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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Of the numerous criticisms and expressions of grievance directed at the Church in Germany on the eve of the Reformation, the most devastating was the charge of inadequate pastoral care. Reformers of all complexions bewailed the poor state of the parish clergy and the inadequate manner in which they provided for the spiritual needs of their flocks. At the very least, the parish clergy were ill-educated and ill-prepared for their pastoral tasks; at the very worst, they exploited those to whom they should have ministered, charging for their services, treating layfolk as merely a means of increasing their incomes, and, above all, resorting to the tyranny of the spiritual ban to uphold their position. The popular propaganda of the early Reformation fully exploited such deficiencies, exposing the decay in root and branch of a system of pastoral care depicted as no more than an empty shell, a facade of a genuine Christian cure of souls. The attack on the traditional Church was highly successful, successful enough to provoke an ecclesiastical revolution, and almost a socio-political revolution as well. It was, indeed, so successful that generations of historians of the Reformation have seen the condition of the pre-Reformation Church largely through the eyes of its critics and opponents. This negative image was matched by an idealized view of what succeeded it: where the old Church had failed the Christian laity, indeed, so much that they had virtually fallen into the hands of the Devil, the new Church offered solutions, a new way forward, a new standard of pastoral care and concern that created a new ideal, the Lutheran pastor, who cared for his flock as a kindly father, a shepherd who would willingly give up his life for his sheep.
I wish to express my thanks to the British Academy and the British Council who made possible research visits to the archives of the German Democratic Republic to gather material on which this article is based.
2 For Evangelical popular propaganda against the shepherds who have become ravening wolves, see Scribner, R. W., For the Sake of Simple Folk Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 52–7Google Scholar. The theme of pastoral care in the pre-Reformation Church has, however, been given little attention, except where it appears in studies such as Tender, Thomas N., Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar. Much of the literature on ‘the state of the Church’ at the end of the Middle Ages concentrates too heavily on ‘abuses’ and ignores the efforts being made in successive diocesan synods to improve the quality of the clergy and their standards of pastoral care.
3 For the new image of the pastor, see the succinct statement by Oberman, Heiko A., Masters of the Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), p. 279CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 I refer here to the debate sparked off by Strauss’s, Gerald work on the ‘success or failure’ of the German Reformation, largely contained in his Luther’s House of Learning. Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, 1978)Google Scholar. Critical views have been most strongly stated by Kittelson, James M., ‘Successes and failures in the German Reformation. The Report from Strasbourg’, ARG, pp. 75Google Scholar; and ‘Visitations and Popular Religious Culture: Further Reports from Strasbourg’ in Sessions, Kyle C. and Bebb, Phillip N., eds, Pietas et Societas. New Trends in Reformation Social History (Kirksville, Miss., 1985), pp. 89–101Google Scholar. However, even sympathetic responses have raised similar critical comments: see Edwards, Mark U., ‘Lutheran Pedagogy in Reformation Germany’, History of Education Quarterly, 21 (1981), pp. 471–7Google Scholar.
5 I have already touched some of these issues in a broader context in ‘Anticlericalism and the Reformation’, German, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), pp. 243–56, esp. pp. 252–6Google Scholar, using source materials from Württenberg. Here I shall rely on archival material from Lutheran Saxony in the first two generations of the instnutionalization of the Reform. I have used from the Staatsarchiv Weimar, Ernestinisches Gesamtarchiv the inventories Reg. LI (Pfarrbestallungen, Pfarrangelegenheiten), concerned with appointment and dismissals of pastors; Reg. Ii (Visitationsakten), concerned with special visitations and investigations of parish affairs apart from the more extensive general visitations; and some material from Reg. N (Religionssachen). A fuller discussion of this material will be presented in a chapter on the institutionalization of the Reformation in a wider work on the Reformation movements in Germany.
6 Staatsarchiv (hereafter SA) Weimar Reg. LI 670, fols 1–3.
7 SA Weimar Reg. LI 670, fols 5–25.
8 Ibid., fol.5r.
9 SA Weimar Reg. 671, fol. I.
10 Ibid.
11 SA Weimar Reg. li 1499, fols 3–4.
12 Ibid., fols 21–2, letter of complaint of Hans Glorius, citizen of Kahla, to the Elector John Frederick, 20 August 1541.
13 Ibid., fols 23ff.
14 Ibid., fols.4v.
15 The following discussion of the dispute is based on SA Weimar Reg. Ll 669.
16 SA Weimar Reg. Ll 670, fols 29–34, report of the Superintendent of Weimar, Christoph Helmerich, and the tax-official of Weimar, Jorg Wolrab, 7 June 1564, esp. fols 20–31 on the cases mentioned.
17 SA Weimar Reg. Ll 670, fol. 30.
18 Ibid., fols 40–2 (the 17 articles); fols 37–8 (Jorg Wolrab to Johann Rudloff, Secretary in the Saxon Chancellery, 16 June 1564); the dorsal note: ‘dorauf soil den Pfarrer endturlauben und ein ander an sein stadt verordnent worden’, fol. 38V.
19 Sa Weimar Reg. Ll 669, fols 38–46 passim, for Wolrab’s testimony, where he consistently backed Kunhold’s version of events. It is also significant that Wolrab was related by marriage to Johann Rudloff, Saxon Chancellery Secretary, whom he addressed in correspondence as ‘mein grosgunsriger Schwager’: Reg. Ll 670, fol. 37r.
20 On the problems of pastors’ salaries see the pioneering study by Karant-Nunn, Susan, Luther’s Pastors: the Reformation in the Ernestine Countryside = Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 69, pt 8 (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 38–52Google Scholar.
21 SA Weimar Reg. li 771.1 have been unable to locate the precise position of these villages on a modern map; Bressen may be Bresen, south-west of Altenburg.
22 See, for example, SA Weimar Reg. LI 547, two letters by the pastor of Mellingen, Christoph Etzell, complaining in very bitter terms about the false accusations of despoiling the parish woods levelled at him by his parishioners, 17 and 19 October 1568.
23 The Klafter was originally a measure of length, roughly the length measured by an adult male with outstretched arms. It was first used as a square measure for a stack of wood in Augsburg in 1477: see J., and Grimm, W., Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig, 1854-1954), 5Google Scholar, col. 903, although there were numerous local and regional variations in the quantity of timber encompassed by the term.
24 SA Weimar Reg. li 2332.
25 Cf. SA Weimar Reg. LI 15, where the pastor of Auma complained in 1535 of several villages paying him his tithe according to the measure from Neustadt on the Orla rather than the Auma measure. On the general problems of disputes over measures and measuring see Kula, Witold, Measures and Men (Princeton, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 These are preserved in SA Weimar Reg. li in very substantial numbers.
27 SA Weimar Reg. li 2487, Bericht der Visitatoren, 4 March 1555.fol.4v.
28 Both sides of the case were put in the 1534 conflict between the communities of Behlitz, Bressen, and Ochelnitz and their pastor: SA Weimar Reg. li 771.
29 SA Weimar Reg. li 856, complaints of the village of Plotten against their pastor, 1534; see also the 1549 complaint of the town council of Creutzburg: Von yder person die zum heilig hochwirdig Sacrament des altars gegangen oder gehen iii d. alle weichfasten zu geben’: SA Weimar Reg. Ll 111, fol. 13.
30 See, for example, the 1549 complaint of the town council of Creutzberg to Johann Friedich I, SA Weimar Reg. Ll 111, fols 13, 15, where it is condemned as an innovation.
31 SA Weimar Reg. li 23, 34, Johánn Friedrich II to the tax-official of Arnshaug, 5 May 1551, in reply to a complaint from the peasants of Zwakau.
32 SA Weimar Reg. LI 597.
33 SA Weimar Reg. li 2325. Katherinen is today Catherinau, on the Saale, east of Rudolstadt, Schada is now Langenschade, just south of Catherinau.
34 SA Weimar Reg. Ll 597 (Neunhofen’s complaint against Lausnitz, 1SS9); Reg. Ii 1458 (Dobra’s complaint against the pastor of Neunhofen, 1540). I have been unable to locate on a modern map any village called Dobra in the vicinity of Neunhofen and Lausnitz. It can hardly be the Dobra south-west of Altenburg but 45 km. to the north-cast of Neun hofen. Dreba, which lies 8 km. to the south of Neunhofen, is more likely.
35 SA Weimar Reg. li 2353.
36 SA Weimar Reg. N676, fol. 6.
37 SA Weimar Reg. Ll 483, fols 1–2.
38 Ibid., fol. 3.
39 SA Weimar Reg. Ii 2698.
40 Sabean, David, Power in the Blood. Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modem Germany (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar has very usefully opened up new dimensions of such village power-games. I have provided a case-study of the complexity of the rules in ‘Sorcery, Superstition and Society: the Witch of Urach 1529’ in Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), pp. 257–76.
41 See their initial complaint of 20 April 1564, SA Weimar Reg. Ll 670, fol. ir: ‘wie wol ohne vocation und willen verordnet’.
42 The documents of the discussion are in SA Weimar Reg. Ll 671, fols 5–14, and include three petitions from the community of Rinkleben dated 8, 11, and 17 June, and two letters from Wolrab dated 16 and 18 June, addressed respectively to Bartholomeus Rosinus, the District Superintendent of Weimar and to his brother-in-law, Rudloff, the secretary to the Saxon Chancellery. The quip about ‘freywillisch als die freyen schweioer’ on fol. or is addressed to Rosinus.
43 SA Weimar Reg. Ll 670, fol. 7v: ‘sie wojlen das ius eligendi, vocandi, confirmandi und deponendi eines seelhirten gleich wie sie es mit Iren kue und genssehirtenn haben und behalten wollen.’
44 That Phillip Schmidt was not the only quarrelsome pastor in the district is shown by a dispute that arose between the tax-official of Rinkleben. Johann Kunhold, and the pastor of Mittel- hausen, Simon Kiswetter, who accused Kunhold of slandering him in 1556. Kunhold’s low opinion of pastors was not confined to Schmidt; according to Kiswetter, Kunhold sneered that all pastors were made from churchwardens. Kiswetter, in a letter of 19 October 1556, reported the incident to Schmidt, who expressed solidarity with his colleague through copious underlinings in the letter and the notes he wrote on the case, see SA Weimar Reg. LI 580. It is clear from this file that the two pastors saw themselves as comrades-in-arms in the struggle to bring good morals and doctrine to the district.
45 I have cited some evidence from württemberg sources in ‘Anticlericalism and the German Reformation’ (see n. 5 above), but there is also abundant evidence of the same phenomenon in the Saxon sources.
