Hope and Heresy: The Problem of Chiliasm in Lutheran Confessional Culture, 1570–1630

295 Pages·2019·3.837 MB·English

by  Leigh T.I. Penman

Leigh T.I. Penman
Hope and
Heresy
The Problem of Chiliasm in Lutheran
Confessional Culture, 1570–1630
Hope and Heresy
Leigh T.I. Penman
Hope and Heresy
The Problem of Chiliasm in Lutheran
Confessional Culture, 1570–1630
Leigh T.I. Penman
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
University of Queensland
St. Lucia, QLD, Australia
ISBN 978-94-024-1699-2 ISBN 978-94-024-1701-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1701-2
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Acknowledgements
The present work concerns the problematic status of optimistic apocalyptic expec-
tations in early modern Lutheran confessional culture. It began life many years ago
in a very different form as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Melbourne
under the supervision of Charles Zika. It was in Charles’s courses as an undergradu-
ate that I first encountered the works of Robin Bruce Barnes, Johannes Wallmann
and Carlos Gilly, whose research influenced the development of my own interests.
During the research for this book, I was fortunate to spend time at the Herzog
August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel on multiple occasions, firstly as a guest
researcher under the auspices of the Dr. Günther Findel Stiftung and, secondly, with
a fellowship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). In
Wolfenbüttel, I profited from the advice and friendship of numerous scholars whose
thoughts helped to shape this work, including Jill Bepler, Jürgen Beyer, Andreas
Corcoran, Warren Dym, Robert Hardwick Weston, Gizella Hoffmann, Grantley
McDonald, Alexander Nebrig, Cornelia Niekus-Moore, Beth Plummer, Theo
Pronk, Jenny Spinks and Douglas Shantz, as well as the fellow members and co-
founders of SAV Wolfenbüttel, especially Ilona Fekete and Márton Szentpéteri.
During the term of my DAAD grant, both Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen and
Hartmut Lehmann gave me of their time at the former Max-Planck-Institut für
Geschichte in Göttingen, and I am grateful for their advice and interest.
It was not until a postdoctoral fellowship with the Cultures of Knowledge project
at the University of Oxford, however, that this book began to take its present shape.
This was largely due to the influence of Howard Hotson, as well as the convivial
discussions I had concerning matters apocalyptic with Brandon Marriott, Vladimír
Urbánek and James Brown. More recently, a fellowship with the Institute for
Advanced Studies in the Humanities (formerly the Centre for European Discourses)
at the University of Queensland allowed the time for the work to further mature in
an ideal intellectual environment, where I benefitted from the wisdom of Philipp
Almond, Peter Harrison and Ian Hesketh during the completion of the manuscript.
At a late stage, Howard Hotson read and critiqued several key chapters, improving
them immensely by asking the hardest of questions. I am grateful as well to the two
anonymous readers provided by the publisher; their reports were instrumental in
vii
viii Acknowledgements
shifting slightly the tone and focus of the analysis and adding further layers of
complexity.
I would like to collectively thank the staff of archives and libraries throughout
Australia, Europe and North America, especially in Wolfenbüttel, Erfurt, London,
Strasbourg, Wrocław, Prague, Copenhagen, Dresden, Görlitz, Rudolstadt, Steyr,
Budapest, Amsterdam, Karlsruhe, Tübingen, Nuremberg, Munich, Vienna and
Zittau, all of whom fielded requests for manuscripts, books, reproductions and
information helpfully and efficiently and whose own initiative led to the discovery
of many new sources which would otherwise have remained unknown to me.
Finally, I would like to thank my family, my parents, my brother and my late grand-
mother, whose patience, love and support have always been exemplary. To Ilona,
Samu and Kata, thanks for making every day amazing. This work is dedicated to the
memory of Walter Berezy (1924–2016), a pansophist in the tradition of Comenius
who, had he lived in an age not ruined by war and its consequences, might well have
written something like it.
Introduction
In 1621, Valentin Grießmann (d. 1639), Lutheran pastor in Wählitz near Magdeburg,
penned a book against a ‘sudden and inexplicable’ rash of heretical publications that
had caused him great concern. Over the last few years, Grießmann had seen more
than 100 printed pamphlets, together with many more manuscript works circulating
among the local populace, which convinced him that a ‘seditious conspiracy against
all good order’ was afoot in the Holy Roman Empire.1 Grießmann believed that
these tracts were authored by a ‘secretly confederated and corresponding mob’
(heimliche confoederirte vnd correspondirente Rotte)2 of Weigelians, Rosicrucians,
Paracelsians, visionaries, new prophets and theosophers. This ‘mob’ was responsi-
ble for ‘fanning the flames of war’ and accelerating the descent of the Empire into
chaos and destruction. Additionally, these works betrayed all manner of heresies,
ranging from Christological errors to misrepresentations of the nature of the Holy
Spirit. Yet there was one heretical doctrine which, Grießmann held, was common to
all these books; they anticipated that there would soon occur a golden Reformation
(güldene Reformation), a time of peace before the Last Judgment.3 As Grießmann
argued, this expectation was the result of a grave and pernicious heresy called
chiliasmus or chiliasm. But where Grießmann saw heresy, others saw hope.
The present study investigates the place of optimistic apocalyptic expectations—
that is to say, visions of an earthly future felicity before the Last Judgment—within
German Lutheranism between approximately 1570 and 1630. This time span is
deliberately chosen. Its starting point encompasses the time of the expansion of
Lutheran eschatological expectations following Luther’s death and the supernova of
1 Valentin Grießmann, Πρόδρομος εὐμενὴς, καὶ ἀποτρεπτικός Exhibens enneadem quaestionum
generalium De Haeresibus ex orco redivivis: Das ist: Getrewer Eckhart/Welcher in den ersten
Neun gemeinen Fragen/der Wiedertäufferischen/Stenckfeldischen/Weigelianischen/und Calvino-
Photinianischen/Rosen Creutzerischen Ketzereyen/im Landen herumbstreichende und streiffende
wüste Heer zu fliehen/und als seelenmörderische Räuberey zu meyden verwarnet. (Gera: Andreas
Mamitzsch, 1623), 14.
2 Grießmann, Getrewer Eckhart, 48.
3 Grießmann, Getrewer Eckhart, 48, 67.
ix
x Introduction
1572 and concludes following the aftermath of the many disappointed prophesies
that anticipated the commencement of the desired Golden Age sometime during or
after the great conjunction of 1623. It incorporates the first 12 years of the Thirty
Years’ War and the environmental, political and confessional crises which preceded
it. Within lay and clerical cultures, the extensive engagement with ideas of a time of
future felicity before the Last Judgment provoked a diverse range of opinions, from
approval to approbation.
Within Lutheranism, ideas of a future respite or Golden Age were often consid-
ered heretical because they butted up against the pessimistic apocalypticism that
was widely held in the faith.4 Many Lutherans believed that the Millennium of
Revelation 20:1–6, one of the great inspirations for visions of a future felicity, was
a period that had occurred historically. Orthodox Lutherans typically expected that
before the Judgment Day, conditions on earth would worsen, until the true church
was finally vindicated following the apocalyptic event. Thus, when Luke 18:8 posed
the question ‘when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?’, the
typical Lutheran response was ‘very little or none’.5 These expectations were ini-
tially encouraged by Martin Luther (1483–1546). Defending a fledgling faith
decried as heretical by its Catholic opponents, he promoted a historical interpreta-
tion of the apocalyptic books of the New Testament and considered the Last
Judgment imminent. As Robin Bruce Barnes has summarized: ‘For Luther, Christ
stood poised to return, to deliver his own, and to deal the final blow to a corrupt
world. The faithful could rejoice in the recovery of God’s word and the nearness of
their salvation. Meanwhile they were called upon to steel themselves against the
final ragings of Satan’s powers on earth’.6 Under the influence of the devil, the
world had begun to resemble the time of Noah, ripe for a new flood to wipe away
4 On the character of Lutheran eschatology, and more especially apocalypticism, see Hans-Henning
Pflanz, Geschichte und Eschatologie bei Martin Luther (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1939); Ulrich
Assendorf, Eschatologie bei Luther (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967); Robin Bruce
Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1988); Gerhard May, ‘“Je länger, je ärger?” Das Ziel der Geschichte im
Denken Martin Luthers,’ Zeitwende 60 (1989), 208–218; Robin Bruce Barnes, ‘Der herabstürzende
Himmel: Kosmos und Apokalypse unter Luthers Erben um 1600,’ in Jahrhundertwenden: Endzeit-
und Zukunftsvorstellungen vom 15. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, et al.,
eds. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 129–146; Volker Leppin, Antichrist und
Jüngster Tag. Das Profil apokalyptischer Flugshriftenpublizistik im deutschen Luthertum 1548–
1618. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1999); Matthias Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und
konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung: lutherische Kirchen- und Universalgeschichtsschreibung 1546–
1617 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
5 Censuren und Bedencken Von Theologischen Faculteten und Doctoren Zu Wittenberg/Königsberg/
Jehna/Helmstädt Uber M. Hermanni Rahtmanni Predigers zu S. Catharinen binnen Dantzig
außgegangenen Büchern. (Jena: Birckner, 1626), 106.
6 Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, 3. On the development of Luther’s attitudes and interpretations, see
further the useful summary by Bernhard Lohse, ‘Eschatologie’ in Luthers Theologie in ihrer his-
torischen Entwicklung und in ihrem systematischen Zusammenhang (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1995), 345–355.
Introduction xi
sin.7 For Luther, any amelioration of society in this apocalyptic last age was impos-
sible: ‘Now we see, that after this time in which the Pope has been revealed [as
Antichrist], there is nothing to hope for or to anticipate, than the end of the world’.8
On account of Luther’s historicist apocalypticism, the confession as a whole was
largely hesitant to embrace any form of meliorism.9 This pessimistic apocalypticism
was enshrined as a dogmatic article of belief in the Confessio Augustana (1530), the
earliest systematic creed of the Lutheran faith. Article 17 specifically forbade the
expectation that ‘there will be an end to the punishments of condemned men and
devils’, in addition to the idea that ‘before the resurrection of the dead the godly
shall take possession of the kingdom of the world, the ungodly being everywhere
suppressed’.10 Many Lutherans interpreted these statements—which had their ori-
gins in very specific social and doctrinal circumstances—as forbidding any expecta-
tion of a worldly felicitous future. To them, like Luther before them, there was
nothing left for the faithful to do but await the Last Judgment. The postulation of a
period of future felicity, no matter how short its duration, threatened to upset these
expectations.
Nevertheless, by around 1600, a vocal cadre of individuals raised within Lutheran
confessional culture was prepared to embrace a spectrum of optimistic expectations
concerning the Last Days. These expectations were promulgated in a variety of
ways: in scribal publications, preaching on the streets and through the printing
press. They called it by various names: the Millennium, the Golden Age, a New
Reformation, the Age of the Holy Spirit or the Time of Lilies. For some, this felici-
tous period would be terrestrial in nature; for others, it would be purely spiritual,
taking place in the heart of the true believer. Some would base their expectations on
scripture, finding inspiration in Revelation 20, Daniel 12, the apocryphal 2 Esdras
or the synoptic apocalypse of Matthew 24–25. Others would find their authority in
medieval prophecies, or in works of more contemporary figures—like Paracelsus or
visionary prophets—who claimed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit directly. Still
others claimed to base their expectations on their observations of God’s other cre-
ations, such as the celestial firmament. The duration of this future time was simi-
7 Hermann Rahtmann, Christlicher Tugentspiegel, in welchem ihre Art und Eygenschafften zur
Gottseligen ubung, nach Gottes Wort furgestellt und erkläret werden (Danzig: Hünefeldt, 1620),
128–129; P.E.N.H. [Paul Egard] Heller/Klarer/Spiegel der Jetzigen Zeit/deß Jetzigen
Christenthumbs/Glaubens/Lebens/und Wesens im Newen Testament so mit dem Judenthumb/im
Alten Testament/gar richtig ubereinstimmet. (No Place: No Printer, 1623); Georg Rost, Ninivitisch
Deutschland/Welchem der Prophet Jonas Schwerdt/Hunger/Pestilentz/und den endlichen
Untergang ankündiget (Lübeck: Hallevoord, 1624).
8 Martin Luther, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Deutsche Bibel. 121 vols. (Weimar and Graz:
Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–2009), vol. 11, part 2, 113; Melchior Ambach, Vom Ende der
Welt und zukunfft des Endtchrists. Wie es vorm Jüngsten tag in der Welt ergehn werde. (No Place:
No Printer, [c.1550]).
9 Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung; Barnes, Prophecy and
Gnosis.
10 Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche. 9th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoek
& Ruprecht, 1982), 72.