Alternatives to Luther The Diversification of the Reformation
Alternatives to Luther
The Diversification of the Reformation
The name of Martin Luther dominates most popular accounts of the origins and development of Protestantism. By 1519 Luther’s name was beginning to be known more widely, especially within humanist circles. Luther himself was somewhat despondent about the outcome of the debate with Johann Eck at Leipzig, feeling that he had been outwitted and outmaneuvered by the canny theologian from Ingolstadt. Yet humanist networks were buzzing with the news of a hitherto unknown Augustinian monk who had laid down a formidable challenge to papal authority. Luther was about to be hailed as a leading representative of the case for reform of the church and would attract support from even such a luminary as Erasmus of Rotterdam.
Yet other reforming movements were springing up elsewhere in Europe around this time, initially without any knowledge of Luther’s activities and aspirations. It is now clear that uncoordinated reforming initiatives were breaking out in many parts of Europe in the 1510s, often in response to local situations or inspired by local heroes. Many of Europe’s great cities became epicenters of reforming movements that responded to and addressed their local situations. Recent scholarship, in stressing the intellectual and sociological heterogeneity of the first phase of the Reformation, has made it virtually impossible to think of it as a single, coherent movement.1
THE HETEROGENEITY OF EARLY PROTESTANTISM
The Reformation is best conceived as a series of initially independent reforming movements with quite distinct agendas and understandings of the nature of theology and its role in the life of the church. Through the complex networks of the interchange of people, correspondence, and publications that were characteristic of this age, these originally independent movements came to achieve at least a partial degree of alignment over the following decade. Yet this identity was not determined by the movement’s origins, as if this could be frozen in time and declared to be permanently normative. In a tangled and not fully understood process of reappraisal, reorientation, and reappropriation, it would emerge over time.2
The concept of “Protestantism” arose from an attempt to link a series of events in the early sixteenth century to form a common narrative of transformation. For the historian, there has never been a thing called “Protestantism”; rather, there were a number of movements, each with its own distinctive regional, theological, and cultural agendas. To speak of “the rise of Protestantism” is to offer a controlling narrative that links these potentially disparate events as part of a greater, more significant movement. So persuasive was this emerging narrative that many of the reforming groups scattered across Europe realigned their sense of identity and purpose to conform to it. As these movements began to locate themselves on a historical and conceptual map, each came increasingly to identify itself in terms of what was perceived as a greater overarching movement. A subtle process of realignment led to a growing sense of institutional and intellectual identity. Yet that identity was initially conceived primarily in terms of two movements—the Lutheran Reformation in northeastern Germany and the Zwinglian Reformation in eastern Switzerland. The idea that these two movements were as the two sides of the same Protestant coin represents a later retrojection by historians and Protestant apologists.
The suggestion that there exists a universal notion called “Protestantism” must therefore be viewed with considerable caution, as must the traditional idea that Luther’s personal religious views somehow define the essence of this putative “Protestantism.” As will become clear, Protestantism designates a family of religious movements that share certain historical roots and theological resources. Luther—admired and respected in some quarters, less so in others—is certainly one of those resources. As we shall see, Protestantism developed into a coherent entity through a complicated history of negotiations and compromises in the late 1520s and 1530s, during which time it was often unclear who was “in” and who was “out,” let alone what the final outcome might be. Everything was in a state of flux, and the various reforming movements of the era shared no clear sense of a common set of beliefs, values, or ways of interpreting the Bible.
In a highly insightful study on the unity of the Reformation, Dorothea Wendebourg argues that the “unity” of the Reformation emerged retrospectively, primarily in response to later Catholic criticisms of the movement.3 Protestantism developed its sense of identity primarily in response to external threats and criticisms rather than as a result of shared beliefs. In one sense, the idea of “Protestantism” can be seen as the creation of its opponents rather than of its supporters. The history of Protestantism repeatedly demonstrates that a shared sense of identity that transcends denominational and confessional boundaries depends on there being a credible common enemy—a role that has been played, until very recently, by Catholicism.
In this chapter, we explore some of the early alternatives to Luther that sprang up throughout western Europe during the 1520s and early 1530s and the negotiations that ensued to define the characteristics of the movement and maximize the potential for collaboration in the face of shared threats and foes. We begin by noting the tensions and disagreements within the original reforming faction at Wittenberg.
WITTENBERG: LOCAL ALTERNATIVES TO LUTHER
The Reformation at Wittenberg in the early 1520s centered on three very different dynamic and charismatic individuals: Martin Luther, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, and Thomas Müntzer. With his public profile, Luther was by far the most visible and well-known representative of the reforming movement in Germany. Yet his ideas did not find universal acceptance, even within Wittenberg itself. Luther was seen as much too conservative by Karlstadt and Müntzer, both of whom urged him to adopt far more radical reforming programs.
While Luther was in hiding in Wartburg Castle, Karlstadt began to assume leadership of the emerging reformation at Wittenberg. He had his own strong views on how the Bible was to be interpreted, and he applied these with enthusiasm. They were not, however, the same as Luther’s. On Christmas Day 1521, Karlstad preached in a simple robe rather than the normal elaborate clerical dress, purged any references to a sacrifice from the text of the mass, read Christ’s words of institution in German rather than Latin, and distributed both the bread and the wine to all present. The next month Karlstadt set out an agenda for even more radical reforms. All religious images were to be smashed. Did not the Old Testament forbid images altogether? Music was to be abolished altogether from churches. “Better one heart-felt prayer than a thousand cantatas of the Psalms.”
This bold act of defiance alarmed Luther. On leaving the Wartburg, Luther urged caution and assumed personal direction of the reforms at Wittenberg. Many of Karlstadt’s proposals were blocked with immediate effect. The issue of biblical interpretation suddenly became a source of public tension and disagreement. For Karlstadt, the Old Testament prohibited the use of religious images; Christians should therefore avoid them and destroy any that remained in churches. Luther, however, argued that such Old Testament regulations were not binding under the new covenant of grace.4
Karlstadt was deeply alienated by what he saw as Luther’s lack of vision and nerve. He left Wittenberg and became the pastor of Orlamünde, where he was able to continue a program of radical reform, including the abolition of infant baptism as unbiblical.5 Alarmed, Luther tried to prevent such ideas from spreading. A meeting with Karlstadt at the Black Bear Tavern in Jena failed to resolve their differences. Luther appealed to the congregation to resist Karlstadt’s radical measures, but was rebuffed. They liked their new pastor and were quite happy with the direction in which he was leading them. Karlstadt subsequently moved on to Switzerland, where he developed a still more radical approach to the reform of the church.
Karlstadt regarded Luther as a compromiser, someone who had begun to reform the church but held back once things got under way. There was a need for principled consistency, in Karlstadt’s view, rather than compromising half-measures. His criticism of Luther’s failure of theological nerve would reverberate throughout many other movements within Protestantism, which would see Luther as lacking the courage and integrity to follow his ideas through to their conclusions. Luther dismissed these more radical reformers as fanatics, but they were merely consistently following through on his own ideas and methods and reaching conclusions and outcomes that he personally found unacceptable.6
Thomas Müntzer also posed a significant challenge to Luther. Always a cautious figure, Luther was prepared to collaborate with authorities in order to secure support for his local reformation. Müntzer saw this as unbiblical, a failure to bring about the much-needed social and political reformation of society that he regarded as integral to any reformation worthy of the name. Where Luther tended to see the reformation primarily as a matter of ideas, Müntzer saw it as biblically legitimated social action. Citing the prophet Hosea, Müntzer declared that “God gave the princes and lords to the world in his anger, and intends to take them away again.” Power would then be given to the “common people.”7
These ideas would play a critical role in bringing about the Peasants’ War of 1525.8 Müntzer led the peasants at the Battle of Frankenhausen, at which they were massacred. He himself was captured and beheaded. Where Müntzer saw rebellion of the peasants against their masters as something legitimated by the Bible, Luther saw such a revolt as a metaphysical rebellion against a divinely ordained social structure, also legitimated by the Bible. It is well known that Luther’s early optimism about the ability of Herr Omnes—his term for the German people—to interpret the Bible was severely challenged by the events of the Peasants’ War.
Much, of course, could be gained through a detailed analysis and comparison of the reforming programs of Luther, Karlstadt, and Müntzer. Yet the most fundamental point is simply this: they were strikingly different. There was no single Wittenberg reforming program, no single approach to biblical interpretation and application. The fact that Luther’s particular vision of reform ultimately triumphed at Wittenberg seems to the historian to be not a fundamental theological necessity but rather a matter of historical contingency, reflecting the dynamics of power and political expediency.9 This outcome of happenstance cannot be regarded as constitutive or definitive of Protestant identity, but as representing one outcome of the many reforming agendas and programs of this formative period.
More interestingly, careful analysis of the reception of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith suggests that it was often misunderstood by the laity.10 Luther’s call to return to the Bible was often interpreted morally. The idea of the “pure gospel” led many laypeople to see the Bible as a source of instruction on behavior that was pleasing to God, or as the “law of God” illustrating how the will of God was to manifest itself in the life of human communities.11 This conclusion led many to an understanding of the Christian life as a quest for obedience to a lawgiving God, which is some considerable conceptual distance from what Luther intended by his doctrine of justification by faith. In fact, it could be argued that this interpretation of the Bible represented a reversion to a biblical moralism that was characteristic of much medieval spirituality and led away from—rather than toward—Luther’s fundamental doctrine of justification by faith.
The diversity of reforming visions becomes even clearer when we turn to consider an alternative vision of the reform of the church that was gathering pace in eastern Switzerland around the same time.
THE SWISS ALTERNATIVE: ZWINGLI AND THE CITY OF ZURICH
During the 1520s, reforming movements sprang up in many territories and cities in western Europe.12 Our story here concerns a priest who celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday on New Year’s Day 1519 by being installed as the “people’s priest” at the Great Minster in the Swiss city of Zurich. Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) would never achieve Luther’s fame and is today seen as ranking behind Luther and Calvin, in terms of both his ideas and his activities. Yet he played a vitally important part in initiating and directing the beginning of the Reformation in Switzerland—a reformation that bore little relation to Luther’s.13
At that time, Switzerland was much smaller than it is at present. The name “Switzerland” is based on one of the three original cantons—Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden—which signed a treaty of mutual defense against the Austrians in 1291. This confederation, known as the Helvetic Confederation, was gradually enlarged. In 1332 Lucerne joined the confederation, followed by Zurich (1351), Glarus and Zug (1352), and Berne (1353). When the confederation gained a historic victory over Austria at the Battle of Nafels (1388), other cantons were subsequently led to join. In 1481 the cantons of Solothurn and Fribourg joined the confederation, bringing the total membership to ten. In 1501 Basel and Schaffhausen joined, followed by Appenzell in 1513.
Zwingli was born on New Year’s Day 1484 in the Toggenburg Valley in the canton of St. Gallen, in the eastern part of modern-day Switzerland. Strictly speaking, St. Gallen was not part of the Swiss confederation at that time. However, in a 1451 treaty, St. Gallen had allied itself to some of the Swiss cantons, and Zwingli appears to have always regarded himself as Swiss. He was educated at the University of Vienna at a time when the old ideas of scholasticism were being displaced by those of humanism. By the time Zwingli returned to Switzerland, he was familiar with the “new learning” and anxious to use it in reforming the church. He became linked with humanist groups in eastern Switzerland that were working for the renewal of the church, the advance of pacifism, and the development of a Swiss “republic of letters.” Like many at the time, Zwingli was captivated by the humanist vision of Christianismus renascens—a Christianity that would be born all over again, restored to the simplicity and vitality of the apostolic age.
Zwingli’s vision of reform began to develop during his time as a “people’s priest” at the Benedictine monastery of Einsiedeln during the mid-1510s. In common with others beginning to think about reform around this time, Zwingli saw the Bible—or more specifically, the New Testament—as central to his program of renewal. Yet Zwingli, like so many reformers in eastern Switzerland, did not see any need for fundamental changes in what the church believed. His vision of reform was primarily institutional and moral: the church needed to return to the simple ways of the New Testament and behave according to the moral teachings of Christ. The New Testament was to be valued because of its clear teaching about Christian discipleship and ethics. Reformation was about the church and its members reshaping their lives in the light of that teaching.
On the day after his arrival at Zurich in 1519, Zwingli announced his intention of beginning a new course of sermons. He proposed to deliver a continuous course of sermons on the gospel according to Matthew. Instead of relying on commentaries, he would base his sermons directly on the scriptural text. For Zwingli, scripture was a living and liberating text by means of which God spoke to his people and enabled them to break free from bondage to false ideas and practices. In particular, he held that Christ’s Sermon on the Mount set out a vision for the moral life that was binding on all Christians.
The contrast with Luther here is striking. Like the fourteenth-century English reformer John Wycliffe, Zwingli saw the Bible as setting out divine commandments for human behavior.14 These were to be contrasted with the human commands of the papacy or state, which did not have the same divine warrant. The proper task of Christian education was to ensure that people were made aware of these divine demands and responded appropriately. For Luther, however, the Bible was primarily about the promises of God—things that God offered to do for humanity, rather than things that God expected humanity to do. (Interestingly, it seems that many misunderstood him on this point and reverted to ideas similar to those of Wycliffe.) Zwingli’s reforming program makes no reference to Luther’s core doctrine of “justification by faith alone.” Indeed, many scholars see an explicit tension between Zwingli’s moralist understanding of reformation and Luther’s emphasis on the grace of God.
One of the most visible and striking divergences between the two major emerging styles of Protestantism is to be found in their differing attitudes to imagery. Where Luther was prepared to tolerate religious images in churches, Zwingli held that the Old Testament ban on images was binding on all Christians. In June 1524, the city of Zurich ruled that all religious imagery was to be removed from churches.15 Iconoclastic riots spread throughout the region—Berne (1528), Basel (1529), Strasbourg (1530), and Geneva (1535)—marking the spreading of the Reformation by popular acts of violence and desecration.16
It is important to note that, throughout the entire formative period of his development as a reformer, Zwingli appears never to have heard of Martin Luther, let alone to have been influenced by him. Zwingli’s distinctive approach to the reformation of the church reflected currents of thought characteristic of eastern Switzerland at that time. In common with Luther and Erasmus, Zwingli held that the church needed to realign itself with the Bible. Yet Zwingli’s understanding of how that process should happen, and what form it would take, bore little relation to Luther’s and was much closer to Erasmus’s vision for institutional and moral reform based on an educational program grounded in the classics and the New Testament.17
In his 1522 treatise The Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God, Zwingli argued for the capacity of the Bible to interpret itself lucidly and unambivalently in all matters of importance. Like Erasmus, he insisted that the best possible aids to the interpretation of the Bible—such as a knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek languages and an understanding of the various figures of speech employed in scripture—needed to be brought to the task of establishing the natural sense of scripture.18 Like Luther, he held that the church had no authority other than the Bible.
Despite their shared emphasis on the centrality of the Bible, Luther and Zwingli used quite different techniques of biblical interpretation. Though both appealed to the same source as authoritative, the outcomes of their engagement with the biblical text were very different—and led to very different visions of reform. Illustrating this tension is one of the most significant debates between rival camps of the Reformation during the 1520s—the controversy between Luther and Zwingli over the nature of the “real presence.”19
In what sense, if any, is Christ really present in the bread and wine of the mass? As we noted earlier, Luther was strongly critical of the medieval doctrine of “transubstantiation,” believing that it was excessively dependent on the Aristotelian philosophical notions of “substance” and “accidents.” Yet his own view was that Christ is indeed present at the mass. (Luther had no difficulty in using this traditional term.) In some way, the body and blood of Christ are conveyed in, through, or under the bread and the wine. For Luther, this was the only way of interpreting Christ’s words at the Last Supper, as recorded in the gospels. When Christ offered bread to his disciples, he declared that “this is my body” (Matthew 26:26). Was not the obvious, correct way of making sense of this core text that the bread in question was Christ’s body? What other way could there be of interpreting this text? If this was not so, Luther argued, then the Bible could not be interpreted reliably.
Zwingli responded by pointing out that this was by no means the only way of interpreting this text. The Bible was full of statements that might seem to suggest one thing but, on closer inspection, meant another. For Zwingli, the phrase “this is my body” did not mean that the bread was identical with the body of Christ; rather, it pointed to, or signified, that body. Christ’s words were to be understood as meaning that the bread of the “Supper” or “Remembrance”—Zwingli did not wish to retain the traditional term “mass”—was a symbol of Christ’s body, just as the wine symbolized his blood. Christ was being remembered in his absence, and his future return anticipated.
It will be obvious that these represent totally different readings of the same text. Luther’s interpretation was much more traditional, Zwingli’s more radical. Which was right? And which was Protestant? We see here the fundamental difficulty that the Reformation faced: the absence of any authoritative interpreter of scripture that could give rulings on contested matters of biblical interpretation. The question was not simply whether Luther or Zwingli was right: it was whether the emerging Protestant movement possessed the means to resolve such questions of biblical interpretation. If the Bible had ultimate authority, who had the right to interpret the Bible? This was no idle question, and it lay at the heart of Protestantism’s complex relationship with its core text. For this question to be answered, an authoritative rule or principle had to be proposed that stood above scripture—the very idea of which was ultimately anathema to Protestantism. The three leading reformers—Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin—all recognized the importance of the question; significantly, each offered a different answer.20 Our concern here is with the influential civil political hermeneutic advocated by Zwingli.
The solution offered by Zurich was elegant in its simplicity. In January 1523, the great debate usually known as the “First Zurich Disputation” got under way. Its outcome was of great importance for the development of the Reformation. First, it was decided that the church in that city would be bound by the “word of God” and would be obedient to scripture. But who was to interpret the Bible? The pope? An ecumenical council? Zwingli himself? No. The city council, seeing itself as a duly elected representative body of the Christians of Zurich, declared that it possessed the corporate right to settle the question of the interpretation of the Bible. The interpretation of the Bible would thus be a local matter.
This was an approach that endeared itself to city councils throughout the region as the Reformation began to spread. Religious authority was transferred from the pope or local bishop to elected representatives of the people. This transfer of authority was yet another example of the “democratization of faith” that was so characteristic of the reforms then taking place, and it gave a place of no small significance to the city council within the urban “sacral community.”21 Yet it raised a major question about the coherence of the movement. If the city councils of Zurich, Basel, Bern, and Constance—to note four major cities that sided with the Reformation in the 1520s—disagreed with each other over the interpretation of the Bible, how could such a dispute be settled? Was there not a danger that it would be the political status of a council, rather than the merits of its arguments, that would determine its power to interpret? In other words, would the authority of a council to interpret the Bible end up reflecting, not its theological ability or spiritual integrity, but its political power, as reflected in the size, wealth, and might of the city itself?
This was a serious question, but not one that Zwingli chose to address in any detail. He was preoccupied with far too many other projects, including taking part in debates in other Swiss cities that would determine whether they joined the Protestant cause. In Zurich, he faced many demands to institutionalize his vision of a reformed Christian church and the new challenges this brought. Holding that clergy were free to marry if they so chose, he married the widow Anna Reinhard secretly in 1522, then publicly in 1524. He was confronted with the growing threat from more radical reformers in Zurich and was personally involved in their suppression and execution, including the 1527 execution of Felix Manz. Manz, formerly one of Zwingli’s closest allies, held that there was no biblical warrant for infant baptism. Refusing to recant his views, he was tied up and drowned in the River Limmat.
Yet this internal challenge to Zwingli’s form of Protestantism within Zurich was soon displaced by a much more serious external threat. The five Catholic cantons of Switzerland, increasingly alarmed at the rise of Protestantism in the region, declared war on Zurich in October 1531. No Protestant canton offered Zurich any support, leaving it to face its opponents alone. Zwingli served as chaplain to the Zurich army, inexpertly led by Georg Göldli at the critical Battle of Kappel. A chaotic situation resulted in which the Protestants were ambushed while withdrawing, and many dead and wounded were left on the battlefield—including the mortally wounded Zwingli.22
The result was disastrous for Zurich, which not only was forced to accept unfavorable peace terms but lost its religious leader. Some regions of Switzerland that had converted to Protestantism reverted to Catholicism. Among these was the city of Bremgarten, where Heinrich Bullinger served as pastor. Forced to leave Bremgarten on account of his emerging Protestant sympathies, Bullinger settled in Zurich at the end of October 1531. Six weeks later, he was elected to take Zwingli’s place. Yet Zurich would never recover its position of prominence in the Protestant reformation. Its power and influence seeped away as other centers of activity emerged. In what follows, we consider some of the early attempts to establish commonality between the various local reformations that emerged during this fascinating, formative period in the history of Protestantism.
THE INVENTION OF PROTESTANTISM: EARLY ATTEMPTS TO UNIFY THE REFORMATION
In the 1520s, city after city in Germany and Switzerland went over to the Reformation, often as a result of public disputations followed by a vote on the part of the city council. In Germany, more than fifty of the sixty-five imperial free cities responded positively to the Reformation, with only five choosing to ignore it altogether. In Switzerland, the Reformation originated in an urban context (Zurich) and spread through a process of public debate within confederate cities such as Berne and Basel and within other centers, such as Geneva and St. Gallen, that were linked to these cities by treaty obligations.
Yet it was realized that a purely political basis for the emerging religious movement was inadequate. Political alliances would shift, the balance of power would change, princes would be subject to pressure. If the new movement was to survive, it could not be grounded merely on the contingencies and provisionalities of politics. A deeper mooring was essential. And what firmer grounding could there be than in theology? Alongside the move to build political alliances between emerging centers of reform, the movement’s visionaries realized that it was essential to ground it in the firm, unchangeable realities of the will of God as revealed in the Bible.
So why did so many of Europe’s great cities switch their support from traditional Catholicism to the new religion? The answer is not entirely clear, although some of the factors involved are reasonably well understood. The historian Berndt Moeller has argued that the urban sense of community was disrupted in the fifteenth century through growing social tension in the cities and an increasing reliance upon external political bodies, such as the imperial government and the papal curia. By adopting the Lutheran Reformation, Moeller suggests, these cities were able to restore a sense of communal identity, including the critically important notion of a community whose inhabitants are bound together in a shared religious life. Moeller draws particular attention to the social implications of Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, which broke down certain traditional distinctions within urban society and encouraged a sense of communal unity.23 Other explanations could easily be added to this, some specific to local situations. Whatever the ultimate explanation may be, there was a clear perception that accepting the Reformation would lead to greater autonomy within the cities, allowing them increased control over their own affairs.
The Reformation also led, perhaps without anyone realizing it, to diversification. The emerging Protestant movement simply included too many variables to remain tightly defined. The motives of city councils for accepting the Reformation varied considerably, as did their understandings of what they were actually doing and the local situations they sought to address. Furthermore, each city had its own resident reformer—in several cases, groups of reformers—and each possessed a somewhat different vision of the nature of the gospel and its implications for individual and corporate life. With the interaction of so many factors, it is not in the least surprising that each city developed its own distinctive reformation.24
Some case studies illustrate the diversity of these local reformations. The great imperial free city of Strasbourg became home to one of the most politically and intellectually significant reforming movements of the 1520s. Its leading proponents included the Hebrew scholar Wolfgang Capito; Matthew Zell, the first person to preach Protestant ideas in the city; the humanist scholar Caspar Hedio; and Martin Bucer, who rapidly established a Europe-wide reputation as a scholar, theologian, and skilled ecclesiastical diplomat.25 While they gladly followed Luther’s lead in returning to scripture, their vision of reform owed more to Erasmus’s concern for institutional simplicity and moral renewal than to Luther’s emphasis on justification by faith.26 While aware of Luther’s emphasis on this doctrine, Bucer modified it, subtly but significantly, in order to stress the importance of moral regeneration after acceptance by God.
Zwingli’s reformation at Zurich attracted much attention in his native Switzerland. After public disputations, the great cities of Berne and Basel decided to adopt the Reformation, tending to follow Zwingli’s distinctive theological positions, without realizing that they were far from characteristic of the emerging movement in Wittenberg. Although Johann Oecolampadius, the reformer of Basel, was generally supportive of Zwingli, there were differences between them.27 After Zwingli’s death in battle in 1531, the religious direction of the city passed to Heinrich Bullinger.
As other cities emerged as centers of reforming action and reflection, they not only contributed to the expansion and partial consolidation of the reforming movement but also demonstrated its diversity and fundamental lack of coherent identity. At times, it seemed as if there were as many reformations as there were cities. In some cities, councils issued their own “declarations of faith,” as in the Zurich “introduction” of 1523 or the Berne “theses” of 1528. These were binding locally. But what of the wider picture? What authority did these local declarations have elsewhere?
The many reforming movements began to coalesce after 1530—not without some difficulties and divergences—around two rival visions of what it meant to be Protestant. A major factor was the disagreement between Luther and Zwingli over the nature of the real presence, which drove a wedge between the German and Swiss reformations. An attempt to mediate between their rival views took place at the Colloquy of Marburg (1529), convened by Philip of Hesse and attended by such Protestant luminaries as Bucer, Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, and Zwingli.
By this time, the Reformation was in trouble. It had enjoyed a period of relative tranquillity, during which it had been able to expand significantly. Yet the reason for this perhaps surprising lack of opposition was primarily that Charles V had been distracted by other, more pressing concerns from settling affairs with the Protestants. He had other crises on his hands, most notably long-standing disputes with Francis I of France, on the one hand, and Pope Clement VII, on the other. Yet suddenly, even dramatically, in 1529 these disputes were resolved within weeks of each other. Charles V was now free to give the rising threat of Protestantism his undivided attention. Suddenly, the two wings of the Reformation faced a powerful political and military threat—a threat for which they were largely unprepared.
The most obvious course of action was to settle their differences—a course of action urged by Bucer, who suggested that differences should be tolerated among Protestants, provided they agreed to recognize the Bible alone as the normative source of faith. Yet Luther and Zwingli failed to resolve their disagreements. Philip of Hesse’s hope of a united evangelical front against the newly regrouped Catholic forces was dashed, and the political credibility of the Reformation seriously compromised. While some partial alignments of vision and policy were achieved, in practice these were insufficient to hold the movement together.
In early 1530, Charles V began to reassert his authority over the German Reformation. Advised by the traditionalist Lorenzo Campeggio, and imbued with a sense of destiny following his coronation by the pope at Bologna earlier that year, Charles decided the time had come to defend Catholicism against those arguing for reform. He convened the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, determined to reestablish the unity of the church. To his irritation, he found himself confronted with three quite different proposals for restoring unity.
The first was the famous Lutheran “Augsburg Confession,” which Melanchthon presented to Charles V on June 25. This surprisingly conservative document gave every indication of having been designed to cause as little offense as possible to the Catholic emperor’s religious sensitivities. The document made little reference to Luther’s central doctrine of justification by faith alone, presumably as it was deemed too contentious for traditional Catholics. Melanchthon clearly hoped that it might provide a basis for the reunification of Christendom in Germany rather than merely as a summary of the Wittenberg reforming faction’s beliefs.28 It was a brave but ultimately forlorn hope. When the emperor summarily refused to accept it as the former, it became the latter by default.
Precisely because it was intended as an instrument of mediation, the Augsburg Confession was seen by the southern German and Swiss reformers as being far too conservative. Many began to see Luther and Melanchthon as part of the problem rather than as its solution. Zwingli presented an alternative confession to the emperor on July 8, distancing himself significantly from Melanchthon’s modest proposals. Finally, on July 11, four imperial southern German cities—Strasbourg, Lindau, Memmingen, and Constance—that had declined to accept Luther’s views on the “real presence” as set out in the Augsburg Confession presented a third alternative. The “Tetrapolitan Confession,” written by Bucer, set out a more reformed position, particularly in relation to sacramental theology.
Charles V’s refusal to take any of these confessions as the basis for reunification of the German church did more than place clear blue water between Catholics and Protestants: it also exposed the emerging differences among the latter. It was clear that at least two separate groups were crystallizing their territorial and theological boundaries. Within a decade, the Reformation had split into two. The wounds would never heal; indeed, within decades they would become even worse, when Lutherans discovered to their horror that their rivals were gaining a foothold in the German territories.
Yet the tensions within the Reformation were actually rather worse than this brief analysis suggests. The tensions that Luther experienced at Wittenberg with his more radical colleagues Karlstadt and Müntzer were being replicated throughout the reforming movement. An emerging “third way” was threatening to destabilize western European society. The name of the movement? Anabaptism.
THE RADICAL ALTERNATIVE: THE RISE OF ANABAPTISM
The message of returning to the simplicities of the New Testament excited both intellectuals and ordinary Christians. To academics, it offered a new way of doing theology, displacing the tedium of scholasticism. It was as if a window had been opened in a smoke-filled room and a refreshing breeze had rushed in to displace and dispel the accumulated stale air. To the laity, the message offered a vision of reform, deflecting the church from its political ambitions and returning it to the simpler, more attractive institution of the New Testament. For most, this did not require any doctrinal alterations whatsoever; some, however, argued that only a reform of the church’s ideas could sustain a reform of its morals.
Yet laity and academia alike wondered how far this reform should be pressed. Did a return to the world of the New Testament involve a gentle correction of errors and excesses—or was a more radical and thoroughgoing revolution required? Did existing ideas and institutions need to be totally demolished before reconstruction was possible? Although Luther’s reforming program is often referred to as “radical” and “revolutionary,” these are relative, not absolute, terms. We have already noted how Luther’s proposals were considered rather tame and conservative by writers such as Bucer and Zwingli. To others, they were positively reactionary. Luther had betrayed the movement that he initiated. It was time for others to take control.
The central issue was the interpretation of the Bible. The debate can best be understood by considering two, quite different understandings of the all-important word biblical—the watchword of the reforming movements of the age.
a. Biblical means whatever is explicitly and unequivocally stated in the Bible.
b. Biblical means whatever is explicitly stated in the Bible or is consistent with this.
Which of these definitions was correct? There was no self-evidently correct answer.
Despite their severe differences on many matters, Luther and Zwingli adopted the second of these two understandings. The thought and life of the church was to be grounded in scripture, but interpreted in the dialogue with leading, reliable biblical interpreters of the past. It is important to note that Luther argued for the supremacy of Augustine as an ancient interpreter of the Bible, and Zwingli for that of Origen; these two writers had quite different, and at times diametrically opposed, theologies. Yet both Luther and Zwingli argued for continuity with the past—for retaining what was good in the medieval church and reforming what was not. (They disagreed, of course, on what these actually were.)
At both Wittenberg and Zurich, more radical reformers emerged, arguing that this represented a compromise.29 The Bible was being shackled by the tradition of the church. What was needed was a revolution, not a reformation. Conrad Grebel at Zurich, Simon Stumpf at Hongg, and Wilhelm Reublin at Wittikon set out a program of reform embodying the first definition of biblical. Zwingli, they argued, had compromised reform. All that he had done was to replace the authority of the pope with that of the city council of Zurich. Zwingli was a puppet, little more than the mouthpiece of the civil authorities, in whose hands real authority now lay. The Reformation had been traduced.
So what radical program did these revolutionaries propose? Perhaps the best way of appreciating the challenge that the movement brought is to consider the question of whether infants should be baptized. This practice was common in the early church, and both Luther and Zwingli regarded it as perfectly acceptable. At no point did they make any attempt to reform what they thought of as an authentic Christian practice.
The radicals saw things very differently. At no point in the New Testament was the practice mentioned, let alone justified. (Luther and others argued that infant baptism was consistent with what was said in the New Testament, but they had to concede the absence of explicit mention of the practice, still less of any command to baptize infants.) The practice therefore had to be reformed in the light of the Bible. Only adult baptism was to be recognized. The precondition for baptism was explicit belief, something that could not be found in infants. Those who had been baptized as infants must therefore be baptized again. It was this conclusion that gave the movement the name “Anabaptism” (from the Greek term meaning “re-baptism”).30
The radical demands went far beyond rebaptism, however, and often seemed to amount to a near-total disengagement with the present order. Many radicals saw the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine as a watershed in the history of the church that had compromised its integrity through an accommodation with imperial power. It was imperative that this false turn—which Luther and Zwingli both regarded as legitimate—should be corrected.31 Christians should not have to swear oaths to the secular authority or compromise themselves in any way through contamination with the fallen world of power and force. (The term “magisterial Reformation” is often used to refer to the reforming programs of Luther, Bucer, and Zwingli on account of the positive role they assigned to the magistracy and other instruments of state.) The use of violence and the bearing of weapons were forbidden. Christians should not take part in wars. The death penalty was contrary to Christian practice and should be abolished. Private property was un-Christian: did not the New Testament speak of the first Christians holding all things in common?
This radical reading of the Bible placed further strain on the already tenuous unity of the reforming movements. Most radical writers rejected Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone, seeing it as incompatible with the New Testament’s emphasis on moral regeneration.32 More significantly, radicals began to call into question traditional doctrines that Luther and Zwingli had regarded as entirely orthodox and not in need of revision. Many radicals argued that the doctrine of the Trinity was not explicitly stated in the Bible. Far from being an authentic Christian doctrine, it reflected the later speculations and elaborations of misguided theologians. Anti-trinitarianism, already evident in the late 1520s, became a hallmark of the movement in the 1550s, causing widespread concern in both Protestant and Catholic circles.33
Again, the magisterial Reformation regarded traditional understandings of the identity of Jesus Christ (an area of theology known as “Christology”) as not requiring further review. The “Chalcedonian Definition” that Christ was truly human and truly divine was perfectly acceptable, representing a legitimate and proper interpretation of the Bible. The radicals disagreed. This area of theology, like every other, had to be reassessed and reviewed. A variety of alternative Christologies emerged within the Radical Reformation, with writers such as Balthasar Hübmaier, Pilgram Marpeck, and Dirk Philips adopting a range of positions, none of which were entirely consistent with the traditional Christian beliefs endorsed by Luther.34 The new radical way of interpreting the Bible, in the view of mainline reformers such as Luther, led directly to heresy. But who, we must ask, was in a position to set limits to how the Bible was interpreted? Who had the right to say that this more radical approach was wrong?
Anabaptists argued that they were consistent, where Luther and Zwingli were not. The latter, they argued, had arbitrarily excluded certain areas of Christian life and thought from the scope of their review and reassessment; Anabaptists were merely being consistent in carrying this program through comprehensively and coherently.35 Lutheran terms of denigration for Anabaptists—such as the “fanatics”—seemed to reflect an assumption that there was an obvious end-point for the process of Reformation, beyond which transgression was not permitted.36 Anabaptists held that there were no such limits—an idea that Luther and other magisterial reformers held to be dangerous and subversive. If followed through, such a position might lead to a radical overturning of the existing social and ecclesiastical order—resulting in a revolution, not a reformation.
An element of apocalyptic enthusiasm, even frenzy, began to permeate sections of the movement. Many Anabaptists read the Book of Revelation with great anticipation, seeing in it prophecies of the overthrow of the established order and the establishment of a just society.37 Many Marxist historians of the 1970s and 1980s saw in Anabaptism the forerunners of socialism. What Marx believed would happen by a human-instigated revolution, some Anabaptists believed would take place by a divine overthrow of the corrupt world order.
It was little cause for surprise that princes and city councils regarded Anabaptism with a mixture of open contempt and hidden fear. Surely nobody would take this kind of thing seriously? But what would happen if they did and it became a mass movement capable of overturning the establishment? In Haarlem, a baker named Jan Matthys announced that he was none other than Enoch, the second witness of the Book of Revelation. The end times were coming! Such dangerous ideas were perfectly capable of initiating and sustaining a revolution.
These were particularly serious concerns in the city of Strasbourg, which was home to a particularly large community of Anabaptists. In particular, they were a cause of considerable anxiety to Martin Bucer, who realized that his own moderate vision of Protestantism could easily be radicalized by such activists. Might these radicals hijack his own more cautious reforms? In 1530 a furrier named Melchior Hoffman began to preach a millennial doctrine that predicted the imminent return of Christ and the overthrow of the city authorities. God had chosen Strasbourg as the New Jerusalem. Alarm bells began to ring throughout the city.
The event that galvanized nervous monarchs and city authorities throughout Europe took place in 1534. Jan Matthys declared that it was no longer Strasbourg that would be the site of the New Jerusalem. It was Münster.38 Excited crowds of his supporters flocked to this unsuspecting German city and took it over. Jan van Leyden took to the streets to declare that the end was nigh, creating an atmosphere of near-hysteria. Lutherans and Catholics alike panicked and rushed to leave the city, to be replaced almost as quickly by hordes of Anabaptists eager to enter the New Jerusalem. Matthys decreed that everyone remaining in the city would have to be rebaptized or face execution. All property was to be distributed equally among the population.39
The seizure sent shock waves throughout the region and proved a serious setback to the cause of reform. Protestantism, it was argued, simply led to destabilization. If anyone doubted that Protestantism was a menace to social stability, the events at Münster would persuade them of its intrinsic dangers. The bishop of Münster, anxiously watched by prelates and princes throughout western Europe, laid siege to the city. It was not until the spring of 1535 that the Anabaptist seizure of Münster was ended by force, having degenerated from idealism to farce. Jan van Leyden announced that a new world order had been revealed to him and promptly began to implement it. Money was abolished; polygamy was legalized; marriage was made compulsory for women. Those who dissented faced execution. Many breathed a sigh of relief when the occupation was ended and something approaching normality was restored. It had been a dangerous moment.
Like its mainstream counterparts, the radical movement was heterogeneous and diverse, its ideas and fortunes shaped by local figures, concerns, and resources. Quite distinct forms of Anabaptism developed in Switzerland, southern Germany, and the Low Countries.40 Yet there is no doubt that it must be considered an integral part of the reforming movements then sweeping across the cities and territories of western Europe. Anabaptists may have occupied a range of positions that some Protestants considered “extreme”; they were, however, unquestionably Protestant. The historian can only conclude that Protestantism designated a spectrum of possibilities so diverse that we must perhaps speak of “Protestantisms,” each claiming to be grounded in the Bible, and the Bible alone, yet recognizing quite different authority figures, interpretative methods, and contextual constraints in their interpretation and application of that text.
By 1535 the political and theological implications of the absence of any centralized authority within Protestantism were being acutely felt. The events at Münster convinced many that the demands for reform had opened a Pandora’s box of uncontrollable, unpredictable, and downright dangerous forces that threatened the stability of the region. The appeal to the Bible had once seemed so simple, so straightforward, so liberating. Now many were longing for stability and wondering whether someone might bring about the order they so earnestly desired in the midst of this theological chaos.
One possible answer began to emerge from the newly independent city of Geneva, which had declared itself a republic in 1535, not long after the end of the Münster affair. One of its reformers seemed to have answers to the questions many were pondering at this time. We now turn to the story of John Calvin and the new sense of direction and purpose he brought to many reforming movements at this time.