communal reformation. the quest for salvation in sixteenth-century germany.by peter blickle; thomas...

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Communal Reformation. The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany. by Peter Blickle; Thomas Dunlap Review by: James M. Stayer The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 450-452 Published by: The Sixteenth Century Journal Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2542925 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 22:08 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Sixteenth Century Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:08:48 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Communal Reformation. The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany.by Peter Blickle; Thomas Dunlap

Communal Reformation. The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany. by PeterBlickle; Thomas DunlapReview by: James M. StayerThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 450-452Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2542925 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 22:08

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheSixteenth Century Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:08:48 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Communal Reformation. The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany.by Peter Blickle; Thomas Dunlap

450 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXV / 2 (1994)

Amplonian College at the University of Erfurt, not of St. George's Burse. There is no evi- dence that Luther's struggles in the monastery were the result of sexual lust. He was a model monk but could not find spiritual certainty or peace of conscience through the monastic life and discipline.With regard to the 95 Theses, Brecht argues that they were sent to the bishops, including the Archbishop of Mainz, on October 31, 1517 but that they were not posted in

Wittenberg until mid-November of the same year. Finally, Brecht affirms the crucial signif- icance of Luther's Anfechtungen and of his reformatory discovery for his spiritual develop- ment, his emergence as an evangelical theologian and the specifics of his reform program. He also agrees with the growing consensus of recent scholarship which dates that discovery in 1518 and confirms Luther's own assertion that it was finally triggered by a new understand-

ing of the righteousness of God. In Brecht's presentation Luther is pictured as a man of conscience, consistently motivated

by theological convictions and concerns, whose passionate search for and defense of the truth, as he perceived it, was shaped by his interpretation of Scripture, by his desire to defend the Gospel and by his concern to be a faithful servant of God and a conscientious teacher of the church. As Brecht summarizes and interprets many of Luther's major writings, the Re- former emerges not only as a fascinating historical figure but also as an incisive expositor of

Scripture, a creative theological mind and a talented, though often acerbating, apologist and

polemicist who profoundly impacted the Western theological tradition and who revitalized both church and society in formative ways. Though Luther recognized and apologized for his polemical excesses and sought instruction and correction on the basis of Scripture, he

challenged all those whom he perceived to be enemies of God'sWord and was willing to face the consequences of his challenge. Single-minded and passionate, he was ready to stand alone, if necessary, but also welcomed and appreciated the support of those who joined his cause. Such a picture of the "young" Luther is surely defensible.

This volume's particular strengths are its comprehensive nature and the author's detailed summaries of Luther's most significant writings. Brecht presents a vast amount of informa- tion in a carefully crafted and thorough account. Furthermore, his precise reconstructions of the Reformer's works highlight the central concern of Luther's reform program, namely, his

theological proposals.They also assist the reader in entering or reviewing the Reformer's nu- merous writings, in tracing the development of Luther's thought and in gaining direct in-

sights into Luther's unique perspectives and convictions. One disappointment should be noted, however. Because of Brecht's intimate and diverse

acquaintance with Luther, one would have expected more extensive analytical reflections re-

garding the Reformer's person, thought, and activity. The author functions primarily as a careful and thoughtful reporter rather than as an innovative interpreter. Nevertheless, Brecht's study is and will remain one of the standard biographies of Luther. It deserves a

prominent place in the library of every serious student of the Reformation.

Kurt K. Hendel ...................... Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Communal Reformation. The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Peter Blickle. Thomas Dunlap, trans. Atlantic Highlands, NJ. and London: Humanities Press, 1992. xix + 219 pp. n.p.

The appearance of Peter Blickle's Gemeindereformation in a serviceable (although not ele- gant) English translation is an event of significance for Reformation studies in the English- reading countries. It is comparable to the importance of the appearance of the English ver- sion of his Revolution of 1525 (1981) on the Peasants'War. Like that book it delivers a pro-

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Page 3: Communal Reformation. The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany.by Peter Blickle; Thomas Dunlap

Book Reviews 451

vocative "provisional balance" on a very important topic-in this case the character of the Reformation until the suppression of the Peasants'War in 1525-26. Like Revolution of 1525, Communal Reformation will not be accepted as the final word on its topic, but it presents a clear, well-defended and important interpretation that Reformation scholarship ignores at its

peril. Communal Reformation attacks the limitation of the social history of the Reformation to

"the Reformation in the cities," as if villagers were not important participants in the popular Reformation, particularly up to 1525.The chapter on the rural Reformation documents the efforts of villages to control their own churches and pastors and to administer their tithes. The programs and manifestos of the Peasants'War particularly stress the community's demand to elect and dismiss its own pastor, who will preach the gospel purely, free of human adulterations, as well as the call for the godly law as the norm for human social relationships. The subsequent two chapters stress the essential similarity between the burghers' Reforma- tion in the cities and towns and the Reformation in the villages. The burghers' Reformation was usually a result of the initiative of communities organized around the guilds.These com- munities rejected the lordship over their religious life of external patrons who were part of the Roman hierarchy, as well as a clergy legally separate from the citizenry and placed in a

position to exploit it financially. In Blickle's perception the communal Reformation was focused temporally in the early

1520s and concentrated geographically in the areas of southwest Germany and Switzerland, the Franconian-Alemannic and Swiss-Austrian regions, "between Alsace and Salzburg, be- tween Franconia and Inner Switzerland."The often noticed paradox that the Peasants'War occurred in the regions of Germany where the towns were the thickest is explained by the idea that in these regions an egalitarian community-based society had replaced the old ma- norial society and economy of the high middle ages. In Switzerland communal institutions had already eclipsed feudal hierarchy and in southwest Germany communalism mounted a

growing challenge to lordship, that was at first ignited by the Reformation and then smoth- ered with the defeat of the Peasants'War. Following 1525 a chastened communal Reforma- tion continued in Switzerland, where previous history had provided it with an institutional foundation, but in the Holy Roman Empire the communal Reformation was replaced by a

princes' Reformation (which dominated those imperial cities that continued to be evangel- ical by the grace of the Schmalkaldic League).What was left of the popular Reformation in

Germany had to abandon its community basis and hide itself in separatist Anabaptist conven- ticles.

Blickle's interpretation of course makes an intrinsic connection between the Reforma- tion and the Peasants'War. The present book is in some sense a continuation and comple- ment to Revolution of 1525, although in no sense a repetition of it. Like the earlier book, it underscores the initiative of anonymous commoners in historical events too often attributed to the inspired powers of great theologians and great politicians. Both books insist on the close similarity of town and village life in sixteenth-century Germany and Switzerland and

reject overemphasis upon the initiative of"cities" as a modernizing anachronism. The exten- sive pamphlet propaganda of the Reformation, Blickle argues, spread to the villages. He cites Bernd Moeller's notion that "the peasants, ...in the face of the Reformation, persisted in their ahistorical life.. .as though they had never heard of the new doctrines" with the scorn it deserves.

In rejecting Luther's presumption to consign the resisting commoners to the devil and

expel them from the Reformation, Blickle tries too hard to associate the Peasants'War as ex-

pressed in the Twelve Articles with the theology of Ulrich Zwingli.The chapter "Church and

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Page 4: Communal Reformation. The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany.by Peter Blickle; Thomas Dunlap

452 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXV / 2 (1994)

Gospel in the Reformers'Theology" is the weakest in the book. Previous popular biblicist movements attacking the Roman church like the Lollards and the Hussites connected the gospel and the law of God as a matter of course.That the rebels of 1525 connected the gospel and the law does not need to be explained with the reference to Zwingli or Miintzer; Luther's dialectics of law and gospel, however brilliant, are what calls for explanation, whether theological or sociopolitical.

The critique of Blickle by Tom Scott, that the erection of communal churches does not

necessarily imply the acceptance of Protestant doctrine, also needs consideration. Scott

points to Inner Switzerland as a place where an earlier communal reform of the churches in- oculated the population against all attacks upon Roman doctrine-a point Blickle antici-

pates but does not develop on page 167. Blickle's antithesis of community-based Reforma- tion and separatist Anabaptism is too sharp-the two were thoroughly intermingled in 1525. His depiction of an ascending wave of communalism sweeping out of the middle ages until it peaked in 1525 is drastically oversimplified. In Revolution of 1525 Blickle put the matter correctly-from about 1450 communal institutions were losing ground before the advance of territorial governments. As Moeller argued long ago in Imperial Cities and the Reformation, the Reformation provided a new impetus to communalism in decline.

There is much else to say pro and contra. Let it suffice that this is an important, stimulating book that opens fresh perspectives on the Reformation. Only the unteachable can read it without new insight.

James M. Stayer ........................................ Queen's University

Universita e Cultura: Studi sui rapporti italo-tedeschi nell'eta dell' Umanesimo. Agostino Sottili. Goldbach: Keip Verlag, 1993. 432 pp. DM 148,-

This book is a collection of eleven articles (seven in Italian, four in German) which the eminent Italian historian Agostino Sottili published between 1971 and 1991 in various Ital- ian, German, and Belgian journals.What gives his studies unity and cohesion is that they all revolve around one common theme: the presence of German students at North Italian uni- versities and their role in the diffusion of Italian humanism in the Holy Roman Empire. The difficulties for such research are enormous because the matriculation records for most North Italian universities, with the exception of Bologna, are virtually nonexistent. However, un- daunted by such obstacles, Sottili, with great persistence, has searched through numerous Italian and German archives in his attempt to shed light on the contacts between German students and their Italian universities.

In the fifteenth century an ever-growing number of German students enrolled in Italian universities to study medicine and law, hoping that, upon their return, the good training they had received abroad would assure them positions of responsibility in church and state in their native country. During their studies at Italian universities, these students came in contact with and were often fascinated by humanist teachers whose works they copied and brought back when they returned home. That they copied not necessarily the best works but often second or third rate texts, has of course to do with the fact that humanism arrived much later in the Empire. Having received their B.A.'s in Heidelberg, Erfurt, or Leipzig, the central Eu- ropean students did not possess the same humanist training in rhetoric and philology their Italian contemporaries had enjoyed. But it was precisely because the Northern students were less critical and less selective, Sottili argues, that they contributed to saving many works which no longer found (or never had found) an audience in Italy. Thus the preservation in

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