Happy Thomas Becket Day

A year after the death of Theobald, April 18, 1161, Becket was appointed by the king archbishop of Canterbury. He accepted reluctantly, and warned the king, with a smile, that he would lose a servant and a friend. The learned and energetic Bishop Gilbert Foliot of Hereford (afterwards of London) remarked sarcastically, perhaps from disappointed ambition, that “the king had wrought a miracle in turning a layman into an archbishop, and a soldier into a saint.”

Becket…. he’s what happens when Kings meddle in the Church.

Heinrich Bullinger: On the Sub-Christian Nature of Polygamy and the Nature of Marriage

Bullinger writes

But it is not appropriate that in lawful matrimony any more should be than two alone, to be joined together under one yoke of wedlock.

For the use of many wives, which our fathers usurped without any blame, may not stablish polygamy for a law among us at these days. The time of correction is now come to light, and Messiah now is come into the world, who teacheth all rightly, and reformeth things amiss.

He therefore hath reduced wedlock to the first prescribed rule and law of matrimony. “Two,” saith the Lord, “shall be one flesh.” And the apostle saith: “Let every man have his own wife, and every woman her own husband.”

The multitude of Solomon’s concubines therefore appertain not to us. We have not to follow the example of Jacob, who married two sisters.

For Christians, even marriage takes its cue from Christ and not from culture.  For Christians, marriage consists of the joining together of one man and one woman.  Period.

But what about divorce?  Bullinger, along with the rest of the Reformers, frowned on it, though they saw it as a concession to the weakness of many.  Still, the divorced were not free to remarry.  Period.

But what if the spouse dies?  Bullinger writes

And yet, notwithstanding, the word of truth condemneth not the second, third, or many marriages which a man maketh, when his wife is deceased.

Marriage, for Christians, means something more than it does for the larger society.  The culture may root like pigs in the trough but Christians are called to a better, less porcine, life.

Luther Gets to Worms

Luther arrived in Worms on Tuesday morning, April 16, 1521, at ten o’clock, shortly before early dinner, in an open carriage with his Wittenberg companions, preceded by the imperial herald, and followed by a number of gentlemen on horseback. He was dressed in his monastic gown. The watchman on the tower of the cathedral announced the arrival of the procession by blowing the horn, and thousands of people gathered to see the heretic.

Fun Facts From Church History: Calvin and His Fevers

[Calvin]  was subject to frequent and severe attacks of fever: they sometimes came upon him while in the pulpit; and he once wrote to a friend, saying that it was only with great trouble, and by sitting down, that he could get through his sermon. But he had a heavier trial to bear: the wife of his brother Anton disgraced the family by her infidelity. Farel observes on this, that it was good for Calvin to encounter these humbling circumstances, “lest his mind might be too exalted by the greatness of the revelations vouchsafed him.”*

Calvin had to sit down when he preached. When I preach, I’m even more effective in sickening the congregation because I make them lie down, bent over with fits of retching and projectile vomiting.  Calvin suffered fevers- I induce them.  Which is more miraculous?  So, take that, John!
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*The Life and Times of John Calvin, the Great Reformer (Vol. 2, p. 318).

Fun Facts From Church History: The Pig Eating Priests of Basel

In 1522

On April 27th a friend informed Zwingli that some priests at Basel ate a sucking pig on Palm Sunday. The incident made quite a stir…*

As big a stir, it seems, as the sausage incident of Zurich.

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*S. Jackson, Huldreich Zwingli: The Reformer of German Switzerland (1484–1531).

On This Day, in Zurich, in 1525

The Council abolished the Catholic Mass in the Churches of Zurich.  As Zwingli wrote that same year

Nothing, therefore, of ours is to be added to the word of God, and nothing taken from His word by rashness of ours. To this some one might here object: “Yet many have found rest even in the word of man, and still do find it; for today the consciences of many are firmly persuaded that they will attain salvation if the Roman Pontiff absolve them, grant them indulgences, enroll them in heaven; if nuns and monks tell beads for them, and do masses, hours, and other things for them.” To this objection I answer that all such are either fools or hypocrites, for it must be the result of folly and ignorance if one thinks one’s self what one is not.

Amen.

Reformation and Everyday Life

The European reformations meant major changes in theology, religion, and everyday life. Some changes were immediate and visible in a number of countries: monasteries were dissolved, new liturgies were introduced, and married pastors were ordained, others were more hidden. Theologically, as well as practically the position of the church in the society changed dramatically, but differently according to confession and political differences. This volume addresses the question of how the theological, liturgical, and organizational changes changes brought by the reformation within different confessional cultures throughout Europe influenced the everyday life of ordinary people within the church and within society. The different contributions in the book ask how lived religion, space, and everyday life were formed in the aftermath of the reformation, and how we can trace changes in material culture, in emotions, in social structures, in culture, which may be linked to the reformation and the development of confessional cultures.

This wonderful collection of papers which were first delivered in 2021 at a REFORC meeting.  The Leseprobe at the link above provides readers with a lot of the opening pages of the book including of course the TOC.

And don’t worry about the German of the website, the book is in English and the materials available are too.

The essays themselves are fascinating.  I am particularly taken by Wandel’s ‘The Reformation of Time’ in which she investigates the ways that Missals were modified and adapted by the Reformed.  Sometimes it’s the things you wouldn’t think about looking into that provide the most new information (or at least new to you).

Along with the usual historical and theological treatments we also find forays into the world of art and how the Reformation impacted it.  Noble’s essay on Durer is a fascinating example of this field if investigation.

Not to be missed for any reason is Stjerna’s examination of women in the European Reformations.  Their contributions are indisputably epoch making and significant and until recently they simply haven’t received the attention they deserve.  Old white guys talking about old white guys has seen its time and now, thankfully, that time is past.

Other essayists also bring the importance of women in the Danish Reformation and beyond.

There are footnotes, bibliographies, and an index, along with a description of each of the contributors which finishes up the volume.

It’s true that of the making of books there is no end.  Some (if not most, let’s be honest) should be ignored as they don’t deserve the time they get.

But others, like the present work, richly deserve a thorough reading and those who will are themselves richly rewarded.

Happy Edward Wightman Day

For those who celebrate-

Edward Wightman was well-known in Puritan circles in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire in the early 1600s, where he began proclaiming increasingly heretical opinions. He reportedly did not believe that human souls went to heaven or hell after death but remained with the body in the grave until the Day of Judgment. As his pronouncements grew odder and odder, his Puritan friends remonstrated with him in vain and he attracted the attention of the authorities. In 1611 he spent months in prison, interrogated at intervals by the Bishop of Lichfield, Richard Neile, and William Laud (the future Archbishop of Canterbury) among others.

Wightman seems to have denied the doctrine of the Trinity, denied that Jesus Christ was God, denied the Resurrection and the legitimacy of Holy Communion and maintained that he himself was both the Holy Spirit and, though not himself divine, the Messiah appointed by God as the saviour of the world. From a modern perspective it seems clear that he had gone completely insane.

Wightman was eventually put on trial in the diocesan court in Lichfield, which in December pronounced him guilty of blasphemy and of promoting the heresies of figures ranging from Simon Magus to the Arians, the Manicheans and the Anabaptists. He was sent to the stake in the square in Lichfield in March 1612. When the flames began to scorch him he cried out in pain and it was thought he wanted to recant. Some of the crowd of spectators rushed to rescue him, though getting burned themselves. He was taken back to prison to recover, but when he was brought before the court again he refused to sign a formal recantation and on Easter Saturday in April he was sent back to the stake and was this time burned to death.

Wightman’s son and two grandsons emigrated to America in the 1650s and were ancestors of various people called Wightman or Whitman, allegedly including the poet Walt Whitman.

Today With Zwingli: The Abolition of the Mass

S. Jackson reports

One more step remained to be taken and the church in Zurich would be completely emancipated from the Old Church, and that was to abolish entirely the mass. Cautiously, but without retrogression, Zwingli had for years steadily moved towards this goal. In 1524 he had won from the Council permission for the priests to dispense the bread and wine under both forms if they would. This, however, still maintained the connection with the old forms.

Judging that the time had come, and knowing that the friends of the ecclesiastical overturning were in decided majority in the Council of the Two Hundred, Zwingli and several other leaders appeared before the Council on Tuesday, April 11, 1525,—Tuesday of Holy Week,—and demanded the abolition of the mass and the substitution therefor of the Lord’s Supper as described by the evangelists and the Apostle Paul.

Opposition being made to the proposition, the Council delegated its debate with Zwingli to four of themselves, and their report being on Zwingli’s side, the Council ordered that the mass be abolished forthwith.

Consequently, on Thursday, April 13, 1525, the first evangelical communion service took place in the Great Minster, and according to Zwingli’s carefully thought out arrangement, which he had published April 6th.

A table covered with a clean linen cloth was set between the choir and the nave in the Great Minster. Upon it were the bread upon wooden platters and the wine in wooden beakers. The men and the women in the congregation were upon opposite sides of the middle aisle. Zwingli preached a sermon and offered prayer. The deacon read Paul’s account of the institution of the sacrament in 1 Cor., 11:20 sqq. Then Zwingli and his assistants and the congregation performed a liturgy, entirely without musical accompaniment in singing, but translated into the Swiss dialect from the Latin mass service, with the introduction of appropriate Scripture and the entire elimination of the transubstantiation teaching.

The elements were passed by the deacons through the congregation. This Eucharist service was repeated upon the two following days.*

On that remarkable day the Church returned, at least in Zurich, to its earliest practice – a practice long corrupted by the magical views of the supporters of the false doctrine of transsubstantiation.
__________________
*S. Jackson, (pp. 228–230).

Ketzer und Heiliger: Das Bild des Johannes Hus zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung

Der 1415 auf dem Konstanzer Konzil als Ketzer verbrannte Johannes Hus wurde vor der Reformation gemeinhin als ein Häretiker betrachtet. Mit Luther und der anbrechenden Reformation begann jedoch ein Umdeutungsprozess, der zu einer völligen Neubewertung von Hus führte. Bereits früh wurde er auf Seiten der Reformation als Heiliger, Märtyrer und Vorläufer Luthers betrachtet. Auf römischer Seite galt Hus jedoch weiterhin als prototypische Ketzergestalt. In einem ersten Teil der Studie untersucht Eike Hinrich Thomsen die Prozesse und Ereignisse, die dazu geführt haben, dass sich das Bild von Hus mit der beginnenden Reformation nachhaltig ändern sollte. Ein zweiter Teil verfolgt einzelne Rezeptionsstränge, die bis in das 18. Jahrhundert hineinreichen. Neben der starken lutherischen Hus-Rezeption werden auch andere Gruppen wie Reformierte, „radikale Reformer“ oder Katholische untersucht. Über die schriftlichen Quellen hinaus werden zahlreiche bildliche und materielle Quellen in die Untersuchung miteinbezogen.

The TOC and the front matter and other sample bits are available here.

Readers of the present volume are treated to a meticulous reception history of Johannes Hus both by Luther and others and by generations after the Magisterial Reformers lie mouldering in the ground.

How Hus was turned from a heretic to a martyr opens the work and how that image guided the reception he received by the second generation of reformers and afterwards guides the first major division of the book (for the full TOC see above).

There’s an incredible amount of information about Hus in this portion of the volume related to his work as a musician as well as his work as a reformer before the Reformers.  But his reception by the likes of Karlstadt and Munzer and Hubmaier and others is really something to behold.

The second major segment of the book focuses on things like how Hus was incorporated into Luther-memoria and the Protestant view of Hus and how the lines connecting him to Luther influenced that reception and his memory.  It also discusses the various editions of Hus’s works by the likes of Flacius and Rabus and Walpurger.

The ghost of Hus was also dragged into use in connection to the Council of Trent, becoming a weapon in the hands of the Protestants commenting on that Catholic gathering.

And finally, the work ends with a look at the way that Hus’s death was utilized by martyrologists and apologists.  In sum, poor Hus became nothing less than a central figure for identifying one’s confessional attachments.  He became, for lack of a better term, a sort of shibboleth.

This is one of the most engaging and well developed revised dissertations that I’ve read in a while.  It has everything that one would want in a book:  good writing, an engaging narrative, and a terribly interesting subject.

I recommend this work to those who enjoy Church history.  Particularly the history of the Reformation and the church to the Enlightenment.

I hope you’ll read it.  I think you’ll want to once you take a look at the materials available on the publisher’s website.

Pestilence

Looks like Washington, DC.

 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, (The Triumph of Death 1562)

Sad News: Carter Lindberg Has Died

It is with great sadness that I announce that Carter Lindberg, Professor Emeritus of Church History at Boston University, passed away on Monday, 8 April 2024. Carter served as President of the Sixteenth Century Society in 1979. He is best known for his 1996 textbook, The European Reformations, which changed how many both understood and taught the era. He cared deeply about the social impact of the Reformations, publishing two books on the topic.

He also wrote about and thought a great deal about love. He wrote his dissertation at University of Iowa, where he worked with George Forell and Robert Kingdon, on Anders Nygren’s conception of love in his interpretation of Luther. His last monograph, published in 2008 was a Love: A Brief History. He loved and laughed deeply. He was married to Alice for 63 years. They met in high school and began dating their first year of college. She died six weeks ago and Carter began to fade almost immediately. They have three children, Anne, Erika, and Matthew, and five grandchildren, and Carter’s doctoral students also became unofficial members of the extended Lindberg family. People who knew him will well-remember his infectious laugh and his ever-present pipe.

On behalf of his family and his former students, if you wish to honor Carter in some way, we encourage you to donate to the Sixteenth Century Society’s Robert M. Kingdon Prize, which awards travel grants to graduate students so that they can attend the annual meeting of the society. Carter shared Bob’s passion for encouraging graduate students to participate in the life of the society and worked to make it affordable. To donate, please use this link and mention Carter’s name in the notation box.

David Whitford- Society for Reformation Studies

Today in Catholic History

Utterly remarkable really since Jerome himself valued the Hebrew and Greek texts above all others.

Martin Chemnitz

From Sachsen-Anhalt on FB

Martin Chemnitz, leading German theologian who was known, with reference to Martin Luther, as “the second Martin” (or Alter Martinus) : Si Martinus non fuisset, Martinus vix stetisset (“If Martin [Chemnitz] had not come along, Martin [Luther] would hardly have survived”) goes a common saying concerning him.

At the University of Wittenberg (1545), Chemnitz was the protégé of the Reformer Philipp Melanchthon. In 1550 at Königsberg, he became librarian to Duke Albert of Prussia, an appointment that afforded him an opportunity to continue his theological studies. He returned to Wittenberg in 1553, entered the ministry as the pastor of the church of St. Aegidi, and began to lecture on Melanchthon’s Loci communes rerum theologicarum (“Theological Commonplaces”), the first systematic treatise on Reformation theology. The following year Chemnitz became coadjutor to Joachim Mörlin, whom he succeeded in 1567 as superintendent of the churches of Braunschweig, a post he held for the rest of his life.

In 1568 he began a decade of work with the theologian Jakob Andreä in uniting German Lutheranism, which had been divided by theological disagreement after Luther’s death in 1546. This end was achieved by the Formula of Concord (1577), which inaugurated the era of Lutheran orthodoxy and was primarily the work of the two men.

He died April 8, 1586.

Today in Church History: The Diet of Augsburg

The situation of Protestantism in 1530 was critical. The Diet of Speier had forbidden the further progress of the Reformation: the Edict of Worms was in full legal force; the Emperor had made peace with the Pope, and received from him the imperial crown at Bologna; the Protestants were divided among themselves, and the Conference at Marburg had failed to unite them against the common foe. At the same time the whole empire was menaced by a foreign power. The Turks under Suleiman “the Magnificent,” who called himself “Lord of all rulers, Dispenser of crowns to the monarchs of the earth, the Shadow of God over the world,” had reached the summit of their military power, and approached the gates of Vienna in September, 1529. They swore by the beard of Mohammed not to rest till the prayers of the prophet of Mecca should be heard from the tower of St. Stephen. They were indeed forced to retire with a loss of eighty thousand men, but threatened a second attempt, and in the mean time laid waste a great part of Hungary.

Under these circumstances the Diet of Augsburg convened, April 8, 1530. Its object was to settle the religious question, and to prepare for war against the Turks. The invitation dated Jan. 21, 1530, from Bologna, carefully avoids all irritating allusions, sets forth in strong language the danger of foreign invasion, and expresses the hope that all would co-operate for the restoration of the unity of the holy empire of the German nation in the one true Christian religion and church.

So Schaff.  It was the Diet of Augsburg which provoked the production of the Augsburg Confession.  And Melanchthon’s ‘Apology of the Augsburg Confession’.  And remember, apology means ‘defense’, not something else.

The Anniversary of Tyndale’s Ordination

Ordination is always followed eventually by execution- either literally or metaphorically.

The Anniversary of Dürer’s Death

Albrecht Dürer died on April 6, 1528. Dürer is considered the greatest of the northern European Renaissance artists, having spent the majority of his career in Nuremberg, Germany. Although he never met Martin Luther, he and his work were greatly influenced by the writings of Luther and other reformers. His work, in turn, influenced the next generation of artists including, presumably, Lucas Cranach and his son who were dear friends of Martin and Katie Luther.

The painting is “The Four Apostles”, and depicts John, Peter, Mark, and Paul. It was done by Dürer in 1526 and now hangs in the Alte Pinakothek Museum in Munich.

-Rebecca DeGarmeaux (on Facebook)

Fun Facts From Church History: Scotus Was a Heretic

Scotus Erigena was considered a heretic or a madman while he lived, and this fact joined to the other that his views were far in advance of his age, caused his influence to be at first much less than might have been expected. He passed into almost complete obscurity before he died, as the conflicting reports of his later years show. Yet he did wield a posthumous influence.

His idea of the unity of philosophy and theology comes up in Anselm and Thomas Aquinas; his speculation concerning primordial causes in Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus. From him Amalrich of Bena, and David of Dinanto drew their pantheism; and various mystical sects of the Middle Ages were inspired by him.

The Church, ever watchful for orthodoxy, perceived that his book, De Divisione Naturae, was doing mischief. Young persons, even in convents read it eagerly. Everywhere it attracted notice. Accordingly a council, at Sens, formally condemned it, and then the Pope (Honorius III.) ordered, by a bull of Jan. 23, 1225, the destruction of all copies that could be found, styling it “a book teeming with the worms of heretical depravity.” This order probably had the desired effect.

The book passed out of notice. But in 1681 Thomas Gale issued it in Oxford. Again the Roman Church was alarmed, and Gregory XIII., by bull of April 3, 1685, put it on the Index.*

Yes, you read that right.  It was Scotus who bastardized theology by unifying it with philosophy.  For that reason alone he deserves Servetus-izing.

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*Philip Schaff and David Schley Schaff, History of the Christian Church (vol. 4; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 772.

The Best Selling Book of the 16th Century Wasn’t Calvin’s Institutes or Luther’s ‘Babylonian Captivity’

It should be today, but people would rather read garbage.

Important Events in Church History That Took Place in April

The notables who died:

• W.P. Stephens – 2019 – April 1
• Emil Brunner – 1966 – April 6
• Philipp Melanchthon – 1560 – April 19

Zwingli published some things:

• Z 1,137 – 1522 – April 9
• Z 1,74ff – 1522 – April 16
• Z 3,86 – 1524 – April 20
• Z 5,1 – 1526 – April 21
• Z 5, 34 – 1526 – April 30

Important things happened:

• Emil Brunner preached his first Sermon – 1912 – April 14

The notables who were born:

• Philip Davies – 1945 – April 20
• Gottfried Locher – 1911 – April 29

Bullinger published some things:

• B 6, 199 – 1536 – April 24
• B 6, 185 – 1535 – April 27