‘Germany in the Age of the Reformation’
Protestants and Other Religious Groups
Lecture Spring Week 9
Introduction
 The challenge and implications of religious diversity
A. Protestants and Catholics
1. Catholic repression
 Attempts to silence, discipline and discredit Luther (e.g. on role of images)
 Catholic propaganda: early intellectual reaction, even some visual Counterattacks, but internal theological divisions and less popular emphasis
 Political manoeuvres in the Empire (Imperial Diet; call for national council)
Johannes Eck (Ingolstadt); study of Catholic reaction by David Bagchi; Johannes Cochlaeus
2. Catholic renewal
 Council of Trent 1545-63 clarifies Catholic doctrine and promotes education
 Growing state influence over the Church in Catholic principalities (Bavaria)
 Negotiating reform: discipline, role models, new orders; but a long and difficult
process at grass-roots level (example of the diocese of Speyer); cultural offensive
of Baroque Catholicism
Pope Paul III; Maximilian of Bavaria (d. 1651); Wittelsbach dynasty; saints Teresa of Avila and
Ignatius Loyola (Jesuits founded 1540); Altötting / Andechs; Dioceses of Speyer and Münster
3. Interconfessional relations
 Religious life in biconfessional communities like Augsburg (calendar conflict)
 Conflicts (Donauwörth), co-existence (condominions of Swiss cantons) and early
forms of ‘tolerance’ (Sebastian Castellio; practical expediency eg in Strasbourg)
B. Protestants and Jews
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The shadow of centuries of tensions and persecution; terminology; Jews mainly in
towns (money lending); under protection of Emperor, but periodic persecutions
Some Humanist appreciation (Hebrew Bible, Urbanus Rhegius, Johann Reuchlin)
Development of Luther’s attitudes: early hope of conversion: Jesus Christ was
born a Jew (1523); disappointment provokes Against the Sabbatarians (1538);
most radical language and measures in The Jews and their Lies (1543)
In post-Reformation Germany much local variety; improvements achieved by
Josel of Rosheim (d. 1554), ‘commander of Jewry’
Conclusions
 Germany faces the unprecedented challenge of accommodating different religions
 In spite of doctrinal differences, Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics pursue a
number of similar aims and face a number of similar problems (concept of
‘Confessionalization’ developed by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling)
 Interconfessional relations are characterised by intolerance, but also grudging /
pragmatic accommodation (Peace of Augsburg; biconfessional contexts)
References
A)
Bagchi, David, Luther’s Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists 1518-25 (Minneapolis, 1991)
Forster, Mark, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque. Religious Identity in Southwest Germany
1550-1750 (Cambridge, 2001) [‘Confessional identity was created from daily experience and was
lived out in the everyday world of the peasants and townspeople of Southwest Germany.’ (p. 12)]
Grell, O.; Scribner, B. (eds), Tolerance & Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge, 1996)
Hacke, Daniela, ‘Church, space and conflict: Religious co-existence and political communication in
seventeenth-century Switzerland’, German History 25 (2007), 285-312
Holzem, Andreas, Religion und Lebensformen. Katholische Konfessionalisierung im Sendgericht des
Fürstbistums Münster 1570-1800 [Catholic Confessionalization in Diocese Münster] (Paderborn,
2000)
Mullet, Michael, The Catholic Reformation (London, 1999)
Reinhard, Wolfgang, ‘Pressures towards Confessionalization? Prolegomena to a Theory of the
Confessional Age’, in: The German Reformation, ed. Scott Dixon (Oxford, 1999), 169-192
Whalley, Joachim, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg 1529-1819 (Cambridge, 1985)
B)
‘Jewish Museum Berlin’: flagship museum with permanent and temporary exhibitions on Jewish
history: http://www.jmberlin.de/main/EN/homepage-EN.php (9/3/2010)
‘Luther’s relationship to the Jews’: webserver of the Lutherhalle exhibition, Wittenberg:
http://www.luther.de/en/kontext/juden.html (9/3/2010)
Burnett, Stephen G., ‘Review article: Jews and Anti-Semitism in early modern Germany’, in: Sixteenth
Century Journal 27 (1996), 1057-64
Rummel, Erika, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social Controversy in SixteenthCentury Germany (Toronto, 2002)
BK 03/10
Unknown artist, ‘Luther's Game of Heresy’, c. 1520
1.The noxious fumes include: falsehood, unbelief, pride, envy, scandal, disobedience,
contempt, haughtiness, lies, heresy, blasphemy, unchastity, fleshly freedom,
disorder, and disloyalty.
2.'I take out falsehood and deceit; I am ashamed of no evil.'
3.'I shall apply myself to piping Luther's false teaching. This I will praise, thereby
tearing Scripture apart.'
4.'That is Luther's Game of Heresy/ Only unrest and misery will come of it./ The
church service has fallen silent.'
8.In the year 1520, / Which one now marks in peace,I have in my simple way
foreseen/What Luther's teaching promises to bring:/ Great rebellion and
bloodletting,/ Much hatred and strife.
The fear of God will vanish forever,/ Together with the whole of Scripture,/ And
authority will everywhere be despised. /Selfishness will reign supreme.
[Illustration and translation taken from TLTP tutorial ‘The Protestant Reformation’:
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/tltp/reform/eng5/gei452f.htm#title
(19/4/2006)]