto Körber, see Simon, Nürnbergisches Pfarrerbuch, pp. 113–114. Körber’s Tro[e]stliche bericht was published by his son, Elias, about

358

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

Notes to Pages 189–190 whom no information is available. This joint work appeared in two editions (1561 and 1580), while Girlich’s work—Ein Weib in Kindesno[e]ten mag man also vnterrichten vnd tro[e]sten—was published without Körber’s two other times (1553 and 1575). Körber’s work was published once without Girlich’s (1553), and he had another work of instruction for pregnant women that appeared in 1534 and 1535. Körber, Tro[e]stliche bericht, fol. Avi r. Ibid., fol. Avii r–v. Ibid., fol. Cii r–v. Ibid., fols. Cii v–Ciii r. Ibid., fols. Cv r–Cv v. On the suffering of labor as a test of faith, see fol. Cvi v. There is an interesting paragraph on verso of title page of Hieronymus Tanneberg’s Trostbu[e]chlein in which either he or the printer explains that this book has been gathered “nicht der Meinung/ als hette es bißanher an Trostspru[e] chen vnd Bu[e]chlein gemangelt” but rather in order to provide the inexperienced pastor with immediate access to those passages of Scripture that will assist him in his ministry to the sick and the suffering. The paragraph says that pastors should also consult the works of “anderer hochgelahrter Ma[e]nner . . . welche hiedurch keines weges verachtet . . . seyn sollen.” See fol. A v. Vogel, Trost oder Seelenartzneibuch, fol. Aii r–v. Porta, Pastorale Lutheri, fol. cc r. On Porta and the Pastorale Lutheri, see ADB 26: 445; Dykema, “Handbooks for Pastors”; and Kolb, “Luther the Master Pastor.” Tanneberg, Trostbu[e]chlein, fols. Av v–Avi r. OKHABW lists 1595 as Tanneberg’s date of death, but this appears to be mistaken, as the title page of the 1599 Trostbu[e]chlein indicates that he was still serving then as a pastor in Oschatz. See Bidembach’s comments to this effect in the preface of the Manuale Ministrorum Ecclesiae. The preface has no page numbers. For basic biographical information about Bidembach, see any of the entries in OKHABW for his Manuale Ministrorum Ecclesiae. Friedrich Myconius asserts in his Wie man die einfeltigen/ vnd sonderlich die Krancken/ im Christenthumb vnterrichten sol that “Viel Pfarrer auch so vngelert/ vnd gantz vngeschickt/ das sie nicht allein/ nichts dauon leren ko[e]nnen/ Sondern auch selbst nicht wissen/ was die lere des Christenthumbs sey.” See fol. Cii v. For a brief treatment of this work, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 183–191. On Myconius, see NDB 18: 661–662. For similar comments, see Weller, Antidotvm, fols. Aiiii v-Av v. Claudia Resch has argued that already in the 1540s, one sees a decrease in creativity among authors of consolation literature for the sick and dying. Whereas earlier authors regularly assume and even state that their works should not be followed to the letter, she maintains that later authors are much more concerned with providing precise wording that they expect to be followed. See Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 197, 209. I think that Resch overstates

Notes to Pages 190–193

32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

359

this argument. There certainly was a trend toward uniformity, aided in large part by the church ordinances, but the evangelical clergy continued to express much creativity as they sought to apply the evangelical gospel to the specific needs of their suffering parishioners. Huberinus, Vom Christlichen Ritter, fols. Riv v-S r. “Welche heimliche vnd jnnerliche anfechtung [e.g., fear of death, fear of hell and eternal damnation, battles with the sinful flesh] weit vbertreffen/ alle eusserliche gefehrligkeit.” Sarcerius, Creutzbu[e]chlein, fol. P. “Dann kein schwerer Creutz/ oder Leiden ist/ denn wenn das Hertz/ oder Gewissen im Menschen betru[e]bt/ vnd angefochten ist.” Vogel, Trost oder Seelenartzneibuch, fol. 124. “Der Christen Creutz ist mancherley/ jnnerlich vnnd eusserlich. Das jnnerliche ist das schwerste.” Glaser, Creutzbüchlein, fol. bv r. The VD16 lists just five editions of Glaser’s work, but the HAB has three others. (Glaser also refers to an earlier edition, but it is not extant). Therefore I have listed eight editions. The earliest extant edition is from 1563. For basic biographical information on Glaser, see the entry in OKHABW for his Creutzbüchlein. Weller maintains that one of the things that the Christian learns from Job is “das die inwendigen engsten/ schrecken/ vnd tru[e]bsaln viel vnleidiger vnd schwerer sind/ denn die eusserliche widerwertigkeit vnd Vnglu[e]ck.” Weller, Das Buch Hiob, fol. Bii v. According to the VD16, there are four editions that contain either chaps. 1–12 (1584, 1592) or chaps. 1–22 (1592) of Job and one that contains chaps. 13–22 (1565). The HAB has at least one more edition from 1563 that also contains chaps. 1–13. Because I am here interested in the opening chapter of Job, I have listed five extant editions. Flacius, Ein geistlicher trost dieser betru[e]bten Magdeburgischen Kirchen Christi, fol. A v. On Flacius, see TRE 11: 206–214; OER 2: 110–111; Olson, “Matthias Flacius Illyricus”; and Olson, Matthias Flacius. Dietrich, Wie die Christen zur zeyt der verfolgung sich tro[e]sten sollen, pp. 201.27–34, 202.8–10. Caspar Kantz asserts in his treatment of the Passion that when Christ cried out in Gethsemane to his disciples that his soul was overwhelmed to the point of death (Matthew 26:38; Mark 14:34), Christians should learn the following: “Dz ain bekümert mensch sein anligen wol mag seinen gu[o]ten freünden klagen/ auff das sich sein leiden vnd not/ durch tro[e]stung/ mitleydung vnd fürbittug außteyle/ vnd jm destringer vnnd leidelicher werde. Es soll sich niemant scheühen/ sein beschwerungen/ so er leydet an seel vnd leib/ denen zu[o] entdecken/ die im trost vnd radt mügen geben an gottes stat. Daher dann auch die beicht ist kommen.” Kantz, Die historia des leydens Jesu Christi nach den vier Euangelisten, fol. Avii r–v. Cyriakus Spangenberg makes similar comments in his Passio. See fol. T7 v. “Zum zwo[e]lfften/ lerets [divinely sent suffering] vns mit ander leuten mitleiden vnd gedult haben/ als die wir drumb wissen/ vnd an vns selbst erfaren haben/ wie eim armen betru[o]bten menschen vmbs hertze ist.” Bock, Würtzgertlein/ fu[e]r die Krancken Seelen, fol. Dviii v.

360

Notes to Pages 193–195

40. “Der heilige Geist wircket wunderbarlich durch der Christen stimme in vns/ trost/ fried/ freud vnd leben.” Vischer, Ein Trostschrifft, fol. Ev r. On Vischer, see ADB 7: 51–52 and ADB 40: 30–31. 41. Arguably the most famous pre-Reformation work of devotion to employ the image of the knight was Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Enchiridion militis christiani. It first appeared in 1503 and was first published in Germany in 1515. The first edition of Erasmus’s Enchiridion to appear in Germany was printed in Strasbourg in 1515 (VD16: E2745). According to the VD16, the work was then printed fortyfive more times in German-speaking towns and cities in the sixteenth century. Two of these editions—VD16: E2794 (Mainz, 1521) and E2795 (Augsburg, 1543)— were in the vernacular. 42. On Spangenberg, see ADB 35:43–46. See also the Kolb translation of A Booklet of Comfort, pp. 9–33. 43. Ibid., pp. 60 (German), 61 (English). 44. See Steiger, “Die Gesichts- und Theologie-Vergessenheit,” pp. 75–76. See also Linton, Poetry and Parental Bereavement, pp. 43–45. 45. Steiger, Medizinische Theologie. See especially p. 106. On the importance of selfcare in pre-Reformation vernacular medical literature, see Russell, “Syphylis,” pp. 286–287. 46. See Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys, pp. 205–206. 47. Caspar Kantz asserts in Wie man dem krancken vnd sterbenden menschen/ ermanen/ tro[e]sten/ vnnd Gott befelhen soll, “Doch sol er [i.e., the suffering Christian] nit gedencken/ das er mit seinem willigen leiden/ wolt seine sünd biessen/ oder etwas verdienen. Dann Christus hat unsere sünd gebiest/ vnd vns durch seinen tod das ewig leben verdient/ Das sol vnser einige zu[o]uersicht sein.” See fol. Aiii r. Georg Major makes a similar argument in his Trostschrift (fols. Avi v–Avii r), as does Tanneberg in his Trostbu[e]chlein (fols. 49 v–50 r). 48. Leonhard Culmann asserts in his Trostbu[e]chle, “Summa/ die zeit dises gantzen lebens ist die zeit der gnaden/ predig deß Euangelii/ der Bu[o]ß/ deß glaubens/ der versonung vnd vergebung der sünden/ zu[o]erlangen das ewig leben auß gnaden Gottes/ durch den glabuen vmb Christi willen/ sollen wir nicht verachten/ versaumen/ noch inn windt schlahen/ sonder inn disem leben vns bekeren/ frumm/ Gottselig vnd Gottsfo[e]rchtig werden inn allen gu[o]ten wercken/ als die so Gottsfo[e]rchtig seyn/ durch den glauben u[e]ben/ nach disem leben ist es auß/ es ist verseümmt: dann da mag man nit bu[o]ß thu[o]n/ gnad erlangen/ vnd gu[o]ts wircken/ sondern folgt das gericht.” See fol. 5r–v. On Culmann, see ADB 4: 569. 49. Andreae, Passional Bu[e]chlein, fol. 79 v. Andreae was a professor of theology at the University of Tübingen and provost of the church of St. George in the same city. He was a major force behind the development of the Formula of Concord, contributing significantly to its content; he also played a leading role in

Notes to Pages 195–196

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55. 56.

361

organizing support for the Book of Concord. On Andreae, see especially Kolb, Andreae; and Raitt, Shapers of Religious Traditions, pp. 53–68. The Joachimsthal preacher Johannes Mathesius asserts in Das tro[e]stliche de Profvndis, “Das heisset nun/ Er der Herre Christus/ hat vns nit allein gnedige vnd zugerechnete vergebung der su[e]nden/ mit seinem blut vnd lo[e]ßgelt erlanget/ vnd vns hie auff erden auß viel lieblicher vnd geistlicher noth errettet/ sondern er der Herre Jesus/ wirt vns auch durch ein gnedigs stu[e]ndlein/ in der letzten vnd vo[e]lligen widergeburt erretten auß allen su[e]nden/ schande/ hertzeleid/ todtes noth vnd hellenangst/ jammer unnd tru[e]bnuß abwischen/ vnd wirt vns jm gleichfo[e]rmig vnd ehnlich machen/ an geschenckter vnnd mitgeteilter Go[e]ttlicher weißheit/ ewiger gerechtigkeyt/ vnd Engelischer heyligkeyt/ vnd Himelischen ehren vnd freyheyt.” See Fol. Ff ii r. The VD16 lists three editions, but the HAB has an additional one; therefore, I have listed four editions. “Nun hastu geho[e]rt lieber bruder/ wie der vnschuldig Sun Gotes/ so schmelich für dich vnd alle gleübigen/ am Creutz vnder den vbelthettern gestorben ist/ auff das er dein leiden heilsam machete/ vnd dich von dem ewigen tod erlo[e]sete.” Kantz, Wie man dem krancken, fol. Biiii v. For a brief treatment of this work, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 142–143. On Kantz, see Hans-Christoph Rublack, Eine bürgerliche Reformation, pp. 206–214; Burger et al., Pfarrerbuch Bayerisch-Schwaben, p. 101; and Geyer, “Kaspar Kantz.” Rhegius, Ein trostbrieff An die Christen zu Hannofer, fol. Fii r–v. Rhegius lists the eight steps as follows: Avditvs verbi, fides, confessio, crux, patientia, probatio, spes, Vita Aeterna. Siegfried Saccus, pastor of the Magdeburg cathedral, reproduced Rhegius’s eight steps in one of his numerous funeral sermons and argued that Christians must not attempt to climb over the steps of suffering and patience, as these were essential to Christian discipleship. See Vrsachen Warumb die Christen, fol. Biii r. On Saccus, see ADB 30:161 and Moore, “The Magdeburg Cathedral Pastor.” “Wie aber denen/ so jr creutz gedu[e]ltig getragen haben/ das ewige leben folgen wirt/ also werden wiederumb die jenigen/ so jhr creutz von sich geworffen oder mit vngedult vnd murren getragen haben/ von Gott verworffen werden/ in ewige marter vnd pein/ wo sie nicht rewe vnd leid daru[e]ber haben/ vnd busse thun/ Wie Christus damit anzeiget/ Wer sein creutze nicht auff sich nimmet/ vnd folget mir nach/ der ist mein nicht werd/ Matth. 10.” Walther, Trostbüchlein, fol. Nv v. No further biographical information is available. Lutheran consolers continued to speak of suffering as a this-worldly purgatory. See Huberinus, Vom Christlichen Ritter, fol. Niv r. See also Saccus, Vrsachen Warumb die Christen, fol. Bii r. Leonhard Culmann makes this point in his Trostbu[e]chle, fol. 23 r. In a treatment of spiritual Anfechtungen, Caspar Huberinus writes, “Es ist wol ein schwerer kampff mit Gott wider Gott kempfen/ mit Gottes wort wider Gottes wort streiten.” Vom Christlichen Ritter, fol. S r.

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Notes to Page 197

57. What I have in mind here is the equivalent of the effectiva iustitia that Luther discusses in Sermo de duplici iustitia. He clearly says that imputata iustitia is a gift from God that the sinner simply receives by faith, but then he goes on to say that Christians cooperate (cooperamur) with this imputed righteousness as it (or the indwelling Christ; cf. WA I: 146.8–9, 32–34) produces actual righteousness. The cooperating agent is the “spiritual person, who exists through faith in Christ” (spiritualis hominis, qui fit per fidem in Christo) (WA I: 147.8–9). Luther can also conceive of the cooperating agent as Christ’s spiritual bride, who responds to his self-offering “I am yours” in like manner (WA I: 147.27–28). I have not found this language of cooperation in other evangelical works of consolation, but I have found discussions of different kinds of righteousness that echo Luther’s. Johannes Mathesius has a similar discussion of different kinds of righteousness in his treatise Vom Artickel der Rechtfertigung vnnd warer Anru[e] ffung (1563). (It was published twice but also appeared in De profundis, which went through four editions. Here I provide a summary of the version in the 1567 edition of De profundis located in the HAB.) Mathesius speaks of three kinds of righteousness—imputata, inchoata, and consumata—and claims that this distinction is accepted in the Lutheran churches of his day. He includes being conformed to Christ’s image as part of the beginning of righteousness that is ever weak, imperfect, and incomplete in this life owing to the strength of indwelling sin. This righteousness is the result of the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit; unlike Luther, Mathesius does not use the language of cooperation when discussing inchoata righteousness. He says that the Holy Spirit creates new hearts in the justified believer but does not ascribe any agency to this new creation. Nor does he posit any essential or ontological connection among the three different forms of righteousness, aside from the experience of faith, which is a sign to oneself and to others in this life that one is a child of God who will be welcomed into the next life. I believe that Luther’s account of actual righteousness in his 1519 sermon provides resources for rendering the loss of salvation theologically plausible in a Lutheran theological context because it accords some measure of agency to the “spiritual person.” (See discussion of this point below.) I do not see how Mathesius’s account can provide the same plausibility. 58. Kymaeus writes that after the sin-enslaved human being has been made righteous through Christ, “schafft Gott/ durch seinen heiligen geist jnn vns ein new leben vnd einen freien willen/ das bo[e]se zu lassen/ vnd das gut zu thun/ gibt gut begirde/ vnd ein rein new hertz, einen Go[e]ttlichen wandel zu fu[e]ren/ Wer hie mit leren vnd ermanen bessern kan/ wer hie gute Werck thun kan/ der sey nicht faul/ er wird seinen lohn reichlich empfahen. Hie wird erfordert vermo[e]glichkeit/ welche die natur nicht gibt/ sondern allein Gott/ wie zun Ro[e]mern geschrieben stehet/ Der geist hilfft vnser schwacheit auff [Rom. 8:26]/ Vnd an die Philipper/ Schafft das jr selig werdet/ mit furcht vnd zittern/ Denn Gott ist est/ der jnn euch wirckt/ beide das wo[e]llen/ vnd das thun/ nach seinem gefallen [Phil. 2:12–13].”

Notes to Pages 197–200

59. 60. 61.

62.

63. 64.

65.

66. 67.

68. 69.

70. 71. 72.

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Passional Buch, fols. X v–XI r, http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/c-313-2f-helmst-2/start. htm?image=00000014. On Kymaeus, see ADB 17: 446. See note 58 above. See Gordon, “Bullinger’s Vernacular Writings,” pp. 118. Karant-Nunn has also observed an emphasis on human agency in Lutheran sermons on the Passion. She attributes this emphasis largely to the stress on discipline that became so important in the process of confessionalization. While there may be something to this suggestion, here I am primarily concerned with finding a theological cause for this emphasis, although I would not dispute that there may well have been social and political causes as well. See Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, pp. 88, 98, 198. Melanchthon argued in the 1535 edition of the Loci Communes that suffering functioned like the law in the Christian life. See Melanchthon, Philipp Melanchthon Heubtartikel Christlicher Lere, p. 407.27–32. See the discussion of Johannes Mathesius’s concept of three different kinds of righteousness in note 57 above. Kolb, Bound Choice, 286. For an interesting treatment of the synergist controversy in Lutheran preaching, see Ferry, “Confessionalization and Popular Preaching.” The central argument of Kolb’s Bound Choice is that the Wittenberg circle strove to maintain the biblical tension between the Creator’s total responsibility for all things, especially salvation, and the creature’s limited but complete responsibility within its divinely ordained sphere of activity. Kolb maintains that Wittenberg theologians did not seek to resolve this tension; rather, they struggled to uphold it and were greatly assisted in doing so by the law-gospel distinction. See note 57 above. For one of the better-known sixteenth-century statements of this argument, see Eisengrein Vnser liebe Fraw zu[o] Alten Oetting (1571). See the discussion of this work and the Protestant response to it in chap. 5 of Soergel’s, Wondrous in His Saints, pp. 131–158. On Eisengrein, see NDB 4: 412–413. The most recent discussion of Protestants and miracles is Soergel’s Miracles and the Protestant Imagination. See Andreas Osiander’s remark to this effect in the 1533 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance, cited in chapter 7 above. See, for example, Hemmingus, Postilla oder Auslegung der Euangelien, fol. 183; Habermann, Postilla, Das ist Außlegung der Episteln vnd Euangelien, fol. 272 v, right-hand column; and Hunnius, Postilla, fols. 533–534. On Marbach, see NDB 16:102–103. Marbach, Von Mirackeln vnd Wunderzeichen, fol. Kii v. WA 10/3: 145.25–146.3. Cited in Dürr, “Prophetie und Wunderglauben,” p. 4. Soergel discusses Luther’s view of miracles in Miracles and the Protestant Imagination, pp. 33-66.

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Notes to Pages 200–202

73. Marbach, Von Mirackeln vnd Wunderzeichen, fol. b r. Soergel discusses Luther’s assertion that Catholic miracles were demonic in origin in Wondrous in His Saints, p. 63. 74. Marbach, Von Mirackeln vnd Wunderzeichen, fols. L v–Liiii r. Nicholas Hemmingus also cites the survival of the Wittenberg movement and of Luther himself as miracles that attest the validity of the Lutheran faith. See his Postilla oder Auslegung der Euangelien, fol. 183. 75. Regarding the power of the Wittenberg gospel to console (and the alleged inabilility of Catholic theology to do the same), Marbach asserts, “Dann jren keiner vermag ein einig gewissen/ so von einer sünde getruckt vnd geu[e]bt ist/ tro[e]sten vnd fro[e]lich machen.” Von Mirackeln vnd Wunderzeichen, Liii v. 76. “Denn ist Christi eigene krafft vnd gewalt/ aus no[e]ten vnd der helle helffen/ nicht mit seltzamen wunderwercken die augen speisen/ Den zweivel wil er aus dem hertzen nemen/ nicht aus dem augen/ auff das der glaube raum habe vnd bestehe/ wider die pforten der hellen/ das wir jnn Christo die sunde vnd den tod vberwinden/ welchs die rechte gerechtigkeit ist .  .  .” Kymaeus, Passional Buch, fol. XXXII r, http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/c-313-2f-helmst-2/start. htm?image=00000035. 77. Huberinus, Postilla Teutsch, fol. Kkk viii r. Luther also distinguished between miracles of bodily healing and miracles of spiritual healing in Scripture, placing greater emphasis on the latter. See Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination, pp. 45–46. 78. Flacius, Vermanung . . . zur gedult vnd glauben zu Gott, fol. Biiii r. 79. Johannes Habermann argues in his Postilla, “Weil denn die Lere des Euangelions mit vielen Wunderwercken durch Christum vnd seine Apostel ist bekrefftiget worden/ sollen wir hinfurt kein Zeichen weder von Gott/ noch Wunder von den Predigen begeren noch foddern/ sondern bey dem wort bleiben/ dasselbige ho[e]ren/ dem gleuben vnd nachfolgen.” See fol. 272 v, right-hand column. See also Hunnius’s comments to this effect in his Postilla, pag es 533–534. 80. On Mathesius, see ADB 20: 586–589; NDB 16: 69–70; OER 3: 32–33; and Brown, Singing the Gospel. Brown’s book focuses on Joachimsthal and deals with Mathesius throughout. 81. Mathesius, Das tro[e]stliche De Profvndis, fols. T v–Tii r. 82. See Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints; Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination; Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis; and Leppin, Antichrist und Jüngster Tag. 83. Johannes Habermann provides sample prayers for healing in his influential Betbüchlein. See fols. 388–389. 84. See chapter 5, note 80, above. 85. See Kühne, “Märkisches Bethesda.” While Kühne’s work deals primarily with the seventeenth century, he does cite one case of a miraculous well in the sixteenth century that was frequented by Lutherans: Pyrmonter Heilbrunnen in 1556.

Notes to Pages 202–204

86.

87. 88.

89. 90.

91.

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Brady also discusses the presence of such wells in Lutheran lands in German Histories, pp. 285–287. On the presence of exorcisms in early modern Lutheranism, see Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, p. 145. On the presence of lay prophets, see Beyer, “A Lübeck Prophet;” and Dürr, “Prophetie und Wunderglauben,” pp. 28–29. See Scribner, Religion and Culture, especially sect. 4, “Protestantism and Magic.” Scribner discusses the diminished porosity of the Protestant universe on p. 330. Lederer, Madness, Religion and the State, p. 130. Lederer notes that the origins of the Oberammergau Passion Play may be traced back to a vow of penance made by the town in exchange for divine protection from plague. See Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory, pp. 371–510. Roper has asserted that “Protestants greatly weakened the link between the physical and the divine. As they did so, they forced a reassessment of the theological understanding of the body.” Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, p. 173. (Cited in Hammond, “Medicine and Pastoral Care,” p. 136.) Karant-Nunn similarly maintains that the physicality of traditional piety “underwent reduction” in the Lutheran Reformation, specifically as a result of the removal of much religious art from evangelical churches. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, p. 67. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel, pp. 290, 291. It should be noted that Merback’s comments are in reference to Cranach’s 1539 Crucifixion with Centurion (see image 113 on p. 288 of Merback’s book). I have opted for Cranach’s 1538 Crucifixion (figure 8.2), as I believe it expresses Merback’s point especially well without the distraction of the centurion figure, particularly in contrast with Cranach’s own ca. 1502 Calvary (figure 8.1). (On the dating of this work, see Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, p. 170, no. 63.) Merback is cautious about identifying the “broken-back” figure in the pre-Reformation work as the Good Thief. The figure occupies the traditional position of Saint Dysmas, but his extreme pain and grotesque configuration give Merback pause, causing him to wonder if Cranach did not reverse the positions of the two thieves in this work. After e-mail correspondence with Merback, Christopher Wood, and Joseph Koerner, I have learned that there really is no consensus among art historians regarding the identity of this figure, and there is very little, if any, literature available on the topic. My own sense is that when viewed within the context of attitudes toward suffering in late medieval Passion piety and spirituality, especially in the works of Henry Suso and Margaret Ebner, there does not appear to be any necessary reason for concluding that the figure must be Gestas, the Bad Thief. In fact, in light of what Suso and Ebner say about the extreme suffering of Christ’s true servants, one would be more inclined to conclude the opposite, that there are good reasons for saying that the figure is Dysmas. Still, in light of Merback’s uncertainty and the dearth of literature by art historians on this issue, the figure’s identity must remain an open question. For the reasons cited above, I identify him as Dysmas, but I do so tentatively. Karant-Nunn also comments on

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92.

93. 94.

95. 96. 97. 98.

Notes to Pages 204–207 the important change in Cranach’s depiction of Christ and the two thieves that took place as a result of his conversion to the evangelical faith. See KarantNunn, The Reformation of Feeling, p. 71. On Cranach, see Ozment, The Serpent and the Lamb. The internalization of piety and concomitant focus on the soul rather than the body predated the Reformation and was also a feature of Catholic reform in the early modern period. See Lindemann, Medicine and Society, p. 212. Bernhard Jussen and Craig Koslofsky have argued that the separation of inner from outer, internal from external, was a major feature of the cultural history of the late medieval and early modern period. Human bodily gestures and actions were no longer held to form and shape the soul; now they only served it. See Jussen and Koslofsky, Kulturelle Reformation, pp. 60–63. In Karant-Nunn’s contribution to that volume, “‘Gedanken, Herz und Sinn,’” she argues that the Protestant assault on traditional ritual contributed to the rise of an official piety that sought to discipline the body in new ways that were oppressive of human emotion. These developments were especially prevalent in Calvinist Christianity. See pp. 69–95. See chapter 10, note 4, below for Karant-Nunn’s own partial retraction of her argument. See chapter 4 above. See the following works for comments to this effect: Johann Spangenberg, Die historia Vom Leiden vnd sterben/ vnsers HERRn Jhesu Christi, fols. Aiii r and Biiii r; Kantz, Die historia des leydens Jesus Christi nach den vier Euangelisten, fol. Hvi r; Dietrich, Passio/ Oder histori vom leyden Christi Jesu vnsers Heylands, fol. Qv r; Brenz, Passio Vnsers Herren Jesu Christi leyden vnd sterben, fol. VI r. See Tanneberg, Trostbu[e]chlein, fol. 47 r–v. Ibid., fol. 50 r. Ibid., fols. 51 v–52 r. Urbanus Rhegius makes this point in his Von volkomenhait vnd frucht des leidens Christi Sampt erkla[e]rung der wort Pauli Colos.1. Jch erfüll/ das abgeet den leyden Christi [et]c. (1522). This work was also included in Kymaeus’s Passional Buch. Rhegius writes to refute what he takes to be an erroneous interpretation of Colossians 1:24: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Rhegius has the following to say about the view that Christians must actually fill up some deficit in Christ’s suffering with their own suffering: “Das ist nu der vngelerten werckheligen Teuffelische auslegung/ ein so grober irsal/ das mans greiffen mag.” See fol. VIII r, http://diglib.hab.de/wdb.php?dir=drucke/c-313-2f-helmst-2&pointer=9. He interprets the passage to mean that there is much left for Christians to suffer as they seek to become more perfect imitators of Christ and as they seek to put to death the old Adam who resides within them. For an examination of how Calvin dealt with such passages, see van Dijkhuizen, “Religious Meanings of Pain,” pp. 210–211.

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99. Karant-Nunn notes that in traditional Passion piety, the devout were encouraged to minister to the suffering Christ as they meditated on his many sufferings. See Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, p. 45. 100. Taylor, Sources of the Self, especially pp. 215–218. 101. Roper, “Martin Luther’s Body,” p. 381. 102. On angels in the Reformation period, see Gordon, “Malevolent Ghosts”; Hendrix, “Angelic Piety”; and Marshall and Walsham, Angels. 103. See the brief discussion of Diarmand MacCulloch’s thesis to this effect in Marshall and Walsham, “Migrations of Angels,” p. 21. 104. See Soergel, “Luther on the Angels.” 105. On the concern for the survival of the Reformation as a motivating factor in the Protestant treatment of angels, see Gordon, “Malevolent Ghosts,” p. 94. 106. See Spangenberg, Postilla, fol. Oiiii r; and Tannenberg, Trostbu[e]chlein, fol. 51 v. 107. Gordon, “Malevolent Ghosts,” pp. 109, 108. 108. See Opitz, Nu[e]tzlicher Bericht Von den Engeln, fol. J4 r–v. On Opitz, see ADB 24: 369–370. 109. See Major, Ein Trostpredigt vor alle betru[e]bte Gewissen, fol. Fii v. On Major, see OER 2: 501–502 and, more recently, Dingel and Wartenberg, Georg Major. 110. Opitz, Nu[e]tzlicher Bericht, fols. J6 v, K r. 111. Garcaeus, Ein Predigt von der heiligen Engeln wesen vnd ampt, fols. Giv v–Gv r. On Garcaeus, see ADB 8: 370–371. 112. On Grynaeus, see Burnett, Teaching the Reformation, pp. 80–81. 113. Dietrich, Der XCI. Psalm, fols. Nv r–Nv v. 114. Ibid., fol. Nviii v. 115. See Garcaeus, Ein Predigt von der heiligen Engeln wesen vnd ampt, fol. Gv r. 116. Johann Arndt refers to members of the Christian nobility having visions of angels in their sleep. See his TrostSpiegel, fol. 30. Opitz relates stories (one of which allegedly comes from Luther) of angels miraculously preserving children from floods and snowstorms. See Opitz, Nu[e]tzlicher Bericht, fol. J r. For other accounts of angelic visits to simple laypeople, see von Regern, Warhafftige Newe Zeitung; and Coler, Eigentlicher bericht. 117. See Garcaeus, Ein Predigt, fol. B r; and Opitz, Nu[e]tzlicher Bericht, fol. L v. 118. See Hendrix, “Angelic Piety,” pp. 393–394. 119. For a treatment of Bullinger and Jud that touches on their respective theologies of suffering, see Gordon, “Bullinger’s Vernacular Writings.” 120. See Jud, Des lydens Jesu Cristi, fol. Aii v. See also Bullinger, Bericht der krancken, fol. B r; and also Bullinger’s Von ra[e]chter hilff vnd errettung in no[e]ten, fols. Ciiii v-Cv r. I am grateful to Bruce Gordon for drawing my attention to these sources. 121. See Jud, Des lydens Jesu Cristi, fols. Aiiii r–Avii v; and Bullinger, Bericht der krancken, fol. Aiiii v. 122. I am grateful to Hermann Selderhuis for drawing my attention to the kinds of Reformed sources that were likely to contain treatments of consolation.

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123.

124. 125. 126. 127.

128. 129. 130. 131.

132. 133. 134.

135.

Notes to Pages 210–212 Karant-Nunn has noted that Calvinist preachers typically did not want their sermons to be published, which provides at least one explanation for why there is less consolation literature among Reformed Protestants than among Lutherans. See Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, p. 6. See de Niet, “Comforting the Sick”; and de Niet, Ziekentroosters. I am grateful to Hermann Selderhuis for drawing my attention to these sources. There are a couple of references to “seelfrauen” in the Lutheran church ordinances, always in conjunction with ministry to the sick, but this designation does not appear to refer to a formal and widespread office in Lutheran Christianity. See Sehling XI: 320 (especially n. 8) and XIII: 410. Steiger, “Zorn Gottes.” Jud says of Christ’s divinity on the cross, “die Gottheyt aber nüßt nüt desterminder die oberste stillikeyt.” Jud, Des lyden Jesu Cristi, fols. CI v–CII r. Bullinger, Bericht der Krancken, fol. F r. For a brief treatment of this work, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, pp. 137–139. “Der aller sterckst wirt schwach vnd der alle hertzen tro[e]stet der bedarf trosts. Der allen schra[e]cken vertybt/ erschrickt vnd zaget. . . . Ein waarer mensch was er / deshalb er sich syn schwachheyt/ leyd/ truren vnd schra[e]cken nit beschempt zeuerja[e]hen vnd zuklagen vor synen jungern vnd vor synem vatter. Ein schra[e]cken/ empfacht er ab dem tod vnd lyden als ein waarer mensch. Dann lyden nit befinden/ ist nit menschlicher natur/ es ist ouch lyden nit lyden so es nit wee thu[o]t/ so es nit befunden wirt. Darumb empfindt Christus des lydens in synem gmu[e]t vnnd lyb/ empfindt des tods kampff/ überringt jn aber.” Jud, Des lyden Jesu Cristi, fol. Jii r–v. On Jud’s deep borrowing from late medieval Passion piety, see Gordon, “Bullinger’s Vernacular Writings,” pp. 123–124. Jud, Des lyden Jesu Cristi, fol. Jiii r. See Burnett, Teaching the Reformation, p. 272. See Gordon, “Bullinger’s Vernacular Writings,” p. 123. The same could be said of Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism. See Institutes, Book II, chap. 17, and Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 44. See also Viladesau, The Triumph of the Cross, p. 121. For an interesting and somewhat critical treatment of Calvin’s view of suffering in the Christian life, see Minnema, “Calvin’s Interpretation of Human Suffering.” See Myconius, Wie man die einfeltigen, fol. Ciii v. See Major, Trostschrift, fols. Av v–Avi v. On plague as a punishment for sin, see Osiander, Wie und wohin, pp. 391.22– 392.3; and Dietrich, Der XCI. Psalm, fol. A4 v. On the Schmalkaldic War, the Augsburg Interim, and the siege of Magdeburg as punishments for sin, see, respectively, Bugenhagen, Von der jtzigen Kriegsru[e]stung, fols. Aii v–Aiii r; Sarcerius, Creutzbüchlein, fol. Biii r; Amsdorff, Ein trost an die zu Mageburg, fols. Aii r–Aii v. See Sarcerius, Creutzbüchlein, fols. Biii r. and Niii v–Niiii r.

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136. Tanneberg, Trostbu[e]chlein, fol. 2 v. 137. On this traditional belief, see Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 638; and Lindemann, Medicine and Society, p. 11. 138. See Walther, Trostbüchlein, fol. Hvii v. See also Dietrich, Kinder Postilla, fols. 237 v–238 r; and Hunnius, Postilla, fol. 194. 139. Major, Trostschrift, fols. C r–Ciii v. See also Sarcerius, Creutzbüchlein, fol. Ivi v. 140. “Darnach machst du jhr/ du mein liebes vnd armes Casperlein viel jammers vnd trawrens/ da dich Gott vmb vnser su[e]nde willen in Mutter leybe gezeichnet hatte/ von der zeit ist jhr all jhr mut vnd freude gelegen/ vnd ist stetigs mit sterbens gedancken vmbgangen/ wie sie mir als eine rechte Prophetin von jhrem tode sehr offt zuuor verku[e]ndiget hat/ vnd mich sehnlich getro[e]stet/ vnd allweg gesprochen: Jr seydt Gott/ der Kirchen Gottes/ vnnd vnsern Kindern nu[e]tzer auff Erden/ denn ich.” Mathesius, Leychpredigten, fols. X r–v. 141. Tanneberg, Trostbu[e]chlein, fols. 49 v–50 r. 142. See Sarcerius, Creutzbüchlein (1549, IX), fols. H v, I v. Sarcerius is uniquely concerned in his treatise to interpret suffering as God’s means of promoting God’s honor among sinful human beings. God sends suffering so that humanity will concede that he is just; therefore, the more tribulation he sends, the more reverence is given to his name. According to Sarcerius, human beings must not reject divinely sent “examinations,” because this would make God out to be a bad teacher and thus rob him of his honor. 143. When God sends plague, “ist er ein zorniger/ staffender Gott. Warumb: Nicht seinet halb/ Sondern deiner sünde halb/ die lassen ihn nicht rugen/ vnnd treyben ihn zum zorn vnnd der straff.” Dietrich, Der XCI. Psalm, fol. B viii. 144. Kaufmann asserts, “Für die Zeit um 1600 dürfte demgegenüber der enge Zusammenhang von Individualisierung und Apokalyptik eine Haupttendenz des zeitgenössischen Luthertums charakterisieren. Das drohend nahe Ende ruft den Sünder zur Buße und stellt ihn vor den ihn unbedingt fordernden Richter.” Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, p. 414. 145. See especially Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, p. 142; Lehmann, “Frömmigkeitsgeschichtliche Auswirkungen’”; Leppin, Antichrist und Jüngster Tag; and Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, pp. 29–66. See also now Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination. 146. Caspar Goltwurm, a pastor in Weilburg, discusses such signs and wonders as portents of the end in the preface to his Wunderwerck vnd Wunderzeichen Buch. For an examination of this work, see Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination, pp. 93–123. 147. See Kymaeus, Passional Buch, fol. XXXVIIr.http://diglib.hab.de/wdb.php?dir= drucke/c-313-2f-helmst-2&image=00000040. 148. See Oberman, Luther. 149. Sarcerius, Pastorale Oder Hirtenbu[e]ch, Vorrede. For a general treatment of this work, see Selderhuis, “Kirche im Aufbau.”

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Notes to Pages 215–217

150. Glaser, Creutzbüchlein, fols. aii v–aiii r. 151. Columbinus, No[e]tiger vnd Christlicher Bericht, fol. Aii v. No further biographical information is available. 152. See Christoph von Regern, Warhafftige Newe Zeitung; and Coler, Eigentlicher bericht. See also Marshall and Walsham, “Migrations of Angels,” p. 18; and Soergel, “Luther on the Angels,” p. 64. 153. “Zum anderen leret dis Buch/ das nicht alles vnglu[e]ck vnd Leiden den frommen vnd Gottfurchtigen widerfare/ von wegen jrer Su[e]nd/ sondern das sie Gott on vrsach/ allein zu seinem Lobe peiniget/ wie Christus Joh. 9. Von dem gebornen blinden zeuget. Hieher geho[e]ren die andern Exempel.” Weller, Hiob, fols. Aiiii v–B r. 154. “Man muss nicht allweg sagen das es Gottes zorn sey/ wenn wir tru[e]bsal haben/ vnnd widerumb/ wo es glu[e]cklich vnnd wol gehet/ das Gott darumb desto gnediger vnd gu[e]tiger sey/ Sondern man muß es auß Gottes wort vrteilen/ Den wo man die rechnung von vnserem tru[e]bsal vnnd widerwertigkeyt wolt nemen/ vnnd darauß schliessen/ wie Gott gegen vns gesinnet vnd geneyget sey/ wu[e]rde bald volgen/ das auch alle Vetter/ die frommen Ko[e] nig/ Propheten vnd Apostel/ eynen vnfreundlichen/ zornigen Gott gehabt hetten.” Weller cites the examples of David, Paul, and Jeremiah. Antidotvm, fols. Lvi v–Lvii r. Culmann lists the promotion of God’s glory (John 9) as the first reason for suffering in his Trostbu[e]chle, fol. 18 v. 155. Dietrich, Der XCI. Psalm, fols. Ev v, Eviii v. Mitchell Hammond has also noted that early modern epidemics were not always interpreted as divine punishment, especially by the pious. See “Medicine and Pastoral Care,” p. 115. 156. Tanneberg, who argues that sicknesses are Su[e]ndenblumen, also maintains in the same treatise that sickness is not a Su[e]ndenkranckheit for the forgiven Christian; it is a Fo[e]rderung to lead the Christian to glory. Tanneberg, Trostbu[e] chlein, fol. 11 v. In his recent study of Lutheran wonder books, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination, Soergel has argued that the clerical authors of these works interpreted strange and threatening occurrences in the natural world according to a model of retributive justice that had a wrathful God punishing evangelical Christians for their every sin. While Soergel concedes that this view of things was not universal in the late Reformation (see pp. 182–183), he still maintains that this period was characterized by an “unrelieved bleakness” (see pp. 34 and 128). Soergel accounts for this jaundiced outlook by asserting that Lutheran preachers were trying to counteract the antinomianism that they feared had been caused by justification by faith, or at least by abuses of this doctrine. Therefore, they consistently preached law over gospel in order to stem the tide of perceived moral decline in their age (see pp. 30, 117, and 183). Only in the seventeenth century did a God of mercy begin to replace the God of wrath in such Lutheran works, as evangelical doctrinal battles subsided and as Lutheran Christians became more confident of the human ability

Notes to Pages 217–219

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to control the natural world. While I do not dispute the emphasis on law in the wonder books, Soergel’s argument about the late appearance of consolation in his sources (see p. 168) and thus of its relative unimportance in the late Reformation strikes me as problematic when viewed from the perspective of the period’s rich supply of consolation literature. Soergel also seems to be unaware of how later Lutheran theologians and pastors could offer a number of explanations for the suffering that was caused or threatened by natural phenomena; divine punishment for sin was not the only explanation available to them. 157. Berndt Hamm similarly argues, “During recent years, historians of early modern Europe have devoted much of their efforts to the categories of ‘social discipline’ and of governmentally regimented ‘Policey.’ Such categories, it must be remembered, formed only one side of ‘normative centering.’ Put more precisely: they formed one aspect of one side, i.e., the social-politcal aspect of the side that tended toward a regularizing, insistent stringency.” Bast, The Reformation of Faith, pp. 45–46. Hamm makes this assertion in the context of a discussion of how discipline and consolation make up two sides of late medieval and early modern normative centering.

c h a p t er 9 1. Resch has observed the same. See Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 137. 2. The German title is Vom Creutz vnd Anfechtung: Vnterrichtung der Heiligen alten Lehrer vnd Merterer. 3. See Koch, Die Entstehung der lutherischen Frömmigkeit. 4. For examples of pastoral and consolation works that frequently cite Augustine and other patristic sources, see the following: Musculus, Precandi Formulae piae; Walther, Trostbüchlein; Porta, Pastorale Lutheri; Pitiscus, Creutz vnd Trostbu[e]chlein; and Tanneberg, Trostbu[e]chlein. See also Martin Moller, Meditationes sanctorum Patrum [Erste Theil] and Moller, Meditationes sanctorum Patrum [Ander Theyl]. For a discussion of Andreas Musculus’s reliance on patristic sources in his Latin and German prayer books, see Baumann-Koch, Frühe lutherische Gebetsliteratur, pp. 413–429. 5. Pitiscus cites liberally from pagan authors in his Creutz vnd Trostbu[e]chlein. There are also references to pagan authors in Veit Dietrich’s preface to Melanchthon’s Ein Trostschrift, in Melanchthon’s preface to Sarcerius’s Creutzbüchlein, and in Walther’s Trostbüchlein. 6. Moller quotes Bernard frequently in both parts of his Meditationes sanctorum Patrum and cites Anselm frequently in part two. Walther cites Bernard frequently in his Trostbüchlein, as does Glaser in his Creutzbüchlein. David Chytraeus cites Gerson in his Oratio de studio theologiae recte inchoando. Michael Neander discusses Bernard at length in his Theologia Bernhardi ac Tauleri. For a

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7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

Notes to Pages 219–220 treatment of the reception of Bernard in later Lutheranism, see Koch, “Die Bernhard-Rezeption.” See Moller, Meditationes sanctorum Patrum [Erste Theil]; and Neander, Theologia Bernhardi ac Tauleri. In addition to the single edition of the Catalogus testium Veritatis listed in the VD16 (Basel, 1556), the HAB also contains a German translation (Frankfurt am Main, 1573); therefore, I have listed two editions. See Catalogus testium Veritatis, fols. 658 (Bernard), 921–923 (Mechthild), 930 (Gerson), 869–871 (Tauler), and 931–932 (German Theology). On the importance of this work in subsequent Protestant historiography, see Dixon, Protestants, pp. 129, 178. Flacius, Vermanung, fol. D r. Baumann-Koch discusses the section on cross bearing in Musculus’s Latin and German prayer books, including his borrowing from pre-Reformation sources. See Baumann-Koch, Frühe lutherische Gebetsliteratur, pp. 296–308. For a more general treatment of the influence of Pseudo-Augustinian texts on Musculus, see Koch, Die Entstehung der lutherischen Frömmigkeit, pp. 20–32. On Neander, see ADB 23: 341–345. The HAB has a 1581 edition, while the VD16 lists only a 1584 edition. Glaser was aware of Neander’s work, although his treatment of Tauler is more detailed and is also organized around the traditional loci of theology. See Glaser, TAVLERI Christliche Lehre, fol. Avi v. Ibid., fols. Avii v–Aviii r. Glaser also cites Melanchthon’s and Weller’s support of Tauler. See fols. aa r–aaii r. See Glaser, Creutzbüchlein, fol. hiiii v; and Pitiscus, Creutz vnd Trostbu[e]chlein, fol. 11. Through my own research and e-mail correspondence with Volker Leppin and Rudolf Weigand, I have been able to confirm that the thornbush reference cited by Glaser and Pitiscus does not appear in any of Tauler’s authentic writers. They were reading a text falsely attributed to Tauler, of which there were many in the early modern period. There is a reference to a dornbusch in Joannis Tauleri des seligen lerers Predig/ fast fruchtbar zu eim recht christlichen leben (Basel: Petri, 1522), fol. CLXVI, http://hardenberg.jalb.de/display_page. php?elementId=13433, Seite 381, but this does not appear to be the one that Glaser and Pitiscus had in mind. I have not been able to determine which Pseudo-Tauler text contains the thornbush image that caught the Lutheran consolers’ attention. When discussing Christ’s eager desire to heal lepers (Matthew 8:1–13), Habermann says, “Ja wir ko[e]nnen nimmermehr so begirig sein von jm etwas zu biten [sic] vnd zu nemen/ er ist viel geneigter vns zu geben/ wenn anders solches zu seinen ehren vnd vnser seligkeit gereicht/ wie Taulerus saget.” Habermann, Postilla, fol. 109 r, left-hand column. Pauli writes in his sermon on the same passage from Matthew, “Alhie mus man wissen/ das Gott mehr in acht

Notes to Pages 220–222

17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

373

hat seine Barmhertzigkeit/ als seine Allmechtigkeit. Es ko[e]ndte vnd wolte vnser lieber HErr Gott/ vns allezeit geben/ all das jenige/ darumb wir jn bitten/ sintemal er (wie Taulerus spricht) zehen tausent mal geueigter ist zu geben/ als wir sind zu nemen/ wo er nicht wu[e]ste vnd erkennete/ das offt viel dinge vns schedlich sind.” Pauli, Postilla, fol. 114, right-hand column. Moller, Meditationes sanctorum Patrum [Erste Theil], fols. Bvii r–v. On Moller, see ADB 22: 128, NDB 18: 1; and Axmacher, Praxis Evangeliorum. Mysterivm Magnvm, fols. 168 r–172 r. On mysticism in Moller, see Axmacher, Praxis Evangeliorum, pp. 131–137, 211–230. For a treatment of Gerhard along with a general overview of mysticism in the later Lutheran Reformation, see Steiger, Johann Gerhard, chap. 1, especially pp. 54–89. On Nicolai and Arndt, see Wallmann, “Reflexionen und Bemerkungen.” Steiger, Johann Gerhard, p. 55 n. 79. Steiger has observed especially with respect to Johann Gerhard’s reliance on medieval mysticism, “Die Zeit der schärfsten kontroverstheologischen Auseinandersetzungen ist zugleich die Phase des größten Austausches auf dem Gebiet der mystischen Frömmigkeit.” Ibid., pp. 54–55. See Zeller, “Protestantische Frömmigkeit.” Wallmann provides a helpful summary of Zeller’s Frömmigkeitskrise thesis, which Zeller first articulated in 1952 and then again in 1962. See Wallmann, “Reflexionen und Bemerkungen,” p. 25. See the brief summary of the scholarly response to Zeller’s thesis in Wallmann, “Reflexionen vnd Bemerkungen,” pp. 26–27. This assumption goes back to Albrecht Ritschl and Paul Althaus. In his Zur Charakteristik der evangelischen Gebetsliteratur, Althaus noted an important and, in his opinion, unfortunate change in evangelical prayer literature around 1550: an increased emphasis on subjective, private prayer over against objective, communal prayer in the context of the community of believers. He blamed this change on the infiltration of “die augustinisch-bernhardinische Mystik des Mittelalters” that writers such as Musculus and Moller picked up from their reading of this literature. Althaus argued that this mysticism was not proper to the Lutheran tradition of devotion and greatly weakened it. See pp. 59–66. See the discussion of Axmacher’s response to Zeller’s thesis below. Steiger’s Herculean effort to rehabilitate interest in Lutheran Orthodoxy has been motivated in large part by a desire to refute Zeller’s thesis. See especially the preface in Steiger, Johann Gerhard. For Koch’s objections to Zeller’s thesis, see Koch, Die Entstehung der lutherischen Frömmigkeit, p. 19. Steiger argues,”Mystik ist bei Gerhard nicht ein Gegensatz zur reformatorisch geprägten Orthodoxie, sondern eine Funktion und ein integraler Bestandteil derselben mit allerdings jeweils unterschiedlicher Intensität. Bei Luther wie bei Gerhard müssen Berhard, Tauler und Thomas von Kempen sozusagen ein

374

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

Notes to Pages 222–224 Aufbaustudium betreiben und eine Zusatzprüfung ablegen. Erst so werden sie—nun reformationstheologisch weitergebildet—zu Kommilitonen der orthodoxen Theologie.” Steiger, Johann Gerhard, pp. 65–66. Axmacher, Praxis Evangeliorum, p. 314. Steiger, Johann Gerhard, p. 21. See also Sparn, “Die Krise der Frömmigkeit.” Axmacher, Praxis Evangeliorum, pp. 131–137, 211–230, 306–318. For a helpful summary of Axmacher’s criticism of Zeller’s thesis, see Bitzel, Anfechtung und Trost, p. 18. Moller writes in Mysterivm Magnvm that he is living in a time “da sonderlich der Erbfeind der Christenheit/ gantz grawsam wu[e]tet/ vnd der Zorn Gottes mit jm herauff zeuhet/ vmb vnsers Vndancks vnd Su[e]nden willen.” See fols. d ii r–v. In the preface to Meditationes sanctorum Patrum [Ander Theyl], Moller says that he has published this second part because of the overwhelming response to the first part, which convinced him that the devotion of “der lieben Alten” can be especially effective in awakening the piety of people in his day. See the Vorrede, fol. iii r. See Mysterivm Magnvm, fols. aii v–aiii r. Moller asserts in the preface to Mysterivm Magnvm that Luther shared his understanding of the marriage metaphor in Ephesians 5, citing the reformer’s own marginal comment on the word “Sacrament” in his translation of the Bible. See fols. avi r–avii v. For other references to Luther and Melanchthon on the theme of Christ’s union with believers, see fols. cv r, cvii r–v, 2 r–v, 4 r, 5 r, 17 r–v, 45 v, 62 r–v, 105 v–106 r, 154 v–155 r, 161 r–162 v, 173 r–v. Ernst Koch makes the interesting argument that such references to ancient and medieval sources should not be interpreted solely as apologetic or tactical measures; rather, they should be seen as evidence for the extent to which later Lutheran theologians saw themselves as standing in the tradition of the historic Christian Church. See Koch, “Die Bernhard-Rezeption,” p. 333. Axmacher emphasizes that for Moller, Christ himself indwellt the believer’s soul, not just Christ’s gifts or the believer’s faith grasping Christ. See Axmacher, Praxis Evangeliorum, p. 227. The reality of Christ’s union with the Christian is the central theme of Moller’s Mysterivm Magnvm. This lack of attention to union with Christ in the Lutheran consolation literature is curious in light of the fact that the vast majority of sixteenth-century Lutheran theologians believed that justification included some kind of participation in Christ; imputation of alien righteousness was not the sum total of Lutheran soteriology in this period. See Vainio, Justification and Participation in Christ, especially p. 15. Moller, Mysterivm Magnvm, 168 r–172 r. For publication statistics see Gerhard, Meditationes Sacrae, pp. 658–659. “Eine warhafftige vnd bestendige frewde kan nicht sein/ denn nur bey der beywohnung Gottes: Gott aber wohnet in reinem zerknirschten vnd demütigen

Notes to Pages 224–226

40. 41.

42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

375

Geist: Das Creutz vnd die Anfechtung ist es/ welche den Geist zerknirschet vnd demütiget/ darumb ist eine warhafftige vnd bestendige frewde in der Seelen der betrübten Christen: Die anfechtung ist ein weg zur erkendtniß Gottes/ darumb sagt der HErr: Jch bin bey jm in der Noth/ ich wil jn heraußreissen/ vnd wil jm zeigen mein Heil [Psalm 50:15; 91:15–16.].” Ibid., p. 538.75–83. See note 26 above. See also Steiger, Johann Gerhard, pp. 59, 79. In Mysterivm Magnvm, Moller thanks Christ for “den Kuß des Friedes” (i.e., forgiveness of sins) that he has received from him. See fol. 64 r. In a later work, Moller again uses the image of the divine kiss, this time being met with the “Kuß meines Glaubens.” See Thesaurus Precationum, fol. 416. It should be noted that Moller’s use of the divine-kiss image is not identical with Bernard’s use; the latter speaks of an experience in which one receives a kiss from the divine mouth or even a kiss of the kiss of the divine mouth. See Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, pp. 215–226, 231–232, 235–241. Moller is using the Bernardine image within a Lutheran theological framework to express in highly emotive language the experience of consolation and faith. Philipp Nicolai, on the other hand, does refer to the kiss of the kiss of God’s mouth that the Christian experiences in heaven. See Freudenspiegel, p. 80. See Praxis Euangeliorum, Theil 1, fol. 548. “Aber nein/ Mein Hertze ist anders sinnes/ Meine Liebe ist zu groß/ Meine Barmhertzigkeit zu bru[e]nstig/ das ich nicht thun wil nach meinem grimmigen Zorn/ noch mich keren dich in deinen Su[e]nden zuverterben. Du hast ja gehuret/ mit dem Teuffel deinem Bulen. Doch komm wider zu mir/ Denn mir bricht mein Hertze gegen dir/ das ich mich dein erbarmen muß.” Moller, Mysterivm Magnvm, fol. 39 r. See Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, p. 318. A 1572 church visitation in the duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuettel and its environs revealed that one church library contained the local church ordinance, theological works by Melanchthon, and a Catholic postil. This pastor’s own personal library—his name was Henning Wetzen—included postils by Musaeus, Wigand, Hemmingus, and Mathesius. He also possessed Melanchthon’s Loci communes, a few catechisms, and the Vulgate. Another rural pastor—Theodor Mastebroch—had a similarly large collection of postils that included works by Catholics Johannes Herolt and Johannes Eck. A pastor named Konrad Roseman in the city of Braunschweig had Lutheran postils by Musaeus, Hemmingus, and Luther and a Catholic one by Friedrich Nausea. See Hackenberg, “Private Book Ownership,” pp. 184, 185–187, 199, respectively. See also the list of Catholic works discovered among Lutheran pastors in the same church visitation as discussed by Schorn-Schütte in Evangelische Geistlichkeit, p. 565. For evidence of book ownership among the rurual clergy outside Nuremberg, see Hirschmann, Die Kirchenvisitation, pp. 99, 115, 124, 128, 136–137, 147, 150–151, 161, 165, 174–175, 180–181, 211, 214, 221, 228, 239, 244, 268, 275, 277, 278,

376

47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

Notes to Pages 226–227 287–288, 289. Postils by Luther, Dietrich, Brenz, Corvinus, Spangenberg, and Huberinus appear frequently in the sources assembled by Hirschmann, as do catechisms by Luther and Brenz. Many pastors also possessed Melanchthon’s Loci communes, along with collections of works by Luther. The results of the 1572 Braunschweig-Wolfenbuettel church visitation reveal a similar preponderence of postils, catechisms, and commentaries on Scripture, with works by Luther and Melanchthon leading the way. See Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 564–568. See also Gerald Strauss’s discussion of pastors’ libraries in “The Mental World.” A 1601 inventory of the private library of Georg Eder, a pastor in the small town of Zell bei Zellhof in Austria, contained 117 items, including Mathesius’s Historia passionis, Sarcerius’s Pastorale oder Hirtenbuch, and Huberinus’s Vom Zorn und Guette Gottes. The library also included Ein Trostbüchlein für die Sterbenden (without author), along with numerous postils, catechisms, and church ordinances. See Hackenberg, “Private Book Ownership,” pp. 187–191. In Schorn-Schütte’s discussion of pastors’ libraries in the 1572 BraunschweigWolfenbuettel church visitation, only one work of consolation appears: L. Lossius, Trost in Anfechtungen und Not [ = Ewiger Warhafftiger vnd Go[e]ttlicher Trost/ Hu[e]lffe/ Erretunge vnd Beystand/ in allerley Verfolgung/ Not/ Angst/ Anfechtung vnd erschreckunge der Su[e]nde/ Todt/ Teuffel/ Helle/ Welt/ eigem Fleisch vnd Blut (1556, Frankfurt, III)]. See Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, p. 566. Gerald Strauss examined the unusually large library of Johann Langepeter, a pastor in the village of Kappellendorf in northern Thuringia. Among other items, Langepeter possessed works on preparation for death by Urbanus Rhegius—almost certainly the Seelenärtzney für die Gesunden und Kranken zu disen Gefärlichen Zeyten—and Johann Pfeffinger, most likely his Trostbu[e]chlin Aus Gottes Wort. Strauss, “The Mental World,” p. 164. Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, p. 218. On the treatments of suffering in the Loci communes and the Examen, see chapter 7, note 74. On Lossius, see ADB 19: 220–221, ADB 20: 748, and NDB 15: 202–203. Lossius, Catechismus, fols. 74 v–76 v, 121 v–123 r; Brenz, Catechismvs, fols. 146, 157–158; Brenz, Heylsame unnd nützliche erkla[e]rung des Ehrwirdigen Herren Joannis Brentii/ vber den Catechismum, fols. Mvii r–v; Spangenberg, Catechismus, fols. Diii r, m v–mii r, Ssiii r–Ssiiii r. See Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 564, 565, 566. Schorn-Schütte suggests that Catholic clergy, especially the Jesuits, received more highly developed training in practical pastoral care than Protestant clergy did. See Schorn-Schütte, “The Christian Clergy,” p. 731. For recent scholarly examinations of clerical education in early modern Germany, see chapter 7, note 10, above. Karant-Nunn has shown that clergy in

Notes to Pages 227–228

55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68.

377

Saxony began attending university regularly on the eve of the Thirty Years War. See Karant-Nunn, “The Emergence of the Pastoral Family,” p. 87. Nieden, Die Erfindung des Theologen, p. 3 n. 7. Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, p. 318. On the stipendary system for early modern Lutheran clergy, see chapter 7, note 10, above. See Brady, German Histories, p. 278. In his Pastorale Oder Hirtenbu[e]ch, Erasmus Sarcerius calls for consistories to handle ordinations and for them to use Melanchthon’s Examen as their guide. Sarcerius specifically calls for consistories to ask ordinands how they will minister to the sick and suffering in their future congregations. See fols. 42–47. See Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung, p. 254. See Weller’s comments to this effect in his Antidotvm, fols. Aiii r–Avi v. Schorn-Schütte, “The Christian Clergy,” p. 731. Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung, p. 253. Vorrede zum 1. Bande der Wittenberger Ausgabe der deutschen Schriften, WA 50: 657–661 (LW 34: 283–288). Luther writes in this work, “Zum dritten ist da Tentatio, anfechtung. Die ist der Pruefestein, die leret dich nicht allein wissen und verstehen, sondern auch erfaren, wie recht, [Revelations 10:9] wie warhafftig, wie suesse, wie lieblich, wie mechtig, wie troestlich Gottes wort sey, weisheit uber alle weisheit.” See p. 660.1–4. See Nieden, “Anfechtungen als Thema”; Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung, p. 259; and Appold, “Academic Life and Teaching,” p. 101. For publication statistics, see Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung, p. 256. Ibid., pp. 256–257. Chytraeus asserts, “Sed nec totius orbis terrae, nec astrorum & motuum coelestium cognitio, non linguae, non Patres, non sacrarum literarum lectio & tractatio aßidua, denique non excellens eruditio & eloquentia bonum Theologum faciunt, nisi CRUX accedat, per quam Deus lucem verae agnitionis sui, verae fidei in Christo acquiescentis, verae intelligentiae divinarum promißionum, veram illocationem, spem, humilitatem, & omnes virtutes, initio per verbum in cordibus accensas, probet, expoliat, confirmet & perficiat.” Oratio de studio theologiae recte inchoando, http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/462-35-quod-13/start. htm?image=00000035. Kaufmann explains that for Chytraeus, “Die Erfahrung von Kreuz und Anfechtung [‘tentatio’] erst erschließt jenes Tiefenverständnis von Theologie, das falsche Lehrsicherheiten fraglich macht und versehen läßt, daß die ganze Lehre des Evangeliums Trost ist. Nur so werde deutlich, daß allein Gott Subjekt aller Theologie sei, der Gott, der den Menschen durch die Erfahrung des Kreuzes übe.” Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung, p. 284. Similarly, Nieden observes, “Die ‘crux’ ist also nach Chytraeus Voraussetzung der Erfahrung, daß das biblische Wort tröstet; diese Erfahrung

378

69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

Notes to Pages 228–230 ist wiederum Voraussetzung für das rechte Verstehen (‘intelligere’) des Evangeliums und damit auch für dessen rechte Weitergabe in Lehre und Seelsorge.” Nieden, “Anfechtungen als Thema,” p. 91. See Weller, Antidotvm, fol Avi r–Avi v; and Musculus, Trostbüchlein, fols. Av v– Avi r, respectively. See Porta, Pastorale Lutheri, fol. 24 v, here quoting Luther. See note 64 above. See Pitiscus, Trostbu[e]chlein, Vorrede, fols. av v–avi r. In his Pastorale Oder Hirtenbu[e]ch, Erasmus Sarcerius says that each Lutheran church should have a cleric who celebrates and administers the Lord’s Supper, baptizes children, and visits the sick, thus leaving preachers and theologians free to teach and preach. But Sarcerius realizes that this is not possible in many villages and therefore acknowledges that the local pastor must frequently perform all of these functions himself. See fols. 35 and 36. Schorn-Schütte, Evangelische Geistlichkeit, pp. 96, 98. See also Schorn-Schütte, “The New Clergies,” p. 450. Dixon and Schorn-Schütte, The Protestant Clergy, p. 6. See the Introduction, note 7, above. See Karant-Nunn, “‘They Have Highly Offended.’” See Boettcher, “The Rhetoric of ‘Seelsorge’.” Ibid., p. 466.

c h a p t er 1 0 1. For the recent literature on lay resistance to Lutheran pastoral care, see the Introduction, note 7, above. 2. Gerald Strauss made much of the common folk’s desire to seek healing and protection from suffering in traditional folk religion. See Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning, pp. 303–304. 3. See Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, pp. 145–146. See also Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual, especially pp. 190–201. 4. See Karant-Nunn, “‘Gedanken, Herz und Sinn.’” It should be noted that in her more recent book, The Reformation of Feeling, Karant-Nunn has sought to distance herself from her argument in this essay that Protestant clergymen sought to suppress emotion. She concedes that her argument, according to which Catholics fostered emotion while Protestants sought to exclude it, was “inaccurate because it was grossly oversimplified” (p. 5). She confesses, “I was wrong to regard the church founded by Martin Luther as striving to eliminate strong feelings in response to its spiritual ministrations” (p. 96). Karant-Nunn still believes that Lutheran preachers sought to effect “a reduction in the outer display of emotionality,” but they also sought to cultivate inner emotional responses to central events of the Christian faith such as the Passion and were much more interested in providing consolation to their parishioners than were their Reformed counterparts

Notes to Pages 230–232

5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

379

(p. 143). Still, Karant-Nunn believes that there was a certain suppression of the emotional life among Lutherans, which, according to her, paved the way for Pietism and its strong emphasis on the affections (p. 255). See Sabean, Power in the Blood, pp. 37–60. See Hsia, “The Structure of Belief,” p. 369; and Scribner, Religion and Culture, p. 330. See Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, p. 146; Hans-Christoph Rublack, “New Patterns,” pp. 586, 594; and van Dülmen, “Volksfrömmigkeit und konfessionelles Christentum.” Scribner, Religion and Culture, p. 289. For further examples of such “covert evangelical sacramentalism,” see Ulinka Rublack, Reformation Europe, pp. 146–191. See Scribner, Religion and Culture, pp. 355–357; Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, p. 6; and Karant-Nunn, “‘Gedanken, Herz und Sinn,’” p. 74. See Strauss, “The Mental World,” p. 170. For a description of a Lutheran exorcism service, see Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, p. 145. See especially Scribner, Religion and Culture, pp. 346–365. See also Hans-Christoph Rublack, “New Patterns,” p. 595 For examples of Protestant laypeople turning to Catholic priests for healing, see Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners, p. 66. AOG 5, p. 98.4–7. See chapter 7, above. For similar examples of lay opposition to the suffering-as-discipline message of the clergy, see Hans-Christoph Rublack, “Success and Failure,” p. 143. There is no reason to suppose that such opposition was limited to Lutheran lands. The sovereignty of God over suffering is basic to all forms of traditional Christianity, not just to Lutheranism, and it was part of the message about suffering that the Christian clergy from across the confessions sought to convey to the laity. This trend began with Strauss’s Luther’s House of Learning. For balanced criticism of this trend, see Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners, p. 116. See Strauss, “Viewpoint.” Strauss conceded that he sought to practice retroactive justice on behalf of the common folk in Luther’s House, confessing that he was glad to find evidence of their resistance to what they (and he) interpreted as an oppressive form of Christianity. Karant-Nunn appears to share this perspective in “Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism,” in which she is highly critical of Lutheran pastors in their efforts to suppress what they viewed as superstitious practices among the common folk. She accuses, “It is not helpful to denigrate rural festivities as pagan remnants and licentious self-indulgence. They were complex social occasions, woven into the fabric of peasant life. They were the means by which interpersonal and interfamilial transactions—social, governmental, and economic—occurred.” See p. 630. This sounds very much like a normative claim regarding what rural religion in the past was really about.

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18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

Notes to Pages 232–234 There is certainly a claim here that official Lutheranism was intolerant and ignorant where rural religion was concerned. See Gordon, “Religion and Change,” p. 238. Commenting on the slow pace of change in rural regions, Brady remarks, “In the countryside, the Protestant reformation was not a historical moment but a generations-long process.” Brady, German Histories, p. 289. Exceptions in the last two decades would include Elsie McKee’s work on Katharina Schütz Zell (see chapter 6 above), Berndt Hamm’s work on Lazarus Spengler (see chapter 6), and Peter Matheson’s Argula von Grumbach. An important exception is Matheson’s The Imaginative World of the Reformation. See Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, pp. 22–32. See Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual, pp. 193, 195. For exceptions, see Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar, pp. 151–160; and Brown, Singing the Gospel, p. 105. See also the work of two British scholars: Carrdus, “‘Thränen-Tüchlein’”; Carrdus, “Consolatory Dialogue”; and Linton, Poetry and Parental Bereavement, especially pp. 29, 43–45. See note 46 below. The vast majority of ego-documents come from Protestants. See Velten, Das selbst geschriebene Leben, p. 77. For an examination of what is perhaps the bestknown Catholic ego-document, see Lundin, “The Mental World.” See Flood, “The Book in Reformation Germany,” p. 87. See Hackenberg, “Private Book Ownership.” The dissertation examines the book holdings of both clergy and laity based on 716 postmortem inventories. Fischer produced a number of works with Trostbüchlein in the title; therefore, it is not possible to determine exactly which one Alfeld possessed. The German title is Warer Christen Creutz. Hackenberg, “Private Book Ownership,” pp. 215–217. Ibid., pp. 237, 251. The German title of Musculus’s work is Trostbüchlin. In allerley Creutz vnd Widerwertigkeit/ Aus den Historien oder Legenden/ der heiligen alten Patriarchen/ Vnd aus den fu[e]rnemsten Spru[e]chen der Schrifft/ zusammen gebracht. I assume that the postil in question here was Spangenberg’s German Postilla. Frymire has found forty-four extant editions. See Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, p. 508. Hackenberg, “Private Book Ownership,” pp. 242–243. Ibid., p. 241. I am working with the edition of Bugenhagen’s work contained in Kymaeus’s Passional Buch. Ibid., p. 249. The German title of Selneccer’s work is Passio. Christliche/ kurtze vnd tro[e]stliche Erklerung der Historien von dem Leiden vnd Sterben vnsers Herrn vnd Heylands IESV CHRISTI. Ibid., p. 245. I have assumed that the Luther postil in question here is his Haußpostille prepared by Veit Dietrich in 1544. The WA lists nine High German editions, one Low German, and one Latin edition. See vol. 52, pp. xxix–xxxv.

Notes to Pages 234–236

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

50. 51. 52.

53.

381

Frymire lists seventy German, twelve Low German, and ten Latin extant editions between 1544 and 1609. See Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, pp. 546–548. The German title of Petri’s is Trostschrifft: Wie und warumb Gott den seinen offte ungebeten guts thut, auch zu weilen nicht hillft, wenn er gleich gebeten wird. It is not clear which of Hesshusen’s postils this person possessed. Frymire lists three, each of which first appeard in 1581. See The Primacy of the Postils, p. 486. Hackenberg, “Private Book Ownership,” pp. 243–244, 251–252. Ibid., p. 244. Ibid., p. 262. Ibid., p. 221. It is not clear which of Corvinus’s postils is in view here. Ibid., p. 258. Ibid., p. 59, chart, “Size of Book Collection by Occupation.” Ibid., p. 268. Moore, “Lutheran Prayer Books,” p. 124. Flood, “The Book in Reformation Germany,” p. 85. There is an enormous literature on early modern ego-documents and their proper interpretation. Among the more important and valuable are the following: von Greyerz, Selbstzeugnisse in der Frühen Neuzeit; Schmid, Schreiben für Status und Herrschaft; von Greyerz et al., Von der dargestellten Person zum erinnerten Ich; and Velten, Das selbst geschriebene Leben. See also the September 2010 issue of German History (28, no. 3), which is devoted to theme of egodocuments. See Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague,” pp. 132–155. For studies that make extensive use of private letters in examining religion and family in early modern Germany, see the following works by Ozment: Three Behaim Boys; Magdalena and Balthasar; Protestants, pp. 193–214; The Bürgermeister’s Daughter; Flesh and Spirit; and Ancestors. See also Beer, Eltern und Kinder; and Beer, “Private Correspondence.” Many of the private letters in these studies (and my own) come from early modern Nuremberg, as the family archives in this city are arguably the best in all of Germany. Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague,” p. 137. Ozment, Three Behaim Boys, pp. 19, 25. Ozment also discusses the change in Michael Behaim’s greetings in Protestants, p. 198. See also Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague,” p. 145. Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague,” p. 144. Ibid., p. 144. See Heal, “Images of the Virgin Mary,” p. 39. Heming argues that many Protestants continued to invoke the saints, regardless of what their preachers and rulers mandated to the contrary. See Heming, Protestants and the Cult of the Saints, p. 105. See Hirschmann, Die Kirchenvisitation, pp. 49, 54, 83, 110, 116, 161, 168, 182, 191, 211, 233, 236, 237, 249, 251, 252, 253.

382

Notes to Pages 236–241

54. Boos, Thomas und Felix Platter, p. 66. See also Heman, Thomas und Felix Platter, p. 84. Ozment also cites this example in Protestants, p. 179. On Reformed Protestant ego-documents, see Benedict, “Some Uses of Autobiographical Documents,” pp. 355–367. 55. Anna was an orphan who worked as a servant in the Myconius household. She came to regard Myconius and his wife as her parents. See Thomas Platter, Lebensbeschreibung, p. 87. I am grateful to Amy Nelson Burnett for calling my attention to this reference. 56. Ozment dealt with suffering in works such as Three Behaim Boys and, especially, Magdalena and Balthasar, but not in a systematic way. 57. See McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, Vol. 1, pp. 211–213. 58. See Schütz Zell, Den Psalmen Miserere, pp. 341–344. 59. Ibid., p. 344 n. 131. 60. See Loesche, Johannes Mathesius, p. 207. 61. See chapter 8 above. For a treatment of Mathesius’s funeral sermons see Michel, “Doctrina et consolatio.” 62. The account of Mathesius’s illness and eventual recovery may be found in the following sources: Mathesius, Drey Predigten, Vorrede and fols. B2 v–B3 r; Mathesius, Das tro[e]stliche De Profvndis, Vorrede; and Loesche, Johannes Mathesius, Vol. 1, pp. 219–227. 63. See Loesche, Johannes Mathesius, Vol. 2, pp. 325–326. On the proper dating of this letter, see Melanchthon, Melanchthons Briefwechsel, Vol. 7, p. 377. 64. Loesche, Johannes Mathesius, Vol. 2, p. 181. 65. Mathesius has the following to say in reference to himself: “Ich kenne ein person/ die wolte vorzeyten diesen Psalm predigen/ vnd kompt daru[e]ber in solche trawrigkeyt vnnd zagheyt des Geystes/ das sie nimmer allein sein dorffte/ vnnd kein messer ansehen/ vnd kondte kein Spruch mehr lesen/ vnnd keinen seufftzer faren lassen.” See Mathesius, De Profvndis, fol. Hiii v. 66. “Wir von der Kirchen/ vnnd die von der Schulen/ vnnd andere seine guten freunde wachten bey ihm/ vnd sungen vnd beteten mit jhm/ biß in die 8. wochen.” Mathesius, Drey Predigten, fol. A3 v. 67. Ibid., Drey Predigten, fol. A4 r. 68. The sermon is contained in Drey Predigten. 69. Ozment, Protestants, p. 202. 70. The German title of the draft pamphlet in LSS I is Stellungnahme zum rechten Verhalten angesichts der Türkenbedrohung. See p. 254.14. 71. See Bast, The Reformation of Faith, p. 284. 72. Rem, Tagebuch, p. 10. See also Wenzel, Die Autobiographie, Vol. 2, p. 114. 73. “Ich kam wunderperlich darvon, on al laid. Also mag ich sagen, ditz tag erst niu geporn sey.” Rem, Tagebuch, p. 14. Also in Wenzel, Die Autobiographie, Vol. 2, p. 118. 74. Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar, p. 159.

Notes to Pages 241–244

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75. “Unnd wän er [ father] etwan hin uß dem huß gieng oder nider schlaffen gieng oder uffstündt, war das sin gebätt: ‘Das walt gott der vatter, gott der son unnd gott der heilig geyst. Das ist die heillig tryfaltickheyt. Behütte unns vor wasser unnd vor für, vor großem kummer unnd härtzleyd, vor sünden unnd vor allem übel. Unnd welle der allmächtig gott unnd vatter, das wäder zefrüy noch zespat seyge, sunder grad eben recht, durch Jesum Christum, amen.’” Rageth, “Die Autobiographie des Täufers Georg Frell,” p. 458. 76. See Mohnike, Bartholomai Sastrowen, Vol. 1, pp. 3–4. 77. See Vincentz, Die Goldschmiede-Chronik, p. 510. 78. See Velten, Das selbst geschriebene Leben, p. 219; and Schmidt, “Gemeinde und Sittenzucht,” p. 204. 79. See Bast, The Reformation of Faith, pp. 282–285. 80. Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar, p. 146. Ozment is here specifically referring to the subjects of his study, Magdalena Behaim and Balthasar Paumgartner, but his observation holds true for burghers from all walks of life and from each of the Christian confessions in late medieval and early modern Europe. 81. Ozment, Three Behaim Boys, p. 41. 82. Ibid., p. 51. 83. Hartmann confirms that Amerbach was not an enthusiastic supporter of the Reformation in Basel. See Die Amerbachkorrespondenz, Vol. 1, p. XI. 84. “Aber gott der allmechtig hatts alßo wellen haben; dem wollens wir bevolhen haben; dan sin will, der werd.” Hartmann, Die Amerbachkorrespondenz, Vol. 5, no. 2459, p. 346.10–11. 85. The remainder of this paragraph draws directly on Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague,” p. 144. 86. Tucher, Letter to Hans Tiedeshoren. 87. See Paulus Behaim, Letters from Sebastian Imhoff. This letter is dated September 28, 1562 (no. 15). 88. Ibid. The letter is dated September 25, 1562. 89. Joachim Haller to Christoff Kress. The letter is dated October 2, 1562, and can be found in the Kress Archiv. 90. Boos, Thomas und Felix Platter, p. 109. 91. Ozment, Three Behaim Boys, pp. 50, 68; Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar, pp. 128–129. 92. See Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar, pp. 143–144. 93. “Das ergib gott, dan der nichs pos verhengt.” Cited in Beer, Eltern und Kinder, p. 307. 94. Vincentz, Die Goldschmiede-Chronik, p. 498. 95. Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar, p. 112. 96. Ibid., pp. 123, 129. 97. Ibid., p. 127. 98. Ibid., p. 134.

384

Notes to Pages 244–245

99. Ibid, pp. 117, 131–132. Magdalena describes Balthasar’s spring- and medicineinduced purgations as “God’s means of graciously preserving you.” 100. Hammond has argued that early modern Protestants placed an increasing value on medicine and the healing that it could bring. See Hammond, “Medicine and Pastoral Care,” p. 114. Perhaps one reason for this growing appreciation is that medicine came to function as an evangelical ersatz for Catholic sacramentals. (Hammond does not discuss this possibility.) Heinrichs argues in his dissertation that the Lutheran assault on the saints helped to facilitate a stronger emphasis on divinely provided means of healing in the form of natural medicine. This emphasis leads Heinrichs to speak of the “sacralization” of natural medicine in Lutheran Germany. See Heinrichs, “The Plague Cure.” 101. On burgher stoicism, see Hamm, Lazarus Spengler, pp. 50–53. 102. See Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar, p. 154. 103. For example, see Veit, “Die Hausandacht,” p. 205. 104. This paragraph draws on Rittgers, “Protestants and Plague,” p. 149. 105. For example, see Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual, pp. 190–192. 106. This is the argument of Barnes’s book Prophecy and Gnosis. See also Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, p. 142. 107. See Zambelli, Astrologi hallucinati, pp. 101–151; Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, pp. 147–150; Soergel, “Miracle, Magic, and Disenchantment,” p. 233; and Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, p. 87. 108. See Scribner, Religion and Culture, pp. 355–357; and Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, p. 6. 109. See Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, p. 262. 110. See Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, pp. 22–32, 49–56. See also Ozment, The Age of Reform, pp. 204–222. 111. Ozment notes that Magdalena and Balthasar make no mention of the devil or demons in their sixteen-year correspondence. See Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar, pp. 143–144. 112. Even someone as interested in studying the popular culture of early modern Germany as Bob Scribner warned against a “two-tiered” approach that posits a strict division between elites and commoners. Brady explains that Scribner advocated “a pluralistic holism” that saw elites and commoners as part of a single culture that contained many subcultures. See Thomas Brady, “Robert W. Scribner, A Historian of the German Reformation” in Scribner, Religion and Culture, p. 18. Scribner argued against the two-tiered approach in “Is a History of Popular Culture Possible?” which is reprinted in Religion and Culture, pp. 29–51. I believe that the case of suffering provides important evidence to support Scribner’s holistic approach to the study of early modern German culture. 113. Lindemann, Medicine and Society, pp. 36, 195, 199. Aberth has similarly argued for the resourcefulness of late medieval Europeans as they successfully coped

Notes to Pages 245–247

114.

115. 116.

117. 118.

119. 120.

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with the effects of plague. See Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse, p. 263. Barnes has recently suggested that physicians may have actually contributed to the plausbility of the evangelical movement in German towns through their emphasis on the importance of medical self-help in the later Middle Ages. This emphasis prepared the ground for the early Protestant appeal to lay initiative. See Barnes, “Alexander Seitz.” “In summa, Got will herr und maister sein und pleiben und uns durch dise straf ursach geben, zu ime zu schreien und ine fur unsern ainigen helfer zuerkennen.” Oohlau, “Neue Quellen,” p. 244. “Der herr verliche uns gnad, das es diene zu[o] der er gottes, unser selen heill, amen.” Boos, Thomas und Felix Platter, p. 109. Vincentz writes in his family chronicle, “Der Allmächtige, bei dem Weisheit und Gewalt ist und der die, welche feststehen, taumeln macht und trunken, versucht uns, ob wir erfunden werden, wie das Gold.” Vincentz, Die Goldschmiede-Chronik, p. 372. Mohnike, Bartholomai Sastrowen, pp. 4–5. Frell states at the end of his autobiography that he has composed this work for his children, not for his own praise but that God might be praised, especially in the midst of trials: “den [i.e., God] wir ouch allein in allen dingen und umb alle ding, in allem unserem ellend und trüebsal anrüeffen und bitten söllend; dann er allein ist unser hilff und schilt in allen zufallenden nötten, amen, amen, amen.” Rageth, “Die Autobiographie des Täufers Georg Frell,” p. 468. On Geizkofler, see ADB 8: 529; Schweizer, “Lucas Geizkofler”; and Schaffenrath, “Der Humanist Lucas Geizkofler.” “Ich selbs habe mich bishero getröstet, als ich betrachtet, daß der Stifter des heil. Ehestandes christliche eheleut mit dem lieben Kreuz nit aus zorn, sondern vielmehr aus väterlicher neigung zur prob ihrer geduld heimzusuchen und zu segnen pfleget, und daß alle sein werk uns zum besten gemeint seien und gereichen, welches du meine geliebte Ehegenossin gleichfalls betrachten und dich damit christlich trösten wollest. Wir sollen und wollen zwar gern bekennen, daß wir große sünder sind und allerlei kreuz und leiden wol verdienen; aber daneben haben wir uns zu erinnern, welchermassen dasselbe uns Christen zugeschickt wird, daß wir uns in dieser welt von dem zeitlichen und weltlichen nicht einnehmen und anfechten lassen sondern vielmehr bewegt werden, nach dem ewigen und himmlischen schatz zu trachten. Und solches, mein herzliebes Weib, hat mich diese zeit her, in welcher ich von dir abwesend und mir die weltlichen geschäft etwas zu hoch angelegen sein ließ, verursacht, in mich selbs zu gehen und sonderlich in dieser fastenzeit nach einem beständigen trost in unserem trübseligen leben zu trachten. Diesen mögen wir in erinnerung unserers sündlichen lebens durch kein ander mittel und durch niemand andern suchen und finden, als durch unseren seligmacher Jesum Christum und sein bitteres leiden und sterben, welches uns nach

386

121.

122. 123.

124.

125. 126.

127.

Notes to Pages 247–249 alter christlicher ordnung fürnemlich in diesen fasten und marterwochen zu bedenken vorgehalten wird.” Wolf, Lucas Geizkofler, pp. 151–152. For a brief discussion of this letter in the context of Geizkofler’s piety, see Schweizer, “Lucas Geizkofler,” p. 171. “Derhalben ob wir schon mit Creutz vnnd trüebsall haimbgecht werden, so sollen wir doch gedenckhen, das vns Gott solches Creutz vnnd truebsall nicht darumb, das er vns feind, vnnd abholdt seÿ, sondern allein aus vätterlichen trewen wol mainenden hertzen zue schickt, dann der herr (sagt könig Salomon) züchtiget den jenigen, welchen er leib hat.” Geizkofler, Ein hoch tröstliche vnnd nutzliche Erinerung, fols. 144 r–v. See Wolf, Lucas Geizkofler, pp. 152–153. On Geizkofler’s use of the bridal metaphor in this work, see Schweizer, Lucas Geizkofler, p. 171. Schweizer notes the prevalence of this metaphor in the Lutheran devotional works of the day. On Geizkofler’s deep commitment to the Lutheran faith, see ibid., pp. 159–176. Geizkofler knew how to conduct himself in a respectful and self-preserving way when in Catholic lands and was even on good terms with a number of Catholic Christians, but he remained a convinced Lutheran who found many things to fault in traditional faith. Brown, Singing the Gospel, p. 116; Brown, “Sixteenth-Century Midwives.” For examples, see the following funeral sermons: Saccus, Vrsachen Warumb, fols. Aii r and Aiii r–v; Leyser, Eine Christliche Predigt, fol. F v; Montag, Eine Christliche Creutz vnd Trostschrifft, fol. R v; Codomann, Christliche Leichpredigt, p. 29; and Will, Eine Christliche Leichpredigt, fols. Aii v–Aiii r. On Lutheran funeral sermons, see especially Moore, Patterned Lives. On Reformed funeral sermons, see Burnett, “The Reformed Funeral Sermons of Johann Brandmüller.” For a fuller treatment of Oelhafen’s Pious Meditations, see Rittgers, “Grief and Consolation.” The Latin title of Oelhafen’s work is Piae mediationes vidvitatis, ehev moestissimae. The majority of the work is in German, although it contains a couple of Latin poems. An alternative translation of the title would be Pious Meditations on the Most Sorrowful Widowhood (or, less elegantly, Widowerhood). Vidvitas carries both the general meaning of “bereavement” and the more specific meaning of “widowhood.” Because “widowhood” almost always refers to a woman in American English and because the masculine alternative, “widowerhood,” is a rather awkward and seldom-used word, I have opted for the more common and more elegant “bereavement.” This work is cataloged in the GNM-HA as the Gebetbuch des Hans Christoph Oelhafen. I refer to it below by the title that Oelhafen himself gave to it: Piae Mediationes. For biographical information on Oelhafen, see ADB 24: 296–298; Will, Nürnbergisches Gelehrten-Lexicon, Vol. 3, pp. 61–63; Deutsches biographisches Archiv, Vol. 1, p. 911, entries 218–224; Apinus, Vitae et Effigies, pp. 10–19; Oelhafen, Zwei Reden; Biedermann, Geschlechtsregister, table CCCLVII. There is no mention of the Piae Meditationes in any summaries of Oelhafen’s life,

Notes to Pages 249–251

128.

129. 130. 131. 132.

133. 134. 135. 136.

137.

138. 139.

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whether early modern or modern. This is even true of the relevant section in the Oelhafen family chronicle. See Familienbuch, fol. 327. Karant-Nunn focuses primarily on the place of consolation in Lutheran sermons on the Passion and in Lutheran prescriptions for deathbed ministry; her sources are largely clerical in nature. She does not examine Lutheran ego-documents. See Oelhafen, Zwei Reden, p. 12. On these rhetorical strategies see Rittgers, “Grief and Consolation,” and the relevant notes there. On Anna Maria, see Biedermann, Geschlechtsregister, tables CCCLVII, CXLIX. According to the Oelhafen Familienbuch, Johannes Christoph had a “gantz liebreichte und gesegnete ehe” with Anna Maria. See fol. 326. We do not know if Anna Maria held the same opinion, as we have no sources from her. I am grateful to Jill Bepler for drawing my attention to this acrostic. Oelhafen, Diarium, entry for October 13, 1619. Oelhafen, Zwei Reden, p. 12. “O lebendiger Gott, unndt Tröster aller betrübten: Ich habe meinen liebsten schatz auf Erden verloren: dann du hast mir ein stuckh von meinem hertzen weggerißen: du hast sie mir geben, unndt 18 Jahr Lang gelaßen: auch nun wider, zue dir, auß dießem Elendt, alß dein liebes Kindt genommen, wil sie deinen Sohn Erkandt, unndt, mitten in der todten angst, alß ihren Brautigam, hertzlich, angerufen hatt. Tröste mich, Traurig unndt Elenden witber, unndt hilf mir mein Laid tragen, auch meine kleine kinderlein erziehen: unndt schickh, nach deinem Göttlichen willen, ein seeliges stündtlein; das ich, unndt die meinen, fur deinem angesicht, mit unndt neben ihr, in newer frewd unndt ewiger lieb, zusammen kommen, der du, auß Laid, Ewiger freudt, unndt wollgefallen machen kanst, hochgelobt in alle Ewigkeit. Amen.” Oelhafen, Piae Meditationes, entry 1, February 13. (Oelhafen numbered all of the vernacular entries in the Piae Meditationes.) Oelhafen writes that the knowledge that his wife’s death was divine punishment for his sin “frißet und naget sich mein hertz.” Ibid., entry 8, March 21. Oelhafen was deeply persuaded of his sinfulness, and elsewhere in the work, he desires to be forgiven for the guilt or debts (schulden) that he feels he incurs every day. See entry 61, October 24. In addition to viewing his suffering as a punishment for sin, Oelhafen also saw it as God’s gracious “haimbsuchung unndt vatterliche zuchtigung” to produce spiritual “besserung” in him. See entries 8 (March 21), 33 (May 26), 45 (July 18). See entries 5 (28 February 28), 6 (March 7), 10 (March 24), 52 (August 24, verse 3), 61 (October 24). In a later entry (53, August 29, verse 6), Oelhafen asserts that God wishes to be humanity’s sole helper: dann Gott allein will helfer sein.

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Notes to Page 253

140. Wan ich behertzig mein Elendt, unndt mein Augen hin und her wendt, Von Menschen unndt der weiten welt, Mir alle hülf und Trost entfellt: Aber du Trew Barmhertziger Gott, hilf mir, dann Eilend hülf ist Not: wo du nit schafst Rhat unndt heil, werdt Ich gar bald den Todt zu thail: wo du nit wegnimbst diese Last, hat mein hertz weder rhue noch Rast. Ach vatter, sihe mitt gnaden an, mein seuftzen und weinen, das ich kan, außstehen diese schwere not, darein mich stürtzt meins Ehegemahl Todt So dein hülfreich hand nur reicht dar, Ein fingerlein, hats kein gefahr, Ich werdt gantz starckh, rhuig und gesundt, haben fried unndt Rast zur selben stundt. deins Sohns verdienst und groß wolthat, damit Er unß Erlößet hat, Such unndt beger Ich hertzigligch, unndt faß im glabuen demutiglich.

141.

142.

143.

144.

Ibid., entry 3, February 17. Oelhafen implores God to see him and his family “mit den augen deiner barmhertzigkeit.” Ibid., entries 2 (February 14), 4 (February 21). Throughout the work, he implores God to cover him with Christ’s righteousness, especially at the Last Judgment. See entry 61 (October 26), where he prays to be “beklaidet mit deinem [Christ’s] verdienst,” and entry 66 (November 21), where he prays that God will clothe his bride worthily “mit der gerechtigkeit deines whürdigsten Sohns gehorsambs” at the Last Judgment. “Barmhertziger Ewiger gütiger Gott, ich habe ja kein ander vertrawen, hofnung unndt zuflucht, kan mich auch keines andern rhumen, dann das du, fur mich geboren, gestorben, unndt, Insonderheit von den Todten widerauferstanden, undt gehn himmel gefahren bist; wie Ich dann . . . unndt, wann du nun, verdienst von mir forderst, so bringe ich dir herfur, das verdienst deines allerheiligste laidens, das verdinest deines creutzes, unndt das verdienst deines todtes.” Ibid., entry 26 (May 6). “Sintemahl, du ein herr, uber alles bist, was ist dann, im Rest, darmit ich dir satisfaction geben köndte? Ach, anderst nichts, als mein glaubigens hertz . . .” Ibid., entry 61 (October 24). Ibid., entry 72 (December 21).

Notes to Pages 253–255 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153.

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Ibid., entry 6 (March 7). Ibid., entry 8 (March 21). Ibid., entry 9 (March 23). For a reference to other early modern Lutherans who did the same, see Brown, Singing the Gospel, p. 118. Oelhafen, Piae Meditationes, entry 15 (March 25). Ibid., entry 24 (May 1). Ibid. Ibid., entry 32 (May 25). For parallels in other sources, see Carrdus, “‘Thränen-Tüchlein,’” pp. 12–14; Carrdus, “Consolatory Dialogue,” pp. 420–421; and Bepler, “Practicing Piety,” p. 23.

154. AMICO, lieber schatz, wo bist hinkommen? hatt dich der lieber Gott zu sich genommen? oder bistu mir sonsten gentzlich entnommen? Am hochzeit Tag, sag, oder clag, unndt hilf mir geschwindet ab meines hertzen kummer.

Piae Meditationes, entry 32 (May 25), verse 1. 155. Ibid., verses 8, 9. 156. diß liedt hab ich, auß Trew unndt lieb gesungen: am Vrbanz Tag, da Amico war verschlungen, welchs bewainte Ich, mitt mir hinderlaßen Jungen, doch will ich leb sie stetigs schweb, mir, in meinem hertzen, unndt auf meiner zungen.”

Ibid., entry 32 (May 25). 157. Ibid., entry 33 (May 26). 158. “Damit deiner vätterlichen herzens zunaigung, (So, under den Creutz, oftermals verborgen) mein kindtlichen vertrawen correspondiren, unndt mit deiner crafft, macht unndt sterckhe, gewapnet, alß ein christlicher Ritter, fest bestehn.” Ibid., entry 33 (May 26). 159. “Verzeihe mir meine Sunde, unndt verwirfe mich ja nicht, umb meines geringen glaubens willen . . . unndt hilf, das ich alle meine zuversicht setze, auf dich

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Notes to Pages 255–258

allein, meinen herrn unndt meins Gott: mit festem glauben, an dich halte, ob Ich dich woll nicht sihe: von hertzen dich liebe, ob Ich dich woll nicht fühle”. Ibid., entry 72 (December 21). 160. See note 140 above. 161. Oelhafen, Piae Meditationes, entry 62 (October 28). 162. Ibid., entry 75 (December 31), verse 13. As was typical in early modern Germany, Oelhafen did not remain a widower for long. He remarried one year after Anna Maria’s death. For details, see Rittgers, “Grief and Consolation.” 163. On Saubert, see ADB 30: 413–415; and van Dülmen, Orthodoxie und Kirchenreform. Saubert was serving as a preacher and professor of theology in Altdorf at the time of Anna Maria’s death. Saubert did write a work of devotion in 1619 that could have influenced Oelhafen—Schola crucis oder christliche kreutzschule—but it does not appear to be extant. See appendix in van Dülmen. 164. The inscription reads in full: Tuta via est alibi, per AMICI fallere nomen; Hic sed AMICO etiam fidere, tuta via est. O’ raras Fidei rarae tabulas! In AMICO HOC OLHAFIUS qvis sit, discimus, et qvid amet.

Oelhafen, Piae Meditationes, first page.

c onc lusion 1. Resch has similarly emphasized the centrality of justification by faith in the evangelical ars moriendi. See Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 213. 2. AOG 5:100.14–19. Johannes Eck took strong exception to this accusation in his reply to the 1533 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance. See Eck, Christenliche vnderricht, fols. 39r–41v. Eck argues that Job was a model of patience throughout his suffering and, drawing on Gregory the Great’s spiritual exegesis in the Moralia, maintains that in cursing his birth, Job was actually cursing the “day” of human mortality and sin as he looked forward to the eternal “day” of salvation. 3. Weller clearly says that while Job provides consolation for the average Christian who struggles to bear his cross patiently, Job sinned by pressing his case too strongly against God. Weller writes, “Doch soll man die Su[e]nde nicht gering achten/ vnd in wind schlagen/ als were es ein schlecht ding/ daß Hiob so grewlich wider Gott tobet/ vnd mit seinem Scho[e]pffer sich ins Recht zu legen vnterstehet/ Warumb er jhn habe geschaffen.” Weller, Das Buch Hiob, fols. Piiii r–v. For a similar treatment of Psalms of lament, see Weller’s Antidotvm, fols. C v–Cii r.

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4. Weller, Antidotvm, fol. Liiii r. 5. Bullinger, Bericht der Krancken, fol. Aiiii r. On this work, see Mühling, “Welcher Tod sterben wir?” 6. Calvin, Predigten H. Iohannis Calvini vber des buch Job, fol. 1. On Calvin’s Job sermons, see Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? 7. Calvin, Predigten H. Iohannis Calvini vber des buch Job, fol. 3. On the Protestant Reformers’ treatment of Job, see Clines, “Job and the Spirituality.” 8. See chapter 5, note 58, above. 9. See Huberinus, Vom Christlichen Ritter, fol. S r; Melanchthon, Ein Trostschrift, fol. Bii v; Vogel, Trost, fols. 3–5; and Vermigli, Heilige vnd trostliche, fol. 15 v. 10. The Nuremberg pastor and superintendent Moritz Heling complains in his Klag vnd Trostschrifft that in his day, most Christians say that death happens by chance and not by divine decree. See Vorrede, fols. ii v–iii r. 11. See Luther, Sermon vom Leiden und Kreuz, WA 32: 34.10–12 (LW 51: 203); Dietrich, Der XCI. Psalm, fol. Gvi v; and Jud, Des lydens Jesu Cristi, fol. LI v. 12. Bayer, “Toward a Theology of Lament,” p. 211. 13. Johnson, She Who Is, p. 253. 14. For example, see Moltmann, The Crucified God. 15. On this point, see Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes, p. 225. 16. Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 262–263, 652. 17. For discussions of the secularization thesis, see Bruce, Religion and Modernization; Bruce, Religion in the Modern World; and Berger, The Desecularization of the World. 18. The fact that there is a fair bit of interest in the theme of lament in some circles today is no doubt partly attributable to the widespread belief in an infinitely compassionate and approachable God who is primarily interested in human thriving. But the term “lament” actually seems to lose its meaning when paired with such a God, for how could this deity ever allow a situation in which a human being would feel compelled to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 19. Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 649. 20. For an example of such an interpretation of premodern Christian consolation literature, see Mayhew, “Godly Beds of Pain.” Mayhew examines how rhetorical strategies employed by early modern English consolers could help sufferers cope with pain. She is interested in how cognition can change pain and how effective rhetoric can change cognition; that is, her study is about how language can affect what a suffering body thinks it feels. I do not in any way object to such analysis, but I do take issue with its implicit assumption that the solace conveyed through such rhetoric was and only could have been human. For an example of a leading historian who leaves open the possibility of supernatural activity in early modern religiosity while avoiding the errors of providentialism, see Eire, “The Good, the Bad, and the Airborne,” especially p. 323. I wish to

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emphasize that I do not see Christian belief as the only safeguard against reductionist historical interpretation. Such openness to the unknown or simply to the irreducible complexity of human experience is the mark of all good historical writing, and historians of many different belief systems are able to produce such work. 21. My thinking here has been influenced by my reading of literature that seeks to relate Christian faith to the modern historian’s craft. The most important contributions to this literature for my own development have been the following: Butterfield, Christianity and History; McIntire, God, History, and Historians, especially the essays by Dawson, Latourette, Niebuhr, Butterfield, Lewis, and Harbison; Marsden, “Christian Advocacy”; Marsden, “What Difference Might Christian Perspectives Make?”; and the essays by Mark Noll cited in the Introduction, note 36.

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Person Index

Abraham, 104, 137 Adam, sin of, 37, 294n71, 350n19 Adam and Eve expulsion from Eden, 8 in Gerson’s Consolation of Theology, 60 Agricola, Johannes, 153 Alcuin, 48, 56 Alfeld, Hans, 233–34 Alfred the Great, 48 Althaus, Paul, 373n24 Ambrose of Milan, 38 On the Belief in the Resurrection, 44 On the Death of Satyrus, 41–44, 46 on sin of Adam, 294n71 as source in evangelical consolation literature, 219 Amerbach, Bonifacius, 242 Andreae, Jacob, 360n49 Braunschweig and Lüneburg Church Ordinance, 174 Passion Booklet, 195 Angelus de Clavasio, 28. See also Angelo’s Summa; Summa angelica Anselm of Canterbury Admonition of Anselm, 22 ars moriendi and, 22

on original sin, 284n92 prayers of, 66 as source for evangelical consolation literature, 219 Why God Became Human, 70 Antony (saint), 77 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas Aristotle, 38 Armbruster, Sir Felix, 237 Arndt, Johann on angels, 367n116 influence on J.C. Oelhafen, 256 mysticism and, 221, 222, 224 Auer, Albert on medieval consolation literature, 54, 57, 296n123 on mysticism, 64–65 Auerbach, Johannes (Guide for Curates), 16, 28 Augustine, 38 on Christ’s tears for Lazarus, 46 City of God, 147 Luther influenced by, 97 as source for evangelical consolation literature, 219 Zwingli on, 127 Aurifaber, Johannes, 181, 183, 355n74 Axmacher, Elke, 222, 225

444

Person Index

Bayer, Oswald, 259–60 Behaim, Friedrich, 243 Behaim, Magdalena, 240–41, 243–44, 383n80 Behaim, Michael, 65 letters of, 235–36, 242–43 Benedict (saint), 77 Bernard of Clairvaux image of divine kiss, 375n41 Luther influenced by, 97, 98, 311n32, 324n20, 325n26, 328n65, 335n49 mysticism of, 74 Passion piety and, 66 as source of evangelical consolation literature, 219–20, 222, 223, 225, 371n6 Spengler influenced by, 150 Berthold, Brother, 177 Summa of Canon Law, 28–30, 51 Bidembach, Felix, 190 Biel, Gabriel, 23 Bock, Michael, 193, 234 Boethius, 253 The Consolation of Philosophy, 47–49, 52, 53, 58 influence of Cicero on, 38 influence on Luther, 96 influence on Oelhafen, 253 Bonaventure, 98 Tree of Life, 66–68 Boyle, Leonard on Johannes von Freiburg’s Summa for Confessors, 27 on Lateran IV, 13, 15, 279n20 Brenz, Johannes Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance and, 176–81 catechisms by, 226 The Cause of Fortune and Misfortune, 147–48, 341n126 Church Ordinance for Schwäbisch Hall and, 174

An Excerpt from the 8th Chapter of S. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans Dealing with Suffering and Divine Election, 142–43 How the Wood of the Cross Should be Hewn and Most Easily Taken Hold Of, 151 on saints, 144 Briesmann, Johannes, 338n98 A Few Consoling Sayings for Despondent and Weak Consciences, 140–41, 145–46, 150 Scripture and, 194 Brown, Christopher, 249 Bucer, Martin, 136, 237 Bugenhagen, Johannes, 136 Concerning the Current Preparations for War, 186 History of the Passion of Christ, 234 Instruction for Those Who Lie in Sicknesses and the Danger of Death, 162 Bullinger, Heinrich, 210–11 Instruction for the Sick, 211, 258 Burnett, Amy Nelson, xi, 275n7, 349n10, 351n24, 367n112, 368n129, 382n55, 386n126 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 77, 306n100, 306n102, 306n104, 306n108 Calvin, John, 86, 258 Capito, Wolfgang, 136 Castelberger, Andreas, 159 Charles V (emperor), 130 Chemnitz, Martin, 174 Christ. See also Passion of Christ bitter, 157–58, 345n182, 346n184 blood relics of, 18, 19 as bridegroom in evangelical devotional and consolation literature, 82, 154, 248

Person Index change in image from Pantokrator to Man of Sorrows in Middle Ages, 69 in Christian’s suffering, 24, 152, 177, 205–6, 352n53 death of, 25, 42, 70, 71, 168 delayed Second Coming on millennial anniversary of death and influence on medieval piety, 71 in Garden of Gethsemane, 208, 211, 359n38 imitation of in Catholic sources, 47, 66, 68, 70, 115, 326n33 in Luther, 115, 131, 326n33 in Radical Reformation sources, 156 Lord’s Supper and, 70, 152, 160 retributive justice and, 9 suffering humanity of in Jud’s theology, 210–12 in late medieval Catholic sources, 69 in Luther’s theology, 116–17 in Zwingli’s theology, 127, 331n13 tears for Lazarus, 46 two criminals crucified with, 182 union with in Catholic sources, 68, 77–78, 82 in Protestant sources, 99, 120, 151–52, 199, 221, 224–25, 342n144, 374nn35–36 wounds of, 68, 71, 82, 207 Christian God. See God Chrysippus, Stoicism of, 291n13 Chrysostom, 219 Chytraeus, David, 228 Cicero Consolatio, 38 Stoicism and, 39 Tusculan Disputations, 38–40, 52 Cleanthes, Stoicism of, 291n13

445

Clement VI (pope) Dambach and, 55 Unigenitus and, 26 Cohen, Esther on Passion piety, 69, 71 on philopassianism, 64 Columbinus, Peter, 215 Corvinus, Anton, 180–81, 234 Cousins, Ewert, 65–66, 68 Crantor of Soli, 38, 40 Crucinger, Caspar, 167–69, 350n19 Cullmann, Leonhard, 236 Cyprian of Carthage, 38, 123, 258 On Mortality, 42–46 Dambach, Johannes von, 187, 258–59 Clement VI and, 55 Consolation of Theology, 55–57, 61, 298n160 mysticism and, 63 Dante, 48 Delumeau, Jean Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 32–33, 289n142 on grave-digger effect, 261 Dietrich, Veit How Christians Should Console Themselves during Times of Persecution, 192 influence on Nuremberg lay piety, 236 Liturgy Booklet for Pastors in the Countryside, 172–74 Luther and, 172 on plague, 209, 214–15, 217 Dietschi, Anna, 236, 382n55 Dionysius (Pseudo-), 95, 98 Dixon, C. Scott, xi, 276n7, 277nn24–25, 348n10, 372n9, 378n74 Duke of Burgundy, 57 Dürer, Albrecht, 128, 334n42 Dysmas (saint), 203–5, 365n91

446

Person Index

Ebner, Margaret, 63, 72 on bodily suffering, 203 Revelations, 73, 138, 306n106 stigmata and, 77, 306n100 Eck, Johannes on Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance, 390n2 Spengler and, 129–30 Eckhart, Meister, 55, 63, 72 Book of Divine Consolation, 74–75 circle around, 64–65 Eder, Georg, 376n47 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 186, 188, 299n165 Enchiridion militis christiani, 332n14, 360n41 Zwingli on, 127, 332n14 Eve. See Adam and Eve Fischer, Christoff, 233–34 (see also Vischer, Christoph) Flacius, Matthias Catalogue of Witnesses to the Truth, 220 Exhortation to Patience and Belief in God, 201, 220 Spiritual Consolation for This Dejected Church of Christ in Magdeburg, 192 Francis of Assisi (saint) asceticism of, 305n100 Passion piety and, 66 stigmata and, 77 Franck, Caspar, 239 Frederick the Wise, 159 Frell, Georg, 241, 246 Friedrich III, 170 Frymire, John, 278n33, 281n59, 342n138, 348n7, 354n69, 356n5, 357n10, 380n31, 381n35 Fulton, Rachel, 71

Garcaeus, Johannes, 209 Geiler, Johannes, von Kaysersberg, 23 Geizkofler, Lucas, 246–49, 251, 386n124 George of Saxony (duke), 160 Georg of Brandenburg, Markgraf (ruler of Ansbach and Kulmbach), 343n151 Gerard of Liege, 53–55, 79–80, 296n123 Gerhard, Johann, 221, 224 Gerson, Jean, 36 Concerning the Art of Dying, 23 Consolation of Theology, 55, 57–61, 297n147, 297n153, 297n155, 298n158, 298n160 Luther influenced by, 58, 97, 297n147 mysticism and, 64 on Pastoral Rule, 49 as source for evangelical consolation literature, 219 on Ten Commandments, 20, 23 Work in Three Parts, 20, 22–23, 284n87 Girlich, Martin, 189–90, 357n19 Glaser, Peter The Christian Teaching of Tauler, 220 Cross-Booklet, 191, 215 God alien work of, in Luther and early evangelical consolation literature, 103, 111, 134, 318n156 Christian view of, 46–47 covenant (pactum) with human beings in nominalist soteriology, 92 goodness of, 102, 118, 122, 170, 177–79, 184, 353n54, 353n58 hiddenness of, 96, 102, 112, 117, 118, 119, 135, 139, 186, 189, 196, 255 honor of, 70, 214, 246, 287n114, 369n142 intermediaries between humans and, 230

Person Index as loving father in suffering in early Christian and pagan consolation literature, 45 in evangelical burgher piety, 238 in Luther, 102 mysticism and union with, 64, 74–75, 99, 305n85 protest against, 258 sovereignty of, 127, 169, 177, 215, 242, 258–59, 262, 379n15 Goering, Joseph on penance, 285n96 on social learning in the training of clergymen, 34 Goltwurm, Caspar, 369n146 Gordon, Bruce, 198, 208, 212, 367n102, 367n105, 367n120, 368n127 Grebel, Conrad, 155–59 on false forbearance, 156, 160 letters of, 155–57, 159 Gregory I (pope), 13, 177 on bodily affliction, 50 Moralia, 51, 390n2 Pastoral Rule, 36, 49–53, 301n21 Gregory, Brad, 309n4, 344n168 Gregory Nazianzen, 49 Gregory the Great. See Gregory I Grynaeus, Simon, 209 Guido of Monte Rochen, 16, 28, 36, 279n24, 282n65 Habermann, Johannes Prayer-Booklet, 186, 234 sources for, 220 Haller, Joachim, 242–43 Hamm, Berndt, xi on divine mercy in late medieval piety-theology, 23, 283n85, 315n106 on the early Luther’s concept of faith, 88, 310n13

447

on Frömmigkeitstheologie, 6 on the importance of transformation of life in Luther’s theology, 92, 330 on Luther’s early theology of grace, 310n14 on mysticism and Luther, 317n127, 317n129, 317n132 on normative centering, 301n18, 371n157 on Passion piety, 65, 301n18 on the reformational character of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, 319n165, 320n166 on the relationship between late medieval and Reformation theology, 322n200 on Staupitz and Luther, 315n105, 327n50 on Staupitz and Spengler, 334n41, 335n48 on Tauler and Luther, 98 on Zwingli’s theology, 331n10, 332n14 Hammond, Mitchell Lewis, 384n100 Harsdörffer, Anna Maria, 250–56. See also Oelhafen, Johannes Heinrich, Otto (Lutheran ruler), 170 Heinrichs, Erik A., 384n100 Heling, Moritz, 391n10 Heliodorus and death of Nepotianus, 43, 46 Herolt, Johann, 32 Hesshusen, Tilman, 234 Heyden, Sebaldus, 342n134 How One Should Console Himself in All Manner of Necessity, 143–44 influence of, 236 on union with Christ, 343n144 Hildegard of Bingen, 220 Hostiensis, 28

448

Person Index

Huberinus, Caspar Concerning the Christian Knight, 191 Concerning the Wrath and Goodness of God, 151 How One Should Console and Speak to a Dying Person, 139–40, 142, 147, 154, 161, 338n92 on internal suffering, 140, 192 postils by, 186, 201 on saints, 144–45 A Short Excerpt of the Holy Scripture, 140, 144–46 Hut, Hans, 344n167 Ignatius Loyola, 302n31 Ignatius of Antioch, 294n72 Imhoff, Sebastian, 242 Innocent III (pope), 13, 32, 279n5 Innocent IV (pope), 25 Isidore of Seville, 258 influences on, 38 Synonyma, 51–53 Jean the Celestine, 58 Jerome, 38 on Heliodorus and death of Nepotianus, 43, 46 influence of, 129 as source for evangelical consolation literature, 219 Jesus. See Christ Johannes von Freiburg, 27–29, 133, 286n110 Johannes von Staupitz, 20, 32, 136 Luther and, 97–98, 117, 325n26, 327n50, 335n51 Nuremberg sermon by, 81 Schütz Zell and, 136 Spengler and, 132–34, 334n41, 334n43 Johnson, Elizabeth, 260–61 John XXI (pope), 286n110 Jonas, Justus, 167–69, 350n19

Jordan of Quedlinburg, 68 Jud, Leo, 210–12 Jussen, Bernhard, 366n92 Kantz, Caspar on Christ in Garden of Gethsemane, 359n38 How One Should Exhort, Console, and Commend to God Sick and Dying People, 196, 234 Karant-Nunn, Susan on anticlericalism and confessionalization, 354n64 on clergy training, 349n10 on emotions in the Reformation, 366n92, 378n4 on human agency in Lutheran Passion sermons, 363n61 The Reformation of Feeling, 249, 387n128 on superstition, 379n17 on Trost, 8 Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von, 155, 159–61, 346n190 on Gelassenheit, 160 mysticism and, 160 Kaufmann, Thomas on clergy training, 349n10 on the importance of Anfechtungen in the training of Lutheran pastors in universities, 377n68 on Lutheran confessional culture, 7 on Luther’s importance in Lutheran confessional culture, 309n7 Keller, Michael, 152, 161 Kieckhefer, Richard, 75 Koch, Ernst, 374n34 Koch, Traugott, 222 Kolb, Robert, xi on the absence of the theology of the cross in early modern Lutheran theology, 337n90

Person Index on human agency in Lutheran theology, 198–99 on Luther and theodicy, 328n58 on martyrdom in Lutheran sources, 344n168 on Wittenberg circle, 198–99, 363n65 Körber, Otto, 195 A Consoling Instruction: How Pregnant Women Should Console Themselves before and during Birth and How They Should Commend Themselves and Their Little Children to the Loving God through Christ, 189, 357n19 Koslofsky, Craig, 366n92 Kress, Margaretha, 81–82, 138, 308n135 Kreutzberg, Caspar, 234 Kymaeus, Johannes, 197–98, 201 Langepeter, Johann, 376n47 Leppin, Volker, 317n125, 317n129, 323n201, 346n189, 364n82, 369n145 on the importance of Gerson for Luther, 315n110 on Luther and mysticism, 317n129 on Tauler’s influence on Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, 319n165 Lienhard, Eric, 117 Linck, Wenzeslaus How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Suffering, 141, 154, 161 How One May Console the Sick Christianly through the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Articles of the Faith, Together with the Use of the Sacrament, Upon Which Christianity Itself Stands, 162 influence of, 236 on union with Christ, 342n144

449

Lindemann, Mary, 4, 245 Lombard, Peter, 177 Four Books of Sentences, 53, 70 Lossius, Lucas, 226 Lucas Cranach the Elder Crucifixion of Christ, 204–5, 204f, 365n91 The Crucifixion, 204–5, 205f, 365n91 Ludolf of Saxony, 68, 302n31 Luther, Martin. See also Dictata super Psalterium on alien righteousness, 86, 96–97, 99, 109, 111 Anfechtungen and, 93, 98–99, 139, 228, 310n14, 313n62, 316n112 artistic depictions of, 207 Augustine’s influences on, 97 as Augustinian monk, 87, 88, 310n14 Babylonian Captivity, 325n24, 329n80 on baptism, 114, 325n24 Bernard’s influence on, 97, 98, 311n32, 324n20, 325n26, 328n65, 335n49 break with penitential theology, 104–8 care of souls and, 113 Christology of, 116–17, 127, 211 on cross relics, 106–7, 314n82, 321nn181–82 on devil, 122 at Diet of Worms, 159, 209 Dietrich and, 172 Disputation against Scholastic Theology, 102–3 on divine will, 123–24 evangelical movement influenced by, 139–42, 337n90 excommunication of, 115, 129, 159, 333n26 Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses, 108, 112

450

Person Index

Luther, Martin (continued) on food, drink and company of others, 122, 330n83 The Freedom of the Christian, 120, 248, 256 German Theology and, 98–99, 159 Gerson’s influence on, 58, 97, 297n147 on grace, 91, 93, 312n43, 312n46, 313n52, 330n92 Hamm on, 98, 317n129, 317n132 on healing, 121, 329n80, 364n77 Heidelberg Disputation, 112–15, 117, 323n10, 324n18 House-postil, 234 on human passivity, 109, 113 on humilitas fidei, 90–92, 94, 109–10, 311n35, 312n43, 313n52 humility theology and, 81, 97, 115–16, 133, 326n36 on indulgences, 94, 104–9, 314n82, 319n165, 319nn162–63 influences on, 125, 330n1 For the Investigating of Truth and the Consoling of Fearful Consciences, 107, 192 on justification by faith, 84, 90–91 Kolb on, 328n58 Lectures on Hebrews, 102–4, 106–7, 109 Lectures on Romans, 95–97, 109 A Meditation on Christ’s Passion, 113 mysticism and, 78, 98–99, 108, 139, 223, 317n129, 317n132, 327n52 on via negativa, 95–96 on negative theology, 95, 98, 100 Ninety-Five Theses, 104, 105, 106, 129, 243, 319n163 on the non-salvific nature of suffering, 83, 105–6, 109–10 Operationes in Psalmos, 115–18, 123, 211 Passion of Christ and, 112, 113–15

pastoral theology influenced by, 85–86, 309n5 on predestination, 97 Protestant Reformation and, 84–86 on purgatory, 105, 108, 320n166 on purification of Christians, 102, 108, 123 radicals and, 155–61 on saints, 107, 321n183 on salvation, 86–93, 97, 108–9, 310n14, 312n50 on satisfaction, 108, 322n191 on self-accusation, 90–91, 106, 311n32 A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace, 105–6, 131 Sermons on First Peter, 123 The Seven Penitential Psalms, 101–2 on soteriology of via moderna, 92, 97, 312n46, 312n50 as source for later evangelical consolation literature, 219 Spengler and, 128–34, 237, 333n26, 335n49 Staupitz and, 97–98, 117, 325n26, 327n50, 335n51 on suffering, 84–124 Table Talk, 172, 202 Tauler and, 98–99, 108, 220, 315nn108–9, 316n112, 319n165 on theology of the cross, 5, 111–24, 337n90 Treatise on Good Works, 118–19, 137, 140 on tribulations, 88, 90, 92–95, 104–10 tripartite formula for theological study, 228 Zwingli compared to, 86, 125–28, 331n13, 332n18 Major, Georg Consolation-Sermon, 208–9 Consolation Writing, 213–14

Person Index Marbach, Johannes influence of, 237 On Miracles and Wondrous Signs, 200–201 Marquard of Lindau, 32 The Book of the Ten Commandments, 64 Martin von Amberg, 281n54 Mathesius, Johannes The Consoling De Profundis, 201–2, 239–40 funeral sermons of, 214, 238 illness and recovery of, 238–40 letter to Franck, 239 on righteousness, 362n57 Maurice (Byzantine emperor), 213–14 Mayhew, Jenny, 391n20 McClure, George W., 61, 298n164 McGinn, Bernard on mysticism, 63, 74, 304n80 on Suso, 300n3 McGrath, Alister on faith and humility in the young Luther, 311n35, 312n43 on the influence of via modern soteriology on Luther, 312n50, 313n52 on the role of faith in the theology of the cross, 118 McLaughlin, R. Emmet, 34–35, 290n170 Mechthild of Magdeburg, 63, 72, 138 Flowing Light of the Godhead, 73, 78, 83, 303n63, 306n106, 306n110 prophecies of, in evangelical sources, 220 Melanchthon, Philipp, 136, 329n80 Examination for Ordinands, 181–83, 226, 227–28, 355n74 on healing, 183 Instructions for the Visitors, 175–76 Loci communes, 226, 227, 234 on suffering, 181–83, 355n74, 363n62

451

Merback, Mitchell, 204, 365n91 Miller, Clyde Lee, 57–58 Moeller, Bernd, 71, 132 Moller, Martin education of, 227 The Great Mystery, 221, 224, 248, 374n33, 374n35, 375n41 influences on, 221, 223, 225, 251 Meditations of the Holy Fathers, 220–21 Moore, Cornelia Niekus, 234 Mowbray, Donald, 284n89 Muesel, Simon, 186 Müntzer, Thomas, 155, 157–60 on Apocalypse, 158 On Fictitious Faith, 157–58 mysticism and, 158–59, 345n178, 345n184, 346n185 Musculus, Andreas Concerning the Cross and Affliction: Instruction from the Holy Old Teachers and Martyrs, 218–19 Consolation Booklet, 234 The Golden Gem, 219 Pious and Select Formulas for Praying, 220 Prayer Booklet, 220, 234 Myconius, Friedrich How One Should Instruct the Simple and Especially the Sick in Christendom, 186 on Luther’s prayers for his recovery, 329n80 Myconius, Oswald, 236 Dietschi and, 236, 382n55 Neander, Michael, 220 Nepotianus, Heliodorus and death of, 43, 46 Nicholas of Cusa influence of, 16, 34, 36 sermons by, 19

452

Person Index

Nicholas V (pope), 19 Nicolai, Philipp, 221, 224, 375n41 Noll, Mark, 278n36, 392n21 Nützel, Kaspar as translator of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, 129 as writer of consolation letters, 243 Oakley, Francis, 69, 71 Oberman, Heiko on Luther and late medieval theology, 86 on Luther and mysticism, 99 Oelhafen, Anna Maria, 250–56 (see also Harsdörffer, Anna Maria) Oelhafen, Johannes, 249–56 “AMICO, beloved darling,” 250, 254 influence of Boethius on, 253 influence of Johann Arndt on, 256 influence of Johannes Saubert on, 256 Pious Meditations on the Most Sorrowful Bereavement, 249–56, 386n127, 387n137 remarriage of, 390n162 Opitz, Josua, 208 Osiander, Andreas Articles of Doctrine, 176–79, 353n58, 353n63 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance and, 176–81, 231–32, 258 on divine goodness in the midst of suffering, 177–79 on divine wrath, 176–77 influence of, 236 Plague Sermon, 178, 186 on suffering, 176–80 Otter, Jacob, 136 Otto, Henrik, 307n125, 317n129 Ozment, Steven on anxiety in laypeople, 245

on evangelical burgher letters, 381n47 on Luther and mysticism, 99 on prophylactic nature of religion, 240 on union with Christ, 99 Paul, Apostle, 45, 53, 112 Pauli, Simon, 186, 220 Paumgartner, Balthasar, 243–44, 383n80 Petrarch, 61 Petri, Friedrich, 234 Philipp of Hesse, 163 Pirckheimer, Willibald, 128 Pitiscus, Johannes, 188–89, 220 Plato, 38 Platter, Thomas, 236, 243 Plutarch, 38, 43 Polycarp (bishop of Smyrna), 294n72 Porta, Conrad, 190, 219 Pseudo-Augustine, 219, 220 Pseudo-Bonaventura, 66 Pseudo-Dionysius, 98 Raymond of Peñafort, 28 Rem, Lucas, 240 Resch, Claudia on evangelical church ordinances, 167, 350n14 importance of dissertation, 276n14 on justification by faith in evangelical consolation literature, 390n1 on lack of creativity of evangelical consolation literature, 358n31 Rhegius, Urbanus, 366n98 Letter of Consolation to All the Christians in Hildesheim Who Suffer Scorn and Persecution for the Sake of the Gospel, 154–55 Scripture and, 194

Person Index Soul-Medicine for the Healthy and the Sick in These Dangerous Times, 140, 145, 149, 161, 162, 234, 338n92 Roper, Lyndal, 207 Roseman, Konrad, 375n45 Sarcerius, Erasmus, 213, 357n11 The Book for Shepherds, 215 Cross-Booklet, 186, 188, 191, 215 Sastrow, Bartholomew, 241, 246 Saubert, Johannes, 256, 390n163 Scheler, Max, 3 Scheurl, Christoph, 128–29 Schorn-Schütte, Luise, 229, 275n6, 348n10, 375n45, 375n46, 376nn47–48, 376nn52–53, 377n62, 378nn73–74 Schreyer, Sebald, 286n112, 336n52 Schütz Zell, Katharina, 135–38 as church mother, 135 (See also church mother in subject index) evangelical sources of her thought, 136 influences on, 150, 237–38 late medieval female spirituality and, 137–38 on Lord’s Prayer, 237–38 maternal images in writings, 138, 237–38 ministry to Sir Felix Armbruster, 237–38 Schwenckfeld and, 136 Staupitz and, 136 on suffering, 135–38, 237–38 To the Suffering Christ-believing Women of the Community of Kentzingen, 136–38, 140, 237–38 Schwenckfeld, Caspar consolation writings, 136, 356n6 German Passional, 186, 357n8 influence on Schütz Zell, 136

453

Scribner, Robert, 203, 384n112 Scultetus, Mark, 234 Sehling, Emil, 348n5 Seld, Afra, 139 Selneccer, Nicolaus, 234 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 38 To Marcia on Consolation, 40–41 On Providence, 45, 49, 293n62, 294n70 Zwingli on, 127, 332n16 Soergel, Philip M., 370n156 Spalatin, George, 98 Spangenberg, Cyriakus, 229 Spangenberg, Johannes The Booklet of Comfort for the Sick, 193–94 catechisms by, 226 On the Christian Knight, 186, 193 A New Consolation Booklet for the Sick, 186 postils by, 208, 234 Spengler, Lazarus, 128–35 All Mankind Fell in Adam’s Fall, 253 Apology for Luther’s Teaching, 129–30, 132 A Consoling Christian Instruction and Medicine in All Adversities, 130–32, 134–35 on divine protection, 240 Eck and, 129–30 evangelical Stoicism of, 153 Georg of Brandenburg, Markgraf and, 343n151 How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Affliction and Adversity, and Where He Should Seek the Proper Help and Medicine for the Same, 135, 147, 341n126 influences on, 150 Luther and, 128–34, 237, 333n26, 335n49

454

Person Index

Spengler, Lazarus (continued) on plague, 246 Staupitz and, 132–34, 334n41, 334n43 on suffering as penance, 131–35 Stagel, Elsbeth, 307n121 Staupitz. See Johannes von Staupitz Steiger, Johann Anselm affectivity of Lutheran consolation literature, connection with Luther’s Christology, 211 on mysticism in Lutheran sources, 222 on spiritual self-care in Lutheran piety, 194, 247 on Zeller thesis, 221–22 Stephan von Landskron, 19–20 Stratner, Jacob, 170–72 Surgant, Johann Ulrich, 16, 21–22, 24 Suso, Henry on bodily suffering, 203 letter to Stagel, 307n121 Life of the Servant, 72, 73, 75–78, 303n56 Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, 63, 72, 137, 259, 303n56, 307n116 McGinn on, 300n3 Swanson, R. N. on pastoral care, 17, 18 on quality and training of clergy, 34

Teresa of Ávila, 203, 302n31 Tertullian of Carthage, 30 Thomas á Kempis, 20 Imitatio Christi, 302n31 De imitatione Christi, 304n72 Thomas Aquinas Concerning the Articles of Faith and the Sacraments of the Church, 16, 36 on extreme unction, 281n64 on fasting, 28, 287n114 on postbaptismal sin, 285n95 on suffering as a species of fasting, 28 Tiedeshoren, Hans, 242 Tucher, Linhart, 242

Tanneberg, Hieronymus, 190, 206–7, 208, 214 Tauler, Johannes, 55, 63, 73 on gotlidenden mensch, 75 influence of, 159, 160 Luther and, 98–99, 108, 220, 315nn108–9, 316n112, 319n165 Otto on, 307n125, 317n129 Sermons, 72, 74, 78–79 as source, 219, 220, 222 Taylor, Charles, 207, 261–62

Walther, Georg, 196, 234 Weinsberg, Herman von, 289n140 Weller, Hieronymus Antidote or Spiritual Medicine for Christians Who Have Affliction and Spiritual Distress, 186, 188, 217 Book of Job, 191–92, 216–17, 359n35, 390n3 Wentzen, Henning, 375n45 Wranovix, Matthew, 36, 307n125

Urban (saint), 280n42 Van Engen, John, 33 Vincentz, Wolfgang, 241, 243, 246 Virgin Mary calling on, 18, 23, 24 Passion piety and, 67–68, 71 rejection of, as saint, 235, 340n111 Vischer, Christoph, 186, 193 (see also Fischer, Christoff ) Vogel, Matthias, 188–89, 190, 191 Voit, Peter, 234 Von Moos, Peter, 53, 296n119

Person Index Zell, Matthias, 237 Zeller, Winfried, 221–23 Zwingli, Huldrych on Augustine, 127 on belief in gospel, 331n8 on Erasmus, 127, 332n14 influence of, 136, 236

letters of, 126 Luther compared to, 86, 125–28, 331n13, 332n18 Plague-song, 126 on Seneca, 127, 332n16 The Shepherd, 126 on suffering, 125–28 in Zurich, 125–28

455

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Scripture Index

Genesis 3:23–24, 8 21:18–21, 137 22:1–19, 137, 220 Exodus 33:23, 118 Numbers 12:10, 53 17:25, 43 22:21–41, 50 I Kings 6:7, 50 Nehemiah 9:31, 9 Job 9, 28, 37, 51, 52, 53, 55, 60, 62, 64, 79, 80, 121, 148, 178, 191, 216, 258, 289n136, 297n153, 359n34, 390nn2–3, 391nn6–7 42:3–6, 9 Psalms 1:5, 90 4:1, 93 22:1, 116, 117, 211, 327n43 31:17, 145 32:9, 124 33:19 (Vulgate), 54

34:8, 98 38:21, 100 44, 9 44:23, 258 50:15, 183 50:19, 43 51, 237 60:8, 87, 88 66:10, 9 88, 9 89, 9 89:49, 258 90:15 (Vulgate), 54 91, 153 118, 101 119: 11, 312n43 119:37, 213 119:71, 239 119:126, 258 130, 237, 239 130:3, 148 Proverbs 3:11–12, 9, 50, 247 23:14, 59 Ecclesiastes, 9 Song of Songs 2:19, 119, 137

458 Isaiah 28:21, 318 42:3, 252 49:15, 138 Lamentations 3:32–33, 119 Hosea 11, 225 Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 2:1, 60 38:9, 145 Matthew 5:3–6, 149 5:10–12, 180 8:1–13, 372n16 11:20, 252 12:20, 252 15:14, 14 16:19, 107 25:31–46, 152, 206, 350n14 26:38, 359n38 26:39, 137 27:46, 137, 141 Mark 9:24, 149 14:34, 359n38 Luke 2:36–38, 135 6:39, 14 13:4–5, 9 15:10, 89 22:43, 208 23:43, 195 John 1:29, 168 4:47–54, 201 5:1–15, 202 9:1–12, 9, 30, 51, 53, 177, 216, 333n28, 370n154 10:9, 117 11:35, 46

Scripture Index 14:6, 117 14:8, 117 14:18–19, 138 17:12, 19 23:32–43, 182 Acts 5:42, 9 9:4–5, 152, 206, 343n145 12:23, 53 14:21, 52 14:22, 105 Romans 1:20, 112, 323n8 6:4, 155 8:17, 311n24 8:18, 52 8:26–27, 143 8:28, 120, 168, 241 8:35, 168 8:39, 212 I Corinthians 1:28, 94 2:7–8, 96 2:9, 120 3:18, 58 10:13, 54, 106, 137, 189 11:32, 168 13:12, 11 15:53, 42 15:55, 47 II Corinthians 1:3–4, 94 1:5, 54 1:6–7, 24 4:17–18, 59 12:7–9, 45, 53 Galatians 2:19–20, 67 5:22, 181 Ephesians 2:8, 181 5:26–27, 154

Scripture Index Philippians, 38 1:29, 9 2:25–30, 46 Colossians 1:24, 366n98 I Thessalonians 4:13, 46 I Timothy 5:9–10, 135

II Timothy 2:11–12, 311n24 3:12, 60, 311n24 Hebrews 1:3, 102 11:8, 104 11:19, 137 12:4–11, 9, 28, 50, 176, 232, 311n24 Revelation 10:9, 377n64

459

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Subject Index

Abelard’s exemplarist theory of Atonement, 70 Abgeschiedenheit (detachment), 74 absolution. See also confession church ordinances and, 165, 193 as ingredient of sacrament of penance, 25, 27 Luther on, 122 Lutherans and Reformed Protestants on, 210 Admonition of Anselm (Anselm of Canterbury), 22 adversity. See also Anfechtungen; consolation; suffering; tribulations approaches to, 56, 61 evangelical church ordinances on, 166, 170, 176, 181, 355n74 sin relationship with, 37 alien righteousness, Luther’s concept of, 86, 96–97, 99, 109, 111 alien work of God, Luther’s concept of, 103, 111, 134, 318n156 All Mankind Fell in Adam’s Fall (Spengler), 253 alms as penance, 285n96 Anabaptists, 11, 156, 159, 344n167 ancient Christian consolation literature, 41–47

ancient pagan consolation literature, 38–41 Anfechtungen (spiritual assaults) external and internal in evangelical consolation literature, 191 Luther and, 93, 98–99, 139, 228, 310n14, 313n62, 316n112 misfortune as, 243 Angelo’s Summa (Angelus de Clavasio), 28. See also Summa angelica angels Johann Arndt on, 367n116 Protestant stories about, 215–16, 367n116 as replacement for saints in evangelical consolation literature, 208–10 Anselmian theory of Atonement, 70 anthropodicy, 213 anticlericalism confessionalization and, 354n64 resurgent in Late Reformation, 164 Antidote or Spiritual Medicine for Christians Who Have Affliction and Spiritual Distress (Weller), 186, 188, 217 anxiety causes of, among evangelical burghers, 244–45

462

Subject Index

anxiety (continued) of conscience in face of death, 116 from faith in evangelical theology, 121–22 Ozment on, 245 apatheia in ancient Stoicism, 39, 292n18 in evangelical burgher piety, 153, 244 in late medieval consolation literature, 299n169 Apocalypse fear of, among Protestants, 187, 215–17, 244, 369n146 Müntzer on, 158 Apology for Luther’s Teaching (Spengler), 129–30, 132 apprenticeship for clergy, 34, 80, 164, 227, 348n9 ars moriendi (art of dying) discussion of C. Resch’s treatment of, 276n14 emphasis on divine mercy and human passivity in, 109 influence on evangelical pastoral and consolation literature, 145, 170–71, 183, 194, 248 influence on Luther’s theology, 109 in later Middle Ages, 22–24 art bodily suffering and, in Cranach’s pre- and post-Reformation works, 203–5, 204f, 205f, 365nn90–91 faith as art or craft in evangelical sources, 134, 259 mysticism and, 63 Passion piety and, 69 Articles of Doctrine (Osiander), 176–79, 353n58, 353n63 art of arts (ars artium), 12, 35, 49, 227 asceticism in late medieval mysticism, 76–77, 305n97, 305n100

astrology as alternative to Christian means of healing, 19 among evangelical burgers, 244 atheism, absence in early modern period, 259 Atonement Abelard’s exemplarist theory of, 70 Anselmian theory of, 70 juridical-penal theory of, 261 late medieval view of, 302n42 Augsburg Confession, 224, 226 Lutheran Reformation after, 186–87 Augsburg Interim, 188, 192, 212, 217 autobiographies, 233, 235, 241, 246. See also ego-documents auto-hagiography, 72, 303n57 Babylonian Captivity (Luther), 325n24, 329n80 baptism evangelical consolation literature on, 144, 160, 343n144 Luther on, 114, 325n24 of trial and testing, 156 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and role in VD16 and VD17, 278n33 bent palm tree image in Luther’s writings and ancient pagan writings, 94, 313n64 Bible. See also Scripture and Scripture Index evangelical consolation literature and, 150–51 ministry to sick and dying and, 170, 171, 175 retributive justice in, 8–9 “bitter Christ” in Radical Reformation writings, 157–58, 345n182, 346n184 Black Death, 289n151. See also plague blood relics of Christ, 18, 19

Subject Index bodily affliction Gregory I on, 50 mysticism and, 77 bodily suffering Catholicism and, 203 (See also bodily affliction; Passion mysticism) in pre-Reformation and Reformation art, 203–5, 204f, 205f, 365nn90–91 in Protestant thought, 203–7 Suso on, 203 body, pleasures of, in Luther’s thought, 207 body and soul close relationship between, in Christian consolation literature, 5 relationship between, in late medieval penitential theology, 284n89 (See also Mowbray, Donald) Booklet for the Dying (Geiler), 23 The Booklet of Comfort for the Sick (Spangenberg, J.), 193–94 Book of Concord, 361n49 Book of Divine Consolation (Eckhart), 74–75 Book of Job (Weller), 191–92, 216–17, 258, 359n35, 390n3 books, clerical ownership of. See also libraries Catholic, 80 Protestant, 226–29 The Book for Shepherds (Sarcerius), 215 The Book of the Ten Commandments (Marquard), 64 Brandenburg Church Ordinance (1540), 170–72 Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Ordinance (1533) Brenz and, 176–81 Eck on, 390n2 importance of, 178 Osiander and, 176–81, 231–32, 258 treatment of suffering in, 176–80

463

Braunschweig and Lüneburg Church Ordinance (1569), 174 bridal imagery in evangelical devotional and consolation literature, 251, 255, 308n135 bridegroom Christ as, 82, 154, 248 hidden bridegroom image in evangelical devotional and consolation literature, 140, 149 Brothers of the Common Life, 35 burghers. See also specific individuals do-ut-des mentality of, 18 letters of, 62, 235–44 resourceful Stoicism of, 244–46, 249 as sources for studying early modern piety, 233 on suffering as penance, 133–34 as “true believers” in evangelical Christianity, 236–37, 240–44 Calenberg-Göttingen Synodal Constitutions (1544/45), 350n14 Calvinism, 170 care of souls. See also cura animarum; pastoral care in Cicero, 39 clerical apprentice system and, 227 emphasis on attention to personal suffering in Lutheran university treatment of, 228 in evangelical church ordinances, 165–68 in Gregory I’s Pastoral Rule, 49–51 Johann Anselm Steiger on Lutheran sources, 194 in late medieval pastoralia, 16–17 in Lateran IV, 13–15 Luther and, 113 mysticism and, 12, 64, 65 nuns and, 307n124

464

Subject Index

care of souls (continued) Protestant/Catholic comparison, 149–50, 175 role of body in Lutheran sources, 206 cataclysmic suffering, 5 Catalogue of Witnesses to the Truth (Flacius), 220 catechesis, 19, 227 catechisms in Basel, 351n24 by Brenz, 226 Heidelberg Catechism, 170, 308n131 importance in pastoral libraries, 164, 226, 375nn45–46, 376n47 by Kolde, 281n55 late medieval use of, 19–20 by Lossius, 226 Roman Catechism, 180, 354n72 by Schwenckfeld, 356n6, 357n8 as sources of evangelical consolation, 164 by Spangenberg, J., 226 by Stephan von Landskron, 19 Catholicism bodily suffering and, 203 celibate Catholic clergy, 229 evangelical movement compared to, 175 Lutheranism compared to, 199–200, 207, 230 pagan beliefs and, 166 persecution of evangelical Christians, 136–38, 188 Protestantism compared to, 7, 11, 83, 199, 232–33, 236, 257, 259, 378n4 training of Catholic compared to Protestant clergy, 376n53 Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire (Delumeau), 32–33, 289n142 Causae (reasons for suffering). See also suffering, causes or reasons for; suffering, explanations

tradition of offering numerous, 8, 37, 55, 93, 120, 126, 146, 210, 217, 246 The Cause of Fortune and Misfortune (Brenz), 147–48, 341n126 celibate Catholic clergy, 229 Celtic monks and the development of medieval penitential thought, 77 chastened realism, 278n36. See also Noll, Mark Christian consolation literature ancient, 41–47 evangelical clerical, 84–162, 185–229 evangelical lay, 125–38, 230–56 feminism on, 260–61 late medieval, 55–60 late medieval mystical, 63–83 medieval, 47–55 pagan consolation literature compared to, 42–47, 259, 294n72 Christianization, 259 evangelical movement as reChristianization and, 187, 217, 347n1 late medieval Catholic, 31, 33 The Christian Teaching of Tauler (Glaser), 220 Christology of Luther, 116–17, 211 of Zwingli, 127 Church, as term, xv church mother, 135. See also Schütz Zell, Katharina in Name Index Church Ordinance for Mecklenburg (1552), 181, 183, 355n74 Church Ordinance for Schwäbisch Hall (1543), 174 Church Ordinance of Duke Heinrich of Saxony (1539), 167–69, 350n19 church ordinances, 163–84. See also evangelical church ordinances absolution and, 165, 193 from Electoral Palatinate, 170

Subject Index as invention of Protestant Reformation, 165 as text for Protestant ordinations, 337 training of evangelical clergy and, 164–65, 171, 348nn9–10 weakness of, 187 City of God (Augustine), 147 clergy age of admission to holy orders in Catholic church, 34, 290n155 apprenticeship for Catholic and Protestant, 34, 80, 164, 227, 348n9 celibate Catholic, 229 centrality of consolation in Lutheran ministry of, 7–8 church ordinances and training of evangelical, 164–65, 171, 348nn9–10 doctrines of suffering, 3–4 lay expectations of pre-Reformation, 17–20 libraries of Catholic and Protestant, 80, 226, 375n45, 376n47 ministry to sick and dying among Catholic and Protestant, 22–24, 228–29 ordination examinations of Lutheran, 227, 377n59 social distance from parishioners, Lutheran, 229 as stipend holders, 227 training and books of Protestant, 226–29 training and quality of late medieval, 14, 32–36, 289n151, 290n161, 290nn169–70 training of Catholic compared to Protestant, 218, 226, 376n53 university-educated, 34–36, 165, 227–29, 290nn169–70, 349n10, 377n54 communicatio idiomatum (communication of attributes), 117

465

Concerning the Articles of Faith and the Sacraments of the Church (Thomas Aquinas), 16, 36 Concerning the Art of Dying (Gerson), 23 Concerning the Christian Knight (Huberinus), 191 Concerning the Cross and Affliction: Instruction from the Holy Old Teachers and Martyrs (Musculus), 218–19 “Concerning the Cross and Suffering” (church ordinance section), 175, 176–81 Concerning the Current Preparations for War (Bugenhagen), 186 Concerning the Twelve Benefits of Tribulation (Gerard of Liege), 53–55, 79–80, 296n123 Concerning the Wrath and Goodness of God (Huberinus), 151 “Concerning Tribulation” (church ordinance section), 175 confession (private). See also absolution evangelical church ordinances and, 169–71, 174–75 exclusion in Reformed Protestant churches, 170 exclusion in Reformed Protestant church ordinance, 170 importance in development of Lutheran lay spiritual self-care, 194 Karlstadt on, 159 Lateran IV on penance and, 15, 25, 27 Luther on, 122 penance and, 15, 24–32 plight of, in German Reformation, 330n85 private, 122, 159, 194 role in pre-Reformation verbal ministry of consolation, 24–32 voluntary in Basel, 170

466

Subject Index

confessionalization anticlericalism and, 354n64 consolation literature role in Lutheran, 216 discipline in process of, 363n61 evangelical church ordinances and, 164 reformation of suffering and, 7, 191, 257 of suffering, 191 thesis, 6–7 conscience death and anxiety of, 116 as focus of Lutheran pastoral care, 174–75, 191–93, 248 penance and, 27 Consolatio (Cicero), 38 consolation. See also Christian consolation literature; clergy; confession; confessionalization; consolation literature; cura animarum; evangelical consolation literature; extreme unction; self-consolation lay consolation and inward suffering, 191–94 Consolation Booklet (Fischer), 233–34 Consolation Booklet (Musculus), 234 Consolation Booklet (Tanneberg), 190, 206–7, 208, 214 Consolation Booklet (Walther), 196, 234 consolation literature, 37–62. See also Christian consolation literature; evangelical consolation literature ancient Christian, 41–47 ancient pagan, 38–41 Auer on, 54, 57, 296n123 Christian compared to pagan, 42–47, 259, 294n72 divine will in, 43, 48, 259 early, 125–62 late medieval, 55–60 medieval, 47–55 mysticism compared to, 63

purpose of, 81 role in Lutheran confessionalization, 216 The Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius), 47–49, 52, 53, 58, 96 Consolation of Theology (Dambach), 55–57, 61, 298n160 Consolation of Theology (Gerson), 55, 57–61, 297n147, 297n153, 297n155, 298n158, 298n160 Consolation- or Medicine-Book for Souls (Vogel), 188–89, 190, 191 Consolation-Sermon (Major), 208–9 Consolation Writing (Major), 213–14 Consolation Writing (Petri), 234 Consolation Writing (Vischer), 186, 193 A Consoling Christian Instruction and Medicine in All Adversities (Spengler), 130–32, 134–35 A Consoling Instruction: How Pregnant Women Should Console Themselves before and during Birth and How They Should Commend Themselves and Their Little Children to the Loving God through Christ (Körber), 189, 357n19 The Consoling De Profundis (Mathesius), 201–2, 239–40 contrition degrees of, 169 as ingredient of the sacrament of penance, 25 Council of Cologne, 36 Council of Constance, 57 Council of Mainz, 36 Council of Trent, 25, 32 criminals, two, crucified with Christ, 182. See also Dysmas (saint) in Name Index cross. See also theology of the cross “communion of the cross” (M. Moller), 224, 225

Subject Index cross relics, 106–7, 314n82, 321nn181–82 definition of, 143, 156, 161 theologian of the cross, 112 Cross- and Consolation Booklet (Pitiscus), 188–89, 220 cross bearing Corvinus on, 181 evangelical consolation literature on, 146, 154–56 Cross-Booklet (Glaser), 191, 215 Cross-Booklet (Sarcerius), 186, 188, 191, 215 cross relics, 106–7, 314n82, 321nn181–82 crucifix, extreme unction and, 21, 23, 71, 283n83 Crucifixion of Christ (Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1502), 204–5, 204f, 365n91 The Crucifixion (Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1538), 204–5, 205f, 365n91 culpa (debt of sin). See debt of sin cura animarum. See also care of souls; clergy; pastoral care consolation and, 12 influence on, 86 Lateran IV and, 13 Cyrenics, 291n13 daily suffering, 5 death, 5. See also ministry to sick and dying; mortality anxiety of conscience in face of, 116 of Christ, 25, 42, 70, 71, 168 disease and, 4, 303n52 dying for faith, 47, 156, 344n168 extreme unction and, 21–24, 71, 281n61, 281nn63–64 uncertainty of hour of, 170 debt of sin (culpa) definition of, 25 penalty or punishment for sin versus, 25–27, 70, 104, 284n92

467

devil fear of, 244 ferocity of, 170, 176 in Gerson’s Consolation of Theology, 60, 297n153 Luther on, 122 Osiander on, 176 suffering and, 196, 232 diaries, 233, 240. See also egodocuments Dictata super Psalterium (Luther), 87–94 Heidelberg Disputation compared to, 113, 324n18 Lectures on Romans compared to, 96–97 Luther’s soteriology after, 322n199 pot of Moab in, 88–90, 93–94, 142, 310nn16–17, 311n21 Diet of Augsburg, 129, 141 Diet of Speyer, Second, 209 Diet of Worms Charles V at, 130 Luther at, 159, 209 discipline moral, 164, 216, 231, 245 in process of confessionalization, 363n61 social, 164, 177, 371n157 Discourse on How to Begin the Study of Theology Correctly (Chytraeus), 228 diseases. See illness and diseases Disputation against Scholastic Theology (Luther), 102–3 divine absence comparison between medieval mysticism and Luther on, 327n52 (See also McGinn, Bernard) in Luther’s theology, 98 (See also Anfechtungen) in medieval mysticism, 78–79

468

Subject Index

divine agency emphasis in late medieval pietytheology, 23, 113, 283n84, 297n147, 315n106 (See also Hamm, Berndt) emphasis in Luther’s theology, 109, 112–13, 326n36 and human agency in late medieval penitential theology, 25 and human agency in late medieval soteriology, 83 and human agency in Protestant consolation literature, 199 divine favors, 17, 138, 213 divine goodness emphasis in accounts of suffering, Catholic, 31 emphasis in accounts of suffering, evangelical, 177–78 divine kiss. See also Bernard of Clairvaux in evangelical works of devotion and consolation, 225, 375n41 in the works of Mechthild of Magdeburg, 78 divine love, emphasis in evangelical works of consolation, 225 divine mercy. See also divine agency; divine love emphasis in late medieval pietytheology, 23, 283nn84–85, 315n106 (See also Hamm, Berndt) emphasis in Luther’s theology, 109 divine protection laypeople and, 240–41 mediation of, via Catholic rituals, 203 sacramentals and, 18 Spengler on, 240 divine punishment for sin. See also penalty or punishment for sin; poena human compared to, 104–5, 109 suffering as, 8–9, 29–30, 37, 52–53, 172–73, 212, 214–17, 260–62

divine will, 74–75, 96 conformity to, 75 in consolation literature, 43, 48, 259 Luther on, 123–24 submission to and love of, 79 divine wrath appeasing, 71 fear of, 90 Osiander on, 176–77 sin, suffering and, 214–17 do-ut-des mentality, 17–18, 183, 213, 240, 241 early evangelical consolation literature, 125–62 Early Modern/Reformation Studies, 4, 5. See also Reformation Studies ears as the Christian’s most important organ, 103, 206 eclectic evangelicalism, 136 ego-documents, 233, 235, 240, 242–46 Eichstätt church visitation, 36, 291n177 Electoral Palatinate, 170 emotions in ancient pagan consolation literature, 39 (See also apatheia) in evangelical consolation literature, 230–31 in late medieval passion spirituality, 66, 71, 366n92, 378n4 (See also Karant-Nunn, Susan; Virgin Mary) Enchiridion militis christiani (Erasmus), 332n14, 360n41 end times. See Apocalypse Epicureans, 291n13 epidemics, 303n51, 370n155 episcopal synods of Würzburg, Eichstätt, Augsburg (1452), 36 Eucharist. See also Lord’s Supper Christ’s presence in, 70 controversy of late 1520s, 117 eucharistic host as sacred object, 18

Subject Index restricted role in Reformed Protestant pastoral ministry, 170 role in Lutheran pastoral ministry, 122, 169–70 evangelical Christians, term, xv evangelical church ordinances, 163–84. See also specific authors and ordinances on adversity, 166, 170, 176, 181, 355n74 authors of, 164 confessionalization and, 164 confession and, 169–71, 174–75 families of, 164, 178, 347n3, 348n4 issues in, 163 on ministry to sick and dying, 166–75 pagan beliefs compared to, 165–66, 184 on pastoral care, 163–84 purpose of, 163–66, 168 re-Christianization and, 163, 164, 166, 171, 176, 184 Resch on, 167, 350n14 themes in, 169, 171 on understanding suffering, 175–83 evangelical consolation literature on baptism, 144, 160, 343n144 Bible and, 150–51 creativity of, 190, 358n31 on cross bearing, 146, 154–56 early, 125–62 later, 185–229 on pregnant women and childbirth, 189–90, 195, 357n19 radicals and, 155–61, 186 theology of the cross and, 134–35, 138–46, 337n90 evangelical movement, 84–86. See also evangelical church ordinances; evangelical consolation literature Catholicism compared to, 175 impacts of, 257

469

Luther’s influence on, 139–42, 337n90 slow progress in countryside, 232 Examination for Ordinands (Melanchthon), 181–83, 226, 227–28, 355n74 An Excerpt from the 8th Chapter of S. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans Dealing with Suffering and Divine Election (Brenz), 142–43 Exhortation to Patience and Belief in God (Flacius), 201, 220 exomologesis, 288n134 exorcisms, 18, 203 Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses (Luther), 108, 112 Exsurge Domine (papal bull), 129–30, 132, 159 extreme unction, 21–24 call for abolishment of, 356n82 crucifix and, 21, 23, 71, 283n83 death and, 21–24, 71, 281n61, 281nn63–64 forgiveness of sin and, 21–22, 281n60, 282n65 healing and, 21–24, 27, 282nn64–65, 286n106 pastoralia on, 20, 24 Protestant rejection of, 183, 329n80, 356n82 Thomas Aquinas on, 281n64 faith. See also justification by faith anxiety from, 121–22 as art or craft, 259 dying for, 47, 156, 344n168 implicit faith, 33 importance of suffering as testing of, in evangelical Christianity, 97, 102, 110, 118–21, 130–31, 149–53, 256, 328n67 in late medieval theology, 88 in Luther’s early theology, 88

470

Subject Index

“false forbearance” in Radical Reformation sources, 156, 160 families of evangelical church ordinances, 164, 178, 347n3, 348n4 family chronicles, 233, 241. See also ego-documents fasting, 26, 27–28, 285n96, 287n114 fate, 47, 48, 294n70 female compared to male mystics, 77, 306n100, 306n102, 306n104, 306n108 feminism, 260–61 A Few Consoling Sayings for Despondent and Weak Consciences (Briesmann), 140–41, 145–46, 150 First Commandment, treatment in late medieval catechisms, 19–20 flagella, five reasons to experience divine, 53 Flowing Light of the Godhead (Mechthild), 73, 78, 83, 303n63, 306n106, 306n110 folk religion, 18, 231, 378n2 fomes peccati (tinders of sin), 25 food, drink and company of others, positive role in evangelical consolation, 122, 330n83 forgiveness of sin. See also absolution; confession (private); penance extreme unction and, 21–22, 281n60, 282n65 views on, 131, 192 Formula of Concord, 360n49 For the Investigating of Truth and the Consoling of Fearful Consciences (Luther), 107, 192 Four Books of Sentences (Lombard), 53, 70 Fourth Lateran Council (Lateran IV, 1215), 13–16 Boyle on, 13, 15, 279n20 Canon 6 of, 14

Canon 10 of, 14 Canon 21 of, 15, 24, 35, 279n20 Canon 22 of, 27, 286n106 Canon 27 of, 13–14, 16 Canon 30 of, 14 on confession and penance, 15, 25, 27 cura animarum and, 13 Innocent III and, 13, 32, 279n5 reasons for, 13 on training of priests, 14, 34 Franciscans, 66–67 The Freedom of the Christian (Luther), 120, 248, 256 Friends of God, 63–64 Frömmigkeitstheologie (piety-theology) definition of, 6 impacts of, 262 sources of, 20 funeral sermons, 249 of Mathesius, 214, 238 Garden of Gethsemane, 208, 211, 359n38 Gelassenheit (releasement), 74–76, 160, 305n85 German Passional (Schwenckfeld), 186, 357n8 German Peasants’ War, 158, 160, 161 German Postil (Huberinus), 201 German Reformation Studies, 6 German Theology (Theologia Deutsch/ Germanica) (anonymous), 113, 160, 316n120 Luther and, 98–99, 159 as source for evangelical Christianity, 219, 220, 221 Germany, definition of, xv gladiator metaphor in ancient pagan consolation literature, 45 God-forsakenness, 79, 100, 108, 115–17, 141 The Golden Gem (Musculus), 219

Subject Index goodness of God, 102, 118, 122, 170, 177–79, 184, 353n54, 353n58 good works, 119 gospel of all creatures, 344n167 gotesvremedung (estrangement from God), 78 gotlidenden mensch, 75 grace. See also divine love; divine mercy; goodness of God Luther on, 91, 93, 312n43, 312n46, 313n52, 330n92 Great Schism, 57 The Great Mystery (Moller), 221, 224, 248, 374n33, 374n35, 375n41 grief, mitigation of, 39–41, 43, 46, 292n18 grunt (ground) in German mysticism, 74, 99 Guide for Curates (Auerbach), 16, 28 guilt, forgiveness of, 107, 109, 322nn187–88. See also debt of sin habitus theology, 88, 96 Handbook for Curates (Guido of Monte Rochen), 16, 28, 36 healing extreme unction and, 21–24, 27, 282nn64–65, 286n106 Luther on, 121, 329n80, 364n77 Melanchthon on, 183 miracles of, in evangelical sources, 202–5, 364n77, 364n85 penance and, 27, 285n97 prayers and, 202 sacred rites for, 18 saints and, 144 with superstition and magic, 18–20, 259, 286n106 health, spiritual and bodily, 172–75 heaven Dietrich on, 173–74 purification before entering, 25, 196

471

The Heavenly Street (Stephan von Landskron), 19–20 Heidelberg Catechism, 170 Heidelberg Disputation (Luther), 112–15, 117, 141, 142, 323n10, 324n18 hell, 195 Herzog August Bibliothek praise for collection and staff, xi–xii role in VD16 and VD17, 278n33 History of the Passion of Christ (Bugenhagen), 234 holy oil, 21, 183, 281n61. See also extreme unction honor of God, 70, 214, 246, 287n114, 369n142 hope, German proverb about futility of, 143 House-postil (Luther), 234 How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Affliction and Adversity, and Where He Should Seek the Proper Help and Medicine for the Same (Spengler), 135, 147, 341n126 How a Christian Person Should Console Himself in Suffering (Linck), 141, 154, 161 How Christians Should Console Themselves during Times of Persecution (Dietrich), 192 How One May Console the Sick Christianly through the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Articles of the Faith, Together with the Use of the Sacrament, Upon Which Christianity Itself Stands (Linck), 162 How One Should Console and Speak to a Dying Person (Huberinus), 139–40, 142, 147, 154, 161, 338n92 How One Should Console Himself in All Manner of Necessity (Heyden), 143–44

472

Subject Index

How One Should Exhort, Console, and Commend to God Sick and Dying People (Kantz), 196, 234 How One Should Instruct the Simple and Especially the Sick in Christendom (Myconius), 186 How the Wood of the Cross Should be Hewn and Most Easily Taken Hold Of (Brenz), 151 Hoya Church Ordinance (1581), 350n14 human agency in burgher piety, 245 in the face of suffering via lament, 262 Gordon on, in Zwinglian consolation literature, 198 Karant-Nunn on, in Lutheran Passion sermons, 363n61 Kolb on, 198–99 in late medieval penitential theology, 25 in late medieval soteriology, 83 in later evangelical consolation literature, 197–99 in Luther’s theology, 109, 112, 113 Wittenberg circle on, 198 human passivity in evangelical burgher piety, 244 in late medieval mysticism, 75, 98 in Luther, 99, 109, 113 humilitas fidei (humility of faith), 90–92, 94, 109–10, 311n35, 312n43, 313n52 humility theology, 81, 97, 115–16, 133, 326n36 hymnals, 164 hymns, 253 idolatry, 147, 156, 171, 177 illiteracy, 234–35 illness and diseases. See also epidemics; ministry to sick and dying; plague

death and, 4, 303n52 illness and recovery of Mathesius, 238–40 as punishment for sin, 172–74, 212–15, 217, 303n51 Imitatio Christi (Thomas á Kempis), 302n31 De imitatione Christi (Thomas á Kempis), 304n72 implicit faith, 33 indulgences Luther on, 94, 104–9, 314n82, 319n165, 319nn162–63 penance and, 26–27, 30, 285nn99–100 Instruction for the Sick (Bullinger), 211, 258 Instruction for Those Who Lie in Sicknesses and the Danger of Death (Bugenhagen), 162 Instructions for the Visitors (Melanchthon), 175–76 intellect (intellectus), 88 internal suffering, priority over external suffering in evangelical consolation literature, 140, 192 Job. See also Scripture Index Calvin’s sermons on, 258 suffering by, 9, 28, 51, 55, 62, 258, 390nn2–3 juridical-penal theory of Atonement, 261 justification by faith antinomianism caused by, 370n156 Corvinus on, 181 influence on evangelical view of suffering, 148, 168, 181 Luther on, 84, 90–91 Resch on, 390n1 Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog, 278n33 Kirchenordnungen, 163, 170. See also church ordinances

Subject Index knight image in evangelical consolation literature, 193, 360n41 lament exclusion of, in Western Christianity, 258–62 meaning of, 391n18 last rites, 21–23, 27. See also extreme unction late medieval consolation literature, 55–60 Lateran IV. See Fourth Lateran Council later evangelical consolation literature, 185–229 nontheological innovations and aspects of, 187–90 sources of, 218–25 Latin church, as term, xv laypeople divine protection and, 240–41 inward suffering and lay consolation, 191–94 lay suffering and solace, 230–56 libraries of, 234 Luther on role of, 84 ministry to sick and dying by, 171, 210, 282n70 as sources of historical enquiry, 233–35 lectio divina (holy reading), 66 Lectures on Hebrews (Luther), 102–4, 106–7, 109 Lectures on Romans (Luther), 95–97, 109 Leipzig Disputation, 129, 141, 153 Letter of Consolation to All the Christians in Hildesheim Who Suffer Scorn and Persecution for the Sake of the Gospel (Rhegius), 154–55 letters of Behaim, M., 235–36, 242–43 of burghers, 62, 235–44

473

of Geizkofler, 246–49, 386n124 of Grebel, 155–57, 159 of Haller, 242–43 of Imhoff, 242 of Kress, 81–82, 138, 308n135 of laypeople, 18 Mathesius’ to Franck, 239 of Nützel, 243 as sources, 233 Suso’s to Stagel, 307n121 of Tucher, 242 of Zwingli, 126 Leucorea, 6, 277n18 libraries. See also books, clerical ownership of of clergy, 226, 375n45, 376n47 databases, 278n33 of laypeople, 234 parish, 36, 80, 307n125 Life of Christ (Ludolf), 68, 302n31 Life of the Servant (Suso), 72, 73, 75–78, 303n56 Little Book of Eternal Wisdom (Suso), 63, 72, 79–80, 137, 259, 303n56, 307n116 Little Garden of Spices for Sick Souls (Bock), 193, 234 Liturgy Booklet for Pastors in the Countryside (Dietrich), 172–74 Livland Church Ordinance (1570), 350n14 Loci communes (Melanchthon), 226, 227, 234 Lord’s Prayer, 173, 237 Lord’s Supper. See also Eucharist; sacraments Christ’s presence in, 152, 160 Lutherans and Reformed Protestants on, 210 participation in, 122, 126 spiritual enjoyment of, 171

474

Subject Index

Lutheranism Catholicism compared to, 199–200, 207, 230 Reformed Protestantism compared to, 170, 210–11, 368n122 Lutheran Reformation angels in, 208 after Augsburg Confession, 186–87 explanations for suffering in, 216 Lutherans confessional culture, 7 Zwinglians compared to, 152, 208 Magdeburg, city of, 209, 212, 217 magic and superstition, 18–20, 259, 286n106 Manipulus curatorum (Guido of Monte Rochen), 279n24, 282n65 Manuale parrochialium sacerdotum. See Manual for Parish Priests Manual for Curates (Surgant), 16, 21–22, 24 Manual for Parish Priests (anonymous), 16 Manual for the Ministers of the Church (Bidembach), 190 marriage metaphor in evangelical clerical devotional works (Moller), 225 in evangelical lay devotional works (Geizkofler), 248 martyrs, Christian, 47 maternal images in evangelical lay devotional works, 138, 237–38 A Meditation on Christ’s Passion (Luther), 113 medicine, 4, 244, 384n100 medieval consolation literature, 47–55 late, 55–60 Meditations of the Holy Fathers (Moller), 220–21 Meditations on the Life of Christ (PseudoBonaventura), 66

midwives, 236, 249 ministry to sick and dying confession and Communion in, 21 evangelical church ordinances on, 166–75 expectations of clergy and, 228–29 by laypeople, 171, 210, 282n70 monks and, 171 use of Bible and, 170, 171, 175 visitation and, 350n14 miracles, 145, 183 Catholic accusations of absence among Protestants, 199–202 of consolation among Protestants, 200–202 of healing among Protestants, 202–5, 364n77, 364n85 in New Testament, 200, 201 Osiander on, 183 Protestant attitude toward, 199–203 saints and, 18 Wittenberg circle and, 201, 364n74 Miracles and the Protestant Imagination (Soergel), 370n156 miraculous wells among Lutherans, 202, 364n85 monks Benedictine, 71 Celtic, 77 as confessors, 15 Luther as Augustinian, 87, 88, 310n14 ministry to sick and dying forbidden among Lutherans, 171 moral discipline, 164, 216, 231, 245 Moralia (Gregory I), 51, 390n2 mortality, 5 consolation literature and, 38–44 mortification of flesh, 77 Mystical Grapevine (PseudoBonaventura), 66 mysticism, 63–83. See also Passion mysticism

Subject Index Althaus on, 373n24 art and, 63 Auer on, 64–65 Axmacher on, 222, 225 of Bernard of Clairvaux, 74 bodily affliction and, 77 Bynum on, 77, 306n100, 306n102, 306n104, 306n108 care of souls and, 12, 64, 65 consolation literature compared to, 63 Dambach and, 63 Gerson and, 64 of the ground, 74, 304n80 later evangelical consolation literature and, 219–25 Luther and, 78, 98–99, 108, 139, 223, 317n129, 317n132, 327n52 McGinn on, 63, 74, 304n80 Müntzer and, 158–59, 345n178, 345n184, 346n185 pain and, 64, 73, 77–78, 306n108 of properly ordered loves, 74 Resch on, 276n14 Schütz Zell and, 137–38 as source, 219–25 Steiger on, 222 union with God and, 64, 74–75, 99, 305n85 mystics, 63, 72. See also specific individuals female compared to male, 77, 306n100, 306n102, 306n104, 306n108 Necessary and Christian Instruction (Columbinus), 215 negative theology, 95, 98, 100 A New Consolation Booklet for the Sick (Spangenberg, J.), 186 Ninety-Five Theses (Luther), 104, 105, 106, 129, 243, 319n163

475

normative centering, 301n18, 371n157. See also Hamm, Berndt Nuremberg circle of humanists, 128–29, 132, 141 Oberammergau Passion Play, 203, 365n88 oil, holy. See holy oil Old Testament, 216. See also Scripture Index One May Instruct and Console a Woman Delivering a Child as Follows (Girlich), 189–90, 357n19 On Fictitious Faith (Müntzer), 157–58 On Grief (Crantor of Soli), 38, 40 On Miracles and Wondrous Signs (Marbach), 200–201 On Mortality (Cyprian), 42–46 On Providence (Seneca), 45, 49, 293n62, 294n70 On the Belief in the Resurrection (Ambrose), 44 On the Christian Knight (Spangenberg, J.), 186, 193 On the Death of Satyrus (Ambrose), 41–44, 46 On the Suffering of Christ (Jud), 211–12 Operationes in Psalmos (Luther), 115–18, 123, 211 oratio, meditatio, tentatio (prayer, meditation, temptation), 228 original sin, 8 Anselm on, 284n92 belief in, 299n169, 350n19 punishment for, 25 pagan beliefs Catholicism and, 166 evangelical church ordinances compared to, 165–66, 184 laws against pagan rites, 230 pagan origin of saints, 210

476

Subject Index

pagan consolation literature ancient, 38–41 Christian consolation literature compared to, 42–47, 259, 294n72 pain, mysticism and, 64, 73, 77–78, 306n108. See also Cohen, Esther; philopassianism papacy criticism of, 220 papal authority, 105, 111, 320n166 parish libraries, 36, 80, 307n125 Passion Booklet (Andreae), 195 Passion-Booklet (Kymaeus), 197–98, 201 Passion mysticism, 72–80. See also mysticism asceticism and, 76–77, 305n97, 305n100 purgatory and, 73, 304n72 Passion of Christ, 23, 65–71, 302n42. See also Christ; Passion mysticism; Passion piety Kress on, 81–82 Luther and, 112, 113–15 in Wittenberg and Zurich, 210–12 Passion of Christ (Jordan of Quedlinburg), 68 Passion piety, 65–71 art and, 69 Bernard and, 66 Cohen on, 69, 71 Francis of Assisi and, 66 Hamm on, 65, 301n18 Protestants and, 206–7 reasons for, 69 Virgin Mary and, 67–68, 71 pastoral care. See also care of souls; cura animarum evangelical church ordinances on, 163–84 expectations of, 12, 17–20 history of, 5–6 Swanson on, 17, 18

pastoral handbooks, 16–17, 24, 36, 190 pastoralia, 15–17, 280n32 definition of, 15, 279n20 on extreme unction, 20, 24 on penance, 20 Pastoral Instruction from Luther (Porta), 190, 219 pastoral revolution, 13–17, 32 Pastoral Rule (Gregory I), 36, 49–53, 301n21 pastoral theology impacts of, 9–10 Luther’s influence on, 85–86, 309n5 pastors. See clergy patience, suffering and, 61–62 patriarchalism, 164, 260 patristic sources, 218–19 Peace of Augsburg, 139 Peasants’ War, German, 158, 160, 161 penalty or punishment for sin. See also debt of sin; poena curative and satisfactory, 106 debt of sin versus, 25–27, 70, 104, 284n92 illness and diseases as, 172–74, 212–15, 217, 303n51 penance. See also confession absolution as ingredient of, 25, 27 confession and, 15, 24–32 conscience and, 27 contrition as ingredient of, 25 fasting as, 26, 27–28, 285n96, 287n114 four ingredients of, 25 Goering on, 285n96 healing and, 27, 285n97 indulgences and, 26–27, 30, 285nn99–100 Lateran IV on confession and, 15, 25, 27 pastoralia on, 20

Subject Index for postbaptismal sin, 25, 30, 53, 285n95 prayers as, 26, 285n96 Protestant rejection of, 106, 109–10, 179–80 purgatory and, 26, 31, 70, 195–99 self-denial or self-deprivation with, 26 self-imposed, 29 for sins, 15, 25–27, 31, 285nn96–97 suffering as, 24–25, 28–32, 133–34, 284n89, 289n140 three forms of, 26, 285n96 works of mercy as, 26, 27 works of satisfaction as, 26, 105, 285n95 penitential theology late medieval, 24–27 Luther’s break with, 104–8 Peripatetics, 291n13 Peycht Spigel der Sünder. See Sinner’s Mirror for Confession philopassianism, 64, 73. See also Cohen, Esther philosophical schools, 39, 291n13 Pietism, 379n4 piety-crisis thesis, 221–23 Pious and Select Formulas for Praying (Musculus), 220 Pious Meditations on the Most Sorrowful Bereavement (Oelhafen), 249–56, 386n127, 387n137 plague, 4. See also Black Death attitude toward, 212, 214–15, 217, 246, 277n31, 303n52 Dietrich on, 209, 214–15, 217 Spengler on, 246 true believers on, 235–36, 242–43 Plague Sermon (Osiander), 178, 186 Plague-song (Zwingli), 126 Platonism, 127, 332n14

477

pluralistic holism in Scribner’s works, 384n112 poena (penalty for sin), 25–26, 30–31, 104, 285n95 polytheism, 47, 144 postbaptismal sin, 25, 30, 53, 285n95 postils by Corvinus, 180 by Habermann, 186, 220 by Huberinus, 186, 201 importance of, 348n7 on Luther, 172 on miracles, 200 by Muesel, 186 ownership by clergy, 226 ownership by laypeople, 233–34 by Pauli, 186, 220 as sources, 164, 233–34 by Spangenberg, J., 208, 234 by Tauler, 221 pot of Moab, 88–90, 93–94, 142, 310nn16–17, 311n21 power of the keys, 26, 122 Prayer-Booklet (Habermann), 186, 234 Prayer Booklet (Musculus), 220, 234 prayers of Anselm of Canterbury, 66 healing effects of, 202 Lord’s Prayer, 173, 237 as penance, 26, 285n96 preaching importance of, 281n59, 307n124, 342n138 role of, 14, 35–36 predestination, 97 pregnant women and childbirth, 189–90, 195, 357n19 premeditation of suffering, 41 priests. See clergy private confession, 122, 159, 194. See also absolution; confession pro me nature of gospel, 119, 328n65

478

Subject Index

prophylactic nature of religion, 240 Protestant reformation of suffering, 4–5 as term, xv Protestantism. See also Reformed Protestantism Catholicism compared to, 7, 11, 83, 199, 232–33, 236, 257, 259, 378n4 training of Catholic compared to Protestant clergy, 376n53 Protestant Reformation changes during, 4 church ordinances as invention of, 165 Luther and, 84–86 providence, 43, 127, 258 Providential Deism, 262. See also Taylor, Charles Psalms, lectures on. See Dictata super Psalterium; Operationes in Psalmos punishment for sin. See divine punishment for sin; penalty or punishment for sin purgatory Council of Trent and, 25 Luther on, 105, 108, 320n166 Passion mysticism and, 73, 304n72 penance and, 26, 31, 70, 195–99 this-worldly, 108, 196, 322n198, 361n54 purification before entering heaven, 25, 196 Luther on, 102, 108, 123 and purgation as benefits of suffering, 153–55 radical reformers, on suffering, 155–61, 186 re-Christianization Christianization and, 187, 259 evangelical church ordinances and, 163, 164, 166, 171, 176, 184

Reformation. See also Lutheran Reformation; Protestant Reformation definition of, xv old and new history of, 10 Swiss, 212 Wittenberg, 174, 208, 220, 231, 232 Zwinglian, 208 Reformation Frömmigkeitstheologie, 6, 257 role in exclusion of lament, 262 reformation of suffering confessionalization and, 7, 191, 257 Protestant, 4–5 Reformation Studies, 84–85, 216, 309n4 The Reformation of Feeling (KarantNunn), 249, 276n8, 309n5, 354n64, 363n61, 365n90, 365n91, 367n122, 378n4, 387n128 reformatio poenae (reformation of penalty for sin), 109 Reformed Protestantism Lutheranism compared to, 170, 210–11, 368n122 sources, 8, 11 releasement. See Gelassenheit Remedies for Fortune Foul and Fair (Petrarch), 61 resignatio ad infernum, 305n85 resourceful Stoicism among evangelical burghers, 244–56, 384n113 Resurrection, 43–46 retributive justice, 8–9, 241, 370n156 Revelations (Ebner), 73, 138, 306n106 Revolt of the Common Man, 159. See also German Peasants’ War rhetorical strategies in lay evangelical works of consolation, 250, 391n20 righteousness. See also worksrighteousness

Subject Index Luther on alien, 86, 96–97, 99, 109, 111 Mathesius on, 362n57 types of, 362n57 rosaries, 236 sacramentals definition of, 18 emphasis on, 20 sacraments. See also baptism; confession; Eucharist; extreme unction; Lord’s Supper; penance administration of, 16, 20 references to, 61, 298n160 Sacred Meditations (Gerhard), 224 sacred objects, 18 sacred rites, 18. See also last rites; sacramentals; sacraments saints. See also specific saints angels and, in Protestant thought, 208–10 Brenz on, 144 calling on, 18, 23, 24, 381n52 healing and, 144 Huberinus on, 144–45 humiliation of, 18, 280n42 Luther on, 107, 321n183 pagan origin of, 210 rejection of, 194, 235–36, 244 rejection of Virgin Mary as, 235, 340n111 salvation human contribution to, 83, 309n141 Luther on, 86–93, 97, 108–9, 310n14, 312n50 suffering and, 7, 32, 83, 89, 90, 103, 106, 110, 132, 154, 159, 160, 183, 252, 257 satisfaction as ingredient of penance, 25 Luther on, 108, 322n191 penance through works of, 26, 27, 28, 105, 285n95

479

Sayings or Teachings of the Masters (Meisterlehre or Meistersprüche, circle around Eckhart), 64–65 Schmalkaldic War, 192, 212 Scholasticism, 96 Scripture. See also Scripture Index main source for evangelical consolation, 150–51, 218 Second Council of Lyons (1274), 25 Second Diet of Speyer, 209 secularization of Western society, 261–62 self-accusation, 90–92, 106, 311n32. See also humilitas fidei; humility theology; Luther, humility theology and self-annihilation, 76, 101 self-care physical and spiritual, 194 Steiger on, 194, 247 self-consolation, 247–49 self-flagellation, 29 self-imposed penance, 29 versus divinely imposed penance, 75, 160 self-mortification, 77, 160–61 A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace (Luther), 105–6, 131 Sermons (Tauler), 72, 74, 78–79 Sermons on First Peter (Luther), 123 The Seven Penitential Psalms (Luther), 101–2 The Shepherd (Zwingli), 126 A Short Excerpt of the Holy Scripture (Huberinus), 140, 144–46 sickness, 29. See also bodily affliction; bodily suffering; illness and diseases; ministry to sick and dying Sinner’s Mirror for Confession (anonymous), 31, 133

480

Subject Index

sins. See also debt of sin; divine punishment for sin; forgiveness of sin; original sin; penalty or punishment for sin of Adam, 37, 294n71, 350n19 adversity relationship with, 37 divine wrath, suffering and, 214–17 against neighbor, alms for, 285n96 penance for, 15, 25–27, 31, 285nn96–97 penance for postbaptismal, 25, 30, 53, 285n95 suffering and, 52–53, 212–17 two ways for liberation of, 167–68 social class, 245 social discipline, 164, 177, 371n157 social distance of clergy, from parishioners, 229 social learning among clergy, 34 Sodalitas Staupitziana, 132 Solioquia. See Synonyma soteriology of Luther after Dictata super Psalterium, 322n199 of via moderna, Luther on, 92, 97, 312n46, 312n50 role of suffering in, 83, 87, 97, 100, 110, 121, 132, 148, 203, 257, 309n8 (See also salvation, suffering and) trends in, 70, 257 Soul-Medicine for the Healthy and the Sick in These Dangerous Times (Rhegius), 140, 145, 149, 161, 162, 234, 338n92 souls. See also body and soul care of, 12, 64, 65, 113 immortality of, 39 Luther on enlargement of, 93–95 spark of divine in, 74, 99, 160 spiritual and bodily health, 172–75 Spiritual Consolation for This Dejected Church of Christ in Magdeburg (Flacius), 192

spiritual laxity, 104–6, 319n162 spiritual regeneration, 160, 346n190 spiritual renewal, 62, 223 spiritual sweetness, 81, 256, 308n129 spiritual trials, 98–99, 191, 192 stigmata, 66, 77, 306n100 Stoicism, 260 apatheia and, 39, 292n18, 299n169 of Chrysippus, 291n13 Cicero and, 39 of Cleanthes, 291n13 evangelical, 153 resourceful, 244–56, 384n113 suffering. See also specific types of suffering benefits and nonbenefits of, 146–48 of body and soul, 5, 10 causes or reasons for, 37, 55, 217 (See also Causae) clergy’s doctrine of, 3–4 confessionalization of, 191 consolation and, 4–6, 9–11 devil and, 196, 232 as divine punishment for sin, 8–9, 29–30, 37, 52–53, 172–73, 212, 214–17, 260–62 divine wrath, sin and, 214–17 evangelical church ordinances on understanding, 175–83 expansive definition of, 143, 156, 161, 179, 217, 219, 323n10, 343n167 explanations for, 8–9, 216 (See also Causae) by Job, 9, 28, 51, 55, 62, 390nn2–3 lay consolation and inward, 191–94 meaning of, 3, 31 non-salvific nature in Lutheran theology (See Luther, on the non-salvific nature of suffering; penance, Protestant rejection of ) patience and, 61–62 as penance, 24–25, 28–32, 133–34, 284n89, 289n140

Subject Index physical and spiritual, 95 purgation and purification as benefits of, 153–55 purposes of, 73–76, 81–83 salvation and, 7, 183 (See also salvation, suffering and; soteriology, role of suffering in) sin and, 52–53, 212–17 spiritual confidence in midst of, 118–20 testing of faith through, 110, 120–21, 130–31, 149–53, 328n67 suffering church, 156 Summa angelica (Angelus de Clavasio), 28. See also Angelo’s Summa Summa for Confessors (Johannes von Freiburg), 27–29, 286n110 Summa for Simple Priests (anonymous), 16, 28 Summa of Canon Law (Berthold), 28–30, 51 Summa rudium. See Summa for Simple Priests the supernatural, 203, 230, 231, 244, 262 superstition healing with magic and, 18–20, 259, 286n106 Karant-Nunn on, 379n17 Swiss Reformation, 212 sword, defending gospel with, 157 synodal statutes, 19 Synonyma (Isidore), 51–53 Table Talk (Luther), 172, 202 Ten Commandments as favorite text, 36 Gerson on, 20, 23 theodicy, 118, 259, 328n58 theologia crucis, 111–13, 328n58. See theology of the cross Theologia Deutsch/Germanica. See German Theology

481

theologian of glory, 112 theologian of the cross, 112 theology of the cross evangelical consolation literature and, 134–35, 138–46, 337n90 Luther on, 5, 111–24, 337n90 The Theology of Bernard and Tauler (Neander), 220 Third Lateran Council (1179), 14 this-worldly purgatory, 108, 196, 322n198, 361n54 thornbush reference in evangelical consolation literature from Pseudo-Tauler, 220, 372n15 To Marcia on Consolation (Seneca), 40–41 To the Suffering Christ-believing Women of the Community of Kentzingen (Schütz Zell), 136–38, 140, 237–38 treasure of merit, 26, 30 treasure of the church, 122 Treatise on Good Works (Luther), 118–19, 137, 140 Tree of Life (Bonaventure), 66–68 tribulations, 88, 90, 92–95, 104–10. See also adversity; Anfechtungen; suffering Trost (consolation). See also Christian consolation literature; evangelical consolation literature definition of, 8 Trostschriften (consolation literature). See also Christian consolation literature; evangelical consolation literature definition of, 10–11 troubled conscience, 174–75, 191–93, 248 true believers among evangelical burghers, 201, 232–33, 235–44 True Christian Cross (Scultetus), 234

482

Subject Index

Tusculan Disputations (Cicero), 38–40, 52 The Twelve Masters at Paris (anonymous), 64, 73 Two Consoling Instructions for Use When Visiting the Sick and the Dying (Keller), 152, 161 unction. See extreme unction Unigenitus (papal bull), 26 Useful Instruction on Angels (Opitz), 208 vade mecum, 58, 190 verworfenheit (divine rejection), 78 via negativa, 95–96 visitation Eichstätt church, 36, 291n177 ministry to sick and dying and, 350n14 ordinances and parish decrees, 19 wells, miraculous, 202, 364n85 Western Christianity absence of lament and, 261–62 grave-digger effect and, 261 trajectory of church history, 258 Why God Became Human (Anselm), 70 “Why Has the Christian Church Been Placed under the Cross?” (church ordinance section), 175 Wildwuchs (wild growth), 185

Wittenberg doctrine of suffering, 191, 212, 218, 229 Passion of Christ in Zurich and, 210–12 Wittenberg circle definition of, 6 extant sources from, 11 on human agency, 198 Kolb on, 198–99, 363n65 miracles and, 201, 364n74 Wittenberg Reformation, 174, 208, 220, 231, 232 Work in Three Parts (Gerson), 20, 22–23, 284n87 works of mercy, 26, 27 works of satisfaction, 26, 27, 28, 105, 285n95 works-righteousness, 7, 160–61, 196, 219 wounds of Christ, 68, 71, 82, 207 Zurich Passion of Christ in Wittenberg and, 210–12 Zwingli in, 125–28 Zurich Disputation (1523), 126 Zwinglian Reformation, 208 Zwinglians, 152, 208 Die Zwölf Meister zu Paris. See The Twelve Masters at Paris