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Debating Perseverance: The Augustinian Heritage in Post-Reformation England (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) 1st Edition Collier
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Burnett, Amy Nelson, 1957– author. Title: Debating the sacraments : print and authority in the early Reformation / Amy Nelson Burnett. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018016554 (print) | LCCN 2018038613 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190921187 (cloth) | ISBN 978019092194 (UPDF) | ISBN 9780190921200 (EPUB) | ISBN 9780190921217 (Online Content) Subjects: LCSH: Reformation. | Printing—Europe—History—16th century. | Christian literature—Publishing—Europe—History—16th century. | Book industries and trade—Europe—History—16th century. | Lord’s Supper—History of doctrines. | Baptism—History of doctrines. Classification: LCC BR307 (ebook) | LCC BR307 .B87 2019 (print) | DDC 234/.1609031—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016554
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
In memoriam
Mabel Beardsley Peterson
Phyllis Peterson Nelson
Marlowe E. Nelson
List of Figures ix
List of Illustrations xi Preface xiii
Abbreviations and Common Shortened References xvii
1. Print and the Reformation Crisis of Authority 1
PART I. Overview, Background, and Beginnings
2. Contours of the Printed Debate 25
3. Heresy and Hermeneutics: The Background to the Controversy 50
4. Karlstadt’s Challenge to Luther 77
5. The Early Debate in Switzerland 98
PART II. Exchanges, 1526–1529
6. Martin Bucer and Bugenhagen’s Psalms Commentary 121
7. Oecolampadius Against the Wittenbergers 139
8. Undermining Oecolampadius: The Debate with Pirckheimer 158
9. The Contributions of Zurich and Strasbourg 178
Figures
1.1. Number of Publications in German-Speaking Lands 8
1.2. Percentage of Publications on the Lord’s Supper/Mass 10
2.1. Imprints Concerning the Lord’s Supper 27
2.2. Proportion of Imprints by Party, 1525–1529 28
2.3. Number of Imprints by Party 28
2.4. Number of New Titles by Party 29
2.5. Pro-Wittenberg Authors 30
2.6. Pro-Wittenberg Publications Concerning the Lord’s Supper 30
2.7. Luther Imprints Concerning the Lord’s Supper, 1525–1529 31
2.8. Sacramentarian Authors 34
2.9. Catholic Authors 36
2.10. Printing Locations, 1525–1529 39
2.11. Proportion of Imprints on the Lord’s Supper by City, 1525–1529 40
2.12. Genre of Imprints by Party 44
4.1. Published Contributions to the Controversy, 1524–1525 91
7.1. Oecolampadius’s Contributions to the Controversy, 1525–June 1527 141
9.1. Zurich/Swiss Contributions to the Controversy, 1526–June 1527 180
9.2. Other Contributions to the Controversy, 1526–March 1527 195
Illustrations
5.1 Title page of Action oder Bruch des Nachtmals (Zurich: Froschauer, 1525) 114
6.1 Title page of Bugenhagen/Bucer Psalter wol verteutscht (Basel: Petri, 1526) 126
9.1. Title page of Zwingli, Ejn klare vnderrichtung vom nachtmal Christi (Zurich: Hager, 1526) 181
14.1. Woodcut from Urbanus Rhegius, Vom hochwirdigen Sacrament des altars (Leipzig: Thanner, 1525) 284
Preface
Ideas are clean. They soar in the serene supernal. I can take them out and look at them, they fit in a book, they lead me down that narrow way. And in the morning they are there. Ideas are straight. But the world is round, and a messy mortal is my friend. Come walk with me in the mud.
Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself
People have occasionally asked me why on earth I would want to study such a convoluted topic as the Eucharistic controversy. I tell them that my first job after graduating from college was as a policy analyst for a group of legislators in my home state, and one of my responsibilities was to explain the intricacies of property tax relief and school-aid formulas. I discovered that I enjoyed puzzling out the details of extremely complex but important legislation and explaining how it worked to those who made public policy. There are more than a few similarities between that task and my efforts to understand and explain the Reformation debate over the Lord’s Supper.
I began work on this book with a few simple questions: How would our understanding of the Eucharistic controversy change if we read every contribution to it, rather than just the works of Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli? What can these publications tell us about how the ideas of the major reformers were understood and further disseminated through the writings of others? What happens to the standard narrative if we go beyond the traditional concentration on theology and look at other factors? The answers to these questions led me to go beyond the Lord’s Supper to provide a different view of the early Reformation than the accounts one finds in most standard history textbooks.
My work on this book has benefited from the input of many individuals and the support provided by a number of sources. I began my research in the congenial surroundings of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study during a Faculty Development Leave funded in part by a Sabbatical Fellowship from the
American Philosophical Society in 2009–10. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2012, I benefited from the resources and researchers at the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz. While co-directing an NEH Summer Seminar at Calvin College in 2013, I could make use of the holdings of Hekman Library and the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies. Six months at the HerzogAugust-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel while on sabbatical in 2016 and another two months in the summer of 2017 as a senior fellow gave me direct access to my sources and enabled stimulating conversation with the many scholars who flock to this Mecca of early modern scholarship. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Peter Burschel, Dr. Jill Bepler, and the entire staff of the library for all the support they provided. UNL’s Research Council provided two grants-in-aid to support my research, and as always, the staff of Love Library’s Interlibrary Loan department has been wonderfully efficient and helpful.
The best books are not written in splendid isolation but instead grow out of discussion with others. My husband Steve has been my chief sounding board, encourager, and critic over the many years I have worked on this topic. I have benefited in particular from conversations and correspondence with Irene Dingel, Robert Kolb, and Timothy Wengert on the Wittenberg theologians, from Emidio Campi and Peter Opitz and their colleagues at the Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte in Zurich on the Swiss reformers, Christine Christ-von Wedel and James Estes on Erasmus, and Geoffrey Dipple and James Stayer on the radicals. I am particularly grateful to Bob, Tim, Emidio, and Geoff for reading and providing feedback on all or part of the manuscript. I have also received helpful comments from the audiences at several meetings of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, as well as at colloquia at the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz, the Reformation Studies Institute at the University of St. Andrews, the Religious Studies Department of Stanford University, and the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, where I presented earlier versions of the book’s argument.
So many individuals have stimulated my thinking on this book that I hesitate to list names for fear of omission, but a few individuals stand out for their encouragement, support, observations, and insights provided at critical phases in my work: Tom Brady, Bruce Gordon, Helmut Graser, Susan Karant-Nunn, Tony Lane, Karin Maag, Ray Mentzer, Andrew Pettegree, Barbara Pitkin, Beth Plummer, Ron Rittgers, and Ann Tlusty. Here at UNL I have benefited from regular conversations with Sidnie Crawford, Stephen Lahey, and Alison Stewart. My students have also helped me clarify my ideas through their questions.
Some of the most important contributions to the Eucharistic controversy are available in two or more critical editions. I have cited the most recent edition of any given work, which can be consulted for information about earlier
Preface
printed versions. Where they exist, I have also cited English translations for those who are not comfortable with the original language. Quotations from the Bible are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) unless otherwise specified. Early modern spelling of names was not standard, and so I have used the modern German form (thus Konrad Pellikan rather than Conrad Pellican), with the exception of those rulers whose titles are translated into English, such as Elector Frederick the Wise. Although it has become customary, especially in German publications, to use the sixteenth century spelling of the Zurich reformer’s name, I have retained the modern form of Ulrich Zwingli, which is more familiar to an English-language audience.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents and my maternal grandmother. All three of them encouraged my love of learning in different ways, and the older I grow the more I perceive their long-lasting influence. I especially wish that my father could have read this book. The epigram that heads this preface is a bit of “New Age wisdom” from the 1970s. It was given to me while I held that first job by a friend and co-worker who thought that I was too interested in abstract questions and speculative debates. While I cannot claim that the wrongheadedness of the quote played a role in my decision to quit that job and start graduate school in history, it has stayed in my mind all these years. This book is my refutation of Prather’s misguided belief that “ideas are clean.” They do not “soar in the serene supernal” but can be as messy and covered with mud as every other aspect of human existence.
ABR
Abbreviations and Common Shortened References
Abbreviations
Dürr, Emil, and Paul Roth. Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Basler Reformation in den Jahren 1519 bis Anfang 1534. 6 vols. Basel: Historische und antiquarische Gesellschaft, 1921–50.
ASD Erasmus, Desiderius. Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1969–
BCorr
Bucer, Martin. Correspondance de Martin Bucer. Martini Buceri Opera Omnia Series 3. Leiden: Brill, 1979–.
BDS Bucer, Martin. Deutsche Schriften. Opera Omnia Series 1. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1960–2016.
BOL
Bucer, Martin. Martini Buceri Opera Latina. Martini Buceri Opera Omnia Series 2. Leiden: Brill, 1954–.
BWSA Brenz, Johannes. Werke. Eine Studienausgabe. Tübingen: Mohr, 1970–86.
CR Melanchthon, Philipp. Philippi Melanthonis Opera quae Supersunt Omnia. Corpus Reformatorum 1–28. Halle: Schwetschke, 1834–60.
CS Schwenckfeld, Kaspar. Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1907–61.
CWC Rummel, Erika, and Milton Kooistra, eds. The Correspondence of Wolfgang Capito. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005–.
CWE Erasmus, Desiderius. Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974–
EPK Burnett, Amy Nelson, ed. and trans. The Eucharistic Pamphlets of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2011.
FSBT
FSGR
HBBW
HBTS
HZW
Abbreviations and Common Shortened References
Laube, Adolph, et al., eds. Flugschriften vom Bauernkrieg zum Täuferreich (1526–1535). 2 vols. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992.
Laube, Adolph, ed. Flugschriften gegen die Reformation (1525–30). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000.
Furcha, Edward J., and H. Wayne Pipkin, eds. Huldrych Zwingli: Writings. 2 vols. Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1984.
KGK Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von. Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Schriften und Briefe Andreas Bodensteins von Karlstadt, edited by Thomas Kaufmann et al. Güterlsoh: Gütersloher Varlagshaus, 2017–.
LB Erasmus, Desiderius. Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera Omnia emendatiora et auctiora, edited by Jean LeClerc. 10 vols. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961–1978. [Orig: Leiden, 1703–1706].
LW Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works. St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1955–
MBW Scheible, Heinz et al., eds. Melanchthons Briefwechsel: Kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe. StuttgartBad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977–.
MelStA Melanchthon, Philipp. Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl, edited by Robert Stupperich. 7 vols. in 9. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1951–83.
MPL Migne, J.-P., ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina. 221 vols. Paris: Garnieri Fratres, 1844–64.
OBA Staehelin, Ernst, ed. Briefe und Akten zum Leben Oekolampads, zum vierhundertjährigen Jubiläum der Basler Reformation. Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 10, 19. 2 vols. Leipzig: Heinsius, 1927–34.
QGT Hubmaier, Balthasar. Schriften, edited by Gunnar Westin and Torsten Bergsten. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer 9. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1962.
QGTS Muralt, Leonhard von, and Walter Schmid, eds. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz. Vol. 1: Zürich. Zurich: Hirzel, 1952.
TMA
VBS
Abbreviations and Common Shortened References xix
Müntzer, Thomas. Thomas-Müntzer-Ausgabe. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Quellen und Forschungen zur sächsischen Geschichte. Leipzig: Verlag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004–.
Arbenz, Emil, and Hermann Wartmann, eds. Die Vadianische Briefsammlung der Stadtbibliothek St. Gallen. Mitteilungen zur Vaterländischen Geschichte 24–30a. St. Gallen: Fehr, 1884–1913.
VD16 Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts. www.vd16.de.
W2
Walch, Johann Georg, ed. Dr. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften. 23 vols. St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1881–1910.
WA Luther, Martin. Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe.
WB Müller, Nicolaus. Die Wittenberger Bewegung 1521 und 1522. Die Vorgänge in und um Wittenberg während Luthers Wartburgaufenthalt . Leipzig: Heinsius, 1911.
WPBW Reicke, Emil et al., eds. Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel. 7 vols. Munich: Beck, 1940–2009.
Z Zwingli, Ulrich. Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke. Leipzig/Zurich: Heinsius/TVZ, 1905–91.
Z&B Bromiley, Geoffrey W., ed. and trams. Zwingli and Bullinger: Selected Translations with Introductions and Notes. Library of Christian Classics 24. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953.
Z&L Köhler, Walther. Zwingli und Luther: Ihre Streit über das Abendmahl nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen 2 vols. Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 6–7. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1924–53. [Reprint, 2017]
ZSW Jackson, Samuel Macauley, ed. Selected Works of Huldreich Zwingli (1484–1531), The Reformer of German Switzerland. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1901.
Allen
Shortened References
Erasmus, Desiderius. Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterdami, edited by P. S. Allen et al. 12 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1906–1958.
Burnett, Karlstadt Burnett, Amy Nelson. Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy: A Study in the Circulation of Ideas. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Erasmus, “Ratio” Erasmus, Desiderius. “Ratio—Theologische Methodenlehre.” In Erasmus von Rotterdam, Ausgewählte Schriften, Vol. 3, edited by Gerhard B. Winkler. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967.
Herminjard
Herminjard, A.-L., ed. Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue Française. 9 vols. Geneva: H. Georg, 1866–97. [Reprint, Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1966] Kaufmann, Kaufmann, Thomas. Die Abendmahlstheologie der Abendmahlstheologie Strassburger Reformatoren bis 1528. Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 81. Tübingen: Mohr, 1992.
Schiess Schiess, Traugott, ed. Briefwechsel der Brüder Ambrosius und Thomas Blaurer 1509–1548. 3 vols. Freiburg im Brreisgau: Fehsenfeld, 1908–1912.
Sehling, Sehling, Ernst et al., eds. Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts. 24 vols.
Spruyt, Hoen
Leipzig/Tübingen: Reisland/Mohr, 1902–2016.
Spruyt, Bart Jan. Cornelius Henrici Hoen (Honius) and His Epistle on the Eucharist (1525). Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 119. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Staehelin, Staehelin, Ernst. Das theologische Lebenswerk Lebenswerk Johannes Oekolampads. Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 21. Leipzig: Heinsius, 1939.
Zwingli, Zwingli, Ulrich. Commentary on True and False Religion. Commentary Translated by Samuel Macauley Jackson and Clarence Nevin Heller. Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1981.
Print and the Reformation Crisis of Authority
In October of 1524, two Basel printers published several pamphlets by Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt that argued against the presence of Christ’s body in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. These pamphlets touched off an acrimonious debate in print within the evangelical movement that would continue through the end of the decade. Catholic authors would participate in the debate as well, both by defending the doctrine of transubstantiation and by pointing to the disagreement among the reformers as proof that all of them were wrong. Just as rejection of the authority of the papal see divided Roman Catholics from those who would later be called Protestants, so the rejection of Christ’s bodily presence in the elements of bread and wine began the process of dividing Protestants into the Lutheran and Reformed confessional churches.
A few months after the publication of Karlstadt’s pamphlets, a small group meeting in a private home in Zurich watched a layman named Conrad Grebel baptize the priest Georg Blaurock. This was the first known case of believer’s baptism within the evangelical movement. Whether or not the earliest advocates of believer’s baptism intended to create a separate church in January 1525, over the next few years those called Anabaptists would separate from the magisterially backed reformers to establish their own churches independent of state control.
These two events—one involving printing, the other a religious rite—have long stood at the center of confessional histories of the German Reformation. They have also been treated as two completely separate and unrelated events. Already in the sixteenth century, Reformed churchmen wrote histories of the Eucharistic controversy focusing on Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli in order to demonstrate the truth of their own understanding of the Lord’s Supper, and their lead was followed by later historians. This narrative functioned as a “myth of origin” for both Lutherans and Reformed that explained the beginning of their
own confessional tradition, or as a “place of memory” that shaped confessional identity.1 In the twentieth century, Mennonite and Baptist church historians created their own “myth of origin” by examining the lives of Grebel, Blaurock, and other early Zurich Anabaptists. This compartmentalized approach to the fragmentation of the evangelical movement is so embedded in our understanding of the early Reformation that it is still accepted without question by post-confessional and secular historians. To counter the older Luther-centered narrative and to recognize the role of dissenters within the broad evangelical movement, historians have moved away from discussing the Reformation and now talk about the many different reformations. With its focus on distinct and fully formed confessional groups and sects, however, this approach is only a secularized form of the older “myth of origins” narrative.
The greatest anomaly overlooked by the separate accounts of the origins of confessional and dissenting Protestantism is that both emerged at the same time, in the same places, and among the same individuals. Not only did Andreas Karlstadt attack Luther’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper; he also wrote a pamphlet criticizing infant baptism, although he was not able to publish it in 1524. Zwingli is the best known of Luther’s opponents, but the first Swiss Anabaptists were among Zwingli’s most zealous followers. Although the documentary evidence is sparse, there were contacts between Karlstadt and the Zurich proto-Anabaptists, and Karlstadt visited the Swiss city after being expelled from Saxony in the fall of 1524.2 The relationship between Saxon and Swiss radicalism has long been obscured, however, by the firewall between the Eucharistic controversy and early Anabaptism that was first erected by Zwingli’s successor, Heinrich Bullinger. Bullinger wrote histories of both developments, doing his utmost to prove Zwingli’s orthodoxy regarding the Lord’s Supper while distancing him from the “heretical” Anabaptists.3 Over the last two generations, scholars have abandoned Bullinger’s distorted narrative of Anabaptist history and produced a host of new studies that look at the origins of the radical reformation, paying as much attention to socioeconomic as to theological factors.4 The chief criterion in identifying these radicals remains their rejection of infant baptism, however, and their understanding of the Lord’s Supper is discussed only on the margins.
There has been no corresponding development from the side of those studying the magisterial or state-supported reformation, and the Eucharistic controversy continues to be largely the preserve of church historians and theologians. Although their interests are now more often ecumenical than confessional and polemical, their approach still tends to have an eye on the implications of the sixteenth-century debate for contemporary theological concerns.5 When social and cultural historians have examined the sacrament that Protestants called the Lord’s Supper, their focus has been on the rituals and practices developed over the course of the sixteenth century, rather than on the theological debate at its origin.
When the theology of the Lord’s Supper is addressed, it is limited to that of a few key figures, especially Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and Jean Calvin.6
This confessionalized and compartmentalized approach to the debate concerning the two evangelical sacraments has distorted our understanding of the broader questions of sacramental theology and authority in the early Reformation. The controversies concerning infant baptism and Christ’s bodily presence in the bread and wine were only the tip of the iceberg, the most visible aspects of a more fundamental and far-reaching disagreement concerning the definition and purpose of the sacraments more generally and the understanding of the relationship between the visible material world and the invisible spiritual reality that underlay any discussion of the sacraments. The contrasting positions were developed by Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam in the early 1520s, and they reflected differences not only in their broad presuppositions about the nature of reality and God’s interaction with human beings through the sacraments but also in their response to specific questions of biblical hermeneutics and scriptural exegesis. The depth of these disagreements became evident with the beginning of the Eucharistic controversy at the end of 1524, for both parties to the debate cited scripture to uphold their own understanding of the Lord’s Supper. Over the next five years, those who rejected Luther’s understanding of the sacrament fought to establish the legitimacy of their own position. They faced dissent within their own ranks, however, as some of their followers developed an understanding of the sacraments in a way that led to the rejection of infant baptism. The Eucharistic controversy caused a crisis of authority within the evangelical movement that deepened throughout the second half of the 1520s. For this reason, those years belong not with the movement toward institutionalization and stabilization of reforms that characterized developments from 1530 on but, instead, with the ferment of ideas that characterized the early Reformation.
While accounts of the Reformation up to 1525 focus on the enthusiastic reception and rapid expansion of evangelical teachings, the second half of the 1520s is usually described as a period of bitter infighting and evangelical fragmentation. Indeed, the Peasants’ War of 1525 and the division of the evangelical movement into Lutheran, Zwinglian, and radical factions have often been seen as marking the end of the Reformation as a popular movement. With the significant exception of research on the radical reformation, the second half of the decade has been neglected by scholars. If they are discussed at all, the later 1520s are associated with the longer-term developments of a “prince’s reformation” imposed from above and with the process of confession-building and confessionalization that created the major Protestant denominations. This approach, however, reads into the second half of the 1520s developments that more properly began in the early 1530s. In many places the process of reform stalled throughout the second half of the 1520s, and it did not resume until the end of the decade. Only
a handful of cities and territories, most of them in the Swiss Confederation and so not subject to the Catholic emperor, dared to abolish the mass and issue their own church ordinances, thereby officially breaking with the Roman church, before the 1530s.7 Only after membership in the Schmalkaldic League offered German states some protection did they begin the process of institutionalizing religious reforms in earnest. Likewise, the process of confession-building could not begin until the first official confessions were written in 1529–30. Those confessions were shaped not only by conflicts with Catholic opponents but also by the bitter published debate over the sacraments. They would become a new form of authority for the evangelical churches, providing guidance for the correct interpretation of scripture.
This book presents a new way of looking at the early Reformation by examining the printed debate over the sacraments in the second half of the 1520s as a symptom of the crisis of authority within the evangelical movement. At its core is the controversy concerning the Lord’s Supper carried out between 1525 and 1529. Baptism initially played no role in this controversy, for in contrast to the many published works addressing the Lord’s Supper, there was virtually no published debate over baptism. Those who opposed infant baptism did not have access to and could not make use of the printing press to the same extent that opponents of Christ’s bodily presence had. Censorship was also a factor in preventing publication of pamphlets critical of infant baptism. The rejection of infant baptism was strongest among the lower classes, who were unable to read or were literate only in the vernacular. Clandestine preaching rather than print was the primary means of spreading Anabaptist views, and published works on baptism were largely limited to defenses of infant baptism and to mandates that required parents to have their babies baptized and that decreed the punishment of those who were baptized as believers. Over the second half of the 1520s, though, an increasing number of publications on the Lord’s Supper also addressed baptism or the sacraments more generally, and by the end of the 1520s there was a significant secondary debate concerning these topics, waged primarily within works on the Lord’s Supper. Almost two-thirds of the works published in 1529 on that topic also contained some discussion of baptism or the sacraments. The shift from the presence of Christ’s body to broader questions of sacramental theology is a crucial development that has largely been overlooked in discussions of the Eucharistic controversy, and it demands consideration as a major aspect of the evangelical crisis of authority. 8
Zwingli and Luther?
The issue of authority has been obscured by the conventional use of the terms “Lutheran” and “Zwinglian” to describe the two sides of the Eucharistic
controversy. These names originated not as labels describing a distinct set of theological positions held by a well-defined party but, rather, as insults implying that one’s opponents were followers of a particular heretical teacher rather than members of the orthodox and catholic church. In response to charges that they were “Lutherans,” Reformation pamphleteers insisted that they were evangelical Christians, not followers of Luther, Zwingli, or anyone else.9 More significantly, the names “Zwinglian” and “Lutheran” imply that the positions of each side were identical to that of the two reformers, and that the views of those two men were both stable and fully developed. This was indeed the way both terms would be used in histories of the early Eucharistic controversy written in the second half of the sixteenth century. Those claims of consistency had a polemical purpose, however. Luther’s supporters pointed to the varying positions of their opponents while citing the Wittenberg reformer as their theological lodestone. Zurich theologians claimed in response that Luther’s position had changed over time, while Zwingli had consistently held to the same position.10 Neither party accurately depicted the situation of the later 1520s, for as will become clear over the course of this study, the views of both Luther and Zwingli developed during these years.
The naming of the two sides as Lutheran and Zwinglian has also reinforced the perception of the Eucharistic controversy as a clash between two theological titans, each with his own loyal following. Ironically, this view was perpetuated by Walther Köhler’s magisterial Zwingli and Luther: Their Conflict over the Supper According to its Political and Religious Connections. Köhler’s long years of experience as editor of Zwingli’s correspondence, his ready access to the rich holdings of Zurich’s Central Library, and his sensitivity to the historical context in which doctrinal formulations were expressed combined to produce a classic work that is still the standard guide to the controversy, as indicated by its reprinting in 2017, almost a century after the first volume was published.11 Köhler devoted substantial attention to the background and early debate over the Lord’s Supper, including a discussion of the many pamphlets written by other figures—“the smaller and smallest satellites,” as he called them. The preface and introduction of the work’s first volume make clear, however, that the book is not simply a narrative of developments or an encyclopedic summary of the various contributions to the Eucharistic controversy. Instead, Köhler’s goal was to examine the conflict between the two reformers named in the title, and he regarded everything before the first direct exchange between Zwingli and Luther as preliminary skirmishes. Despite his careful attention to the broader debate, in the end Köhler was most concerned with these two giants, for as he put it, “the satellites all revolve around the two suns.”12
Over the last fifty years there has been growing interest in the role of other reformers in the Eucharistic controversy, resulting in studies of Johannes Brenz, Heinrich Bullinger, Urbanus Rhegius, and the Strasbourgers Martin Bucer and
Wolfgang Capito, among others. This research has deepened our understanding of the development of Eucharistic theology in the sixteenth century, but with only a few exceptions the chief concern has continued to be the thought of individual reformers rather than the larger public discourse concerning the Lord’s Supper.13 These studies are like fence posts standing isolated around a field; they do not consider the wires that bind the posts together and create an enclosed space.14 To change analogies, just as it is hard to assess the originality and significance of one person’s contribution to a telephone conference call when none of the other voices are heard, so it is difficult to evaluate the contribution of individual reformers without taking into account how they fit into the broader public discussion of the Lord’s Supper and of the sacraments more generally. It is necessary to listen to the conversation as a whole.
The chapters that follow examine the development of that broader discourse concerning the sacraments, focusing especially on the published debate concerning the Lord’s Supper that took place over the second half of the 1520s. Like Walther Köhler’s study, it is based on an analysis of the printed works not only of the major figures but also of “the smaller and smallest satellites.” Unlike Köhler, however, it takes these individuals seriously as contributors to the debate and as indicators of how the ideas set forth in the most influential publications were received, adapted, and passed on to a different audience. My analysis of these printed works has two related goals: to evaluate the role of printing in the dissemination of evangelical ideas by looking specifically at the debate over the sacraments, and to describe how the printed debate shaped the development of sacramental theology and so contributed to the ultimate division of the evangelical movement, not simply into the forerunners of the confessional churches but also into various dissenting groups. Luther and Zwingli were of course important for the development of the controversy, but other figures were also major players. Particularly important for this process were the exchanges that took place from the beginning of 1526 to the spring of 1527, before Zwingli and Luther attacked each other head-on. Through this early printed debate, authors first worked out the understanding of the Lord’s Supper and of the sacraments in general that were incorporated into the better-known exchange between Luther and the Swiss reformers in 1527–28 and then enshrined in the confessions that began to be written at the end of the decade.
The trend especially in cultural studies of the Reformation has been to downplay theological fine points to focus on more general beliefs, attitudes, and feelings characteristic of a society over a long period of time. This approach cannot work in discussing the early years of the Reformation. Beginnings are by their very nature unstable and involve significant change within a short time, and the early Reformation is no exception. To understand the way sacramental theology would
divide Protestantism in the wake of the Reformation, it is necessary to examine closely the alternatives present at the Reformation’s very beginning. As Luther and his supporters would argue, the devil was quite literally in the details, and studying those details reveals why and how disagreements over the sacraments divided the evangelical movement. The theological positions concerning the Lord’s Supper and the sacraments more generally that developed over the second half of the 1520s would inform the confessions, liturgies, and catechisms that were introduced in Protestant cities and territories in the 1530s and beyond, and so they were crucial for shaping the religious experiences and devotional practices of Protestant Christians in Germany and Switzerland. If we do not understand the foundation of these practices, we will misinterpret the practices themselves.
At the same time, my approach to the debate over the Lord’s Supper differs considerably from that of the theologians and church historians who shaped the familiar narrative. It is concerned not only with the theological arguments contained in printed contributions to the debate but also with the way authors used print to refute their opponents and persuade readers to adopt the author’s own position, and it draws attention to how those positions were elaborated and developed over the course of a public exchange. It considers not only authors but also the role of translators, editors, and printers in expanding the controversy. By looking at how lesser-known individuals reacted and responded to the publications of major contributors to the debate, it offers insight into the reception and further transmission of evangelical ideas more generally, shedding light on the diffusion of evangelical beliefs, the social location of the audiences, and the conceptual frameworks within which the evangelical message was interpreted.
Print and Literacy
The early printed debate over the Lord’s Supper engaged the attention of the literate public throughout the second half of the 1520s and played a vital role in the development of what would become the two major Protestant confessions. The scope of this debate, however, has not been sufficiently recognized either in studies of the Eucharistic controversy or in those of early modern printing more generally. A consideration of book production overall during the first three decades of the sixteenth century provides some context for understanding the significance of print for the Eucharistic controversy.
It is well known that the Reformation caused a significant rise in book production in German-speaking Europe.15 In the first decade of the sixteenth century, German printers produced only between three hundred and four hundred imprints each year (figure 1.1).16 Production rose to an average of almost five
All Imprints
hundred imprints each year between 1511 and 1517, but with the beginning of the Reformation, the pace of publication increased rapidly, reaching a peak of 1,460 works printed in 1524 alone. Over the next few years publications declined to about half that number in 1527, but then began to increase again, reaching almost 1,200 titles in 1530.
A significant proportion of these publications were Flugschriften, or pamphlets. Hans-Joachim Köhler, one of the first scholars to undertake a quantitative examination of pamphlet publication, defined a pamphlet as “an independent printed work consisting of more than one page, unbound and not part of a series, that was addressed to the general public with the goal of agitation (i.e., to influence action) and/or propaganda (i.e., to influence opinion).” Pamphlets were of varying length and were usually in the vernacular, although they could also be in Latin. They covered a range of current topics, but they were particularly concerned with political, religious, and/or social questions. While the author might address a specific audience or social group in the original text, publication spread its contents to a heterogeneous public that was unknown to the author.17 Because pamphlets were intended to persuade to belief or action, the author’s rhetorical strategies were as important as the information or ideas contained in the pamphlet.
Pamphlets were first used to influence public opinion during the controversy that broke out in 1511 over Johannes Reuchlin’s defense of Hebrew books, but with the Reformation they came into their own as a contribution to the public exchange of ideas. Half of the almost 21,000 works printed between 1501 and 1530 were pamphlets. As with printing overall, the number of pamphlets printed each year increased exponentially with the outbreak of the Reformation. Pamphlet
Figure 1.1 Number of Publications in German-Speaking Lands
production rose 530 percent between 1517 and 1518 alone, and this rapid rate of growth continued through 1524, at which point pamphlet publication was fiftyfive times higher than in the period before 1518. Indeed, almost three-quarters of all pamphlets produced in the first three decades of the sixteenth century were printed between 1520 and 1526.18
Scholars have examined these early reformation pamphlets extensively, considering them from the perspective of topic, genre, illustration, author, and place of publication.19 Most of these studies focus on pamphlets published through 1525, and there is a consensus that the decline in pamphlet production after 1524 reflects the end of the Reformation as a popular movement. This ignores the significance of the printed debate over the Lord’s Supper, however. At a time when the overall number of printed titles was declining, the sacrament became one of the most frequently discussed topics in works published in German-speaking lands.
The importance of the Lord’s Supper as a controversial topic is revealed by the proportion of works concerning the sacrament published throughout the 1520s. Printed discussion of the mass began in 1520, with the publication of two major works by Martin Luther: his vernacular Sermon on the New Testament and his Latin treatise On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. Both works rejected the sacrifice of the mass and proposed a new way of understanding the sacrament as Christ’s testament—the promise of forgiveness guaranteed by the signs or seals of bread and wine. The sacrament was discussed in roughly 7 percent of all works published in German-speaking lands between 1520 and 1523. It thus drew some attention, but it was by no means the most controversial of all topics.20 Although the overall number of publications fell between 1524 and 1527, the outbreak of the Eucharistic controversy led to a boom in publications concerning the Lord’s Supper. As a result, the proportion of works on the sacrament rose from roughly 9 percent of all works published in 1524 to a high of 22 percent of all imprints in 1527. All told, about 19 percent of the imprints produced between 1525 and 1529 addressed the Lord’s Supper in one form or another (see figure 1.2).21
If we look more specifically at pamphlet literature, the figures are even more striking. Pamphlets were crucial for the diffusion of evangelical teachings in the first half of the 1520s, but they were also important for the debate over the Lord’s Supper throughout the second half of the decade. Between 1520 and 1524, only about 10 percent of the pamphlets included in Hans-Joachim Köhler’s bibliography of pamphlets addressed the Lord’s Supper—not much more than their proportion of printed works overall.22 In 1525, though, the proportion of pamphlets discussing the Lord’s Supper rose to 25 percent, and it peaked at 35 percent of the pamphlets printed the following year before falling to about 20 percent in 1529.23 These statistics make evident the broad public interest in the debate over the
