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The Role of Godly Magistrates in the Church: Melanchthon as Luther's Interpreter and Collaborator

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

James M. Estes
James M. Estes
Affiliation:
James M. Estes is professor emeritus of history at Victoria College, University of Toronto.
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Extract

Our knowledge of Melanchthon's thought on the role of godly magistrates in the church is surprisingly incomplete, despite the generally acknowledged importance of that thought. Most Reformation scholars are familiar with Melanchthon's argument that the Christian magistrate is, as custodian of both tables of the Law and as foremost member of the church, the incumbent of an office established for the sake of the church and thus burdened with responsibility for the establishment and maintenance of true religion. Most know too that this argument became the standard Lutheran justification for what is called the cura religionis of the magistrate. Few, however, are aware that it took Melanchthon a good decade to arrive at that doctrine, that he spent a further decade or so refining and developing it, and that during all that time there was an intimate connection between the content of his thought and the course of public events. The reason for this gap in our knowledge is that the history of the development of Melanchthon's thought on the religious duties of secular rulers has not yet been written.

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Articles
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Church History , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 463 - 483
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 1998

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References

In its original form this article was an address delivered on 23 October 1997 in Atlanta to a plenary session of the Society for Reformation Research held to observethe quincentenary of Philip Melanchthon's birth. Those features of the address that were appropriate only to an oral presentation have been suppressed, while certain aspects of the topic are dealt with somewhat more fully than was possible in the time available on that October evening. Thanks are due to Timothy J. Wengert and to Robert J. Bast, who were in the audience for the address and who subsequently read the text, for their perceptive criticisms and helpful suggestions.

In the footnotes that have been added to the text, the following abbreviations have been used: Bekenntnisschriften = Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 5th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1967); CR = Philippi Melanchthonis opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. C. G. Bretschneider et al., Corpus Reformatorum, vols. 1–28 (Halle: Schwetschke, 1834–1860); LW = Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, Helmut T. Lehmann et al., 55 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–1986); MSA = Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl, ed. Robert Stupperich et al., 7 vols. (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1951–1975); Nürnberg 1530 = Whether Secular Government Has the Right to Wield the Sword in Matters of Faith: A Controversy in Niirnberg in 1530 over Freedom of Worship and the Authority of Secular Government in Spiritual Matters, trans, and ed. James M. Estes (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 1994); WA = D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 60 vols. (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–1980); WA-Br = D. Martin Luthers Werke: Briefwechsel, 15 vols. (Weimar: H. Bohlau, 1930–1978); WA-TR = D. Martin Luthers Werke: Tischreden, 6 vols. (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1912–1921).

1. Like the public lecture on which it is based, this article is a logical extension of earlier work on the contribution of Johannes Brenz (the leading Lutheran reformer of southwestern Germany) and of Erasmus (the great humanist scholar, many of whose disciples joined the ranks of the Protestant reformers) to the establishment and theoretical justification of the Protestant territorial churches that emerged in the early decades of the Reformation. See Estes, James M., Christian Magistrate and State Church: The Reforming Career of ohannes Brenz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), especially chapters 2 and 3;Google Scholar and idem, “Officium principis christiani: Erasmus and the Origins of the Protestant State Church,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992): 49–72. These two works having demonstrated the influence of Erasmus on the German reformers in general and of both Erasmus and Melanchthon on Brenz in particular, it seemed that Magister Philippus himself demanded closer scrutiny. Apart from the present article, the first result of that scrutiny to appear in print will be “Erasmus, Melanchthon, and the Office of Christian Magistrate,” scheduled for publication in the Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 18 (1998): 21–39.Google Scholar

2. The best brief general introduction is still Franz Lau's essay, “Melanchthon und die Ordnung der Kirche,” in Philipp Melanchthon: Forschungsbeiträge zur vierhundertsten Wiederkehr seines Todestages, ed. Elliger, Walter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1961), 98–115.Google ScholarRichard Nürnberger's published dissertation, Kirche und weltliche Obrigkeit bei Melanchthon (Würzburg: Konrad Triltsch, 1937), overlooks important evidence and has little to say about the historical circumstances surrounding the works discussed.Google ScholarThe following works are significant contributions to the understanding of developments in the 1520s: Sperl, Adolf, Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation (Munich: Kaiser, 1959);Google ScholarMaurer, Wilhelm, Der junge Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1967, 1969);Google Scholar and Wengert, Timothy, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philip Melanchthon's Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

3. My own attempt to write the whole history of Melanchthon's thought on the role of godly magistrates in the church will form part of a monograph on the German reformers and the office of Christian magistrate that is currently in preparation.

4. Scholars have, in fact, tended to perceive this interpretation as having occurred first in the 1530s. See, for example, Thompson, W. D. J. Cargill, The Political Thought of Martin Luther (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester, 1984), 149–51.;Google ScholarKeen, Ralph, “Defending the Pious: Melanchthon and the Reformation in Alberrine Saxony, 1539,” Church History 60 (1991): 180–95., esp. 187–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also below, note 43. Already in 1959, however, Sperl, Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation, 141–70., had shown otherwise. The reasons for pushing the date back to the early 1520s are discussed below.

5. This is, in fact, the hypothesis that I originally pursued, only to abandon it in the process of writing the paper for the Society for Reformation Research meeting (see headnote).

6. In a letter written in 1585, David Chytraeus, who had been Melanchthon's friend and colleague in Wittenberg in the 1540s, reports that Melanchthon told him that Luther had revered Melanchthon as his praeceptor. See Visser, Derk, Niets menselijks is mij vreetnd: leven en werk van Philippus Melanchthon (Kampen: de Groot Goudrian, 1995), 38, 190 n. 56.Google Scholar

7. Wengert, Timothy J., working independently and dealing with a broader set of issues (not including the one addressed here), has also concluded that the relationship between Luther and Melanchthon was one of the harmonious collaboration between two quite different men who engaged in “theology through conversation” and did not take too seriously their divergences from one another. Professor Wengert's paper, “Melanchthon and Luther/Luther and Melanchthon,” which he kindly allowed me to read in manuscript, will appear in the Lutherjahrbuch for 1998.Google Scholar

8. The evidence for the interpretation of Luther's views summarized in the succeeding paragraphs is discussed in some detail in my book on Johannes Brenz, Christian Magistrate and State Church, 19–28. (see note 1). With minor reservations (mostly concerning what is said about developments after 1530), the analysis offered there is one that I still endorse.

9. Given the long history of princely responsibility for religious reformation in German principalities, they could hardly have assumed otherwise. See Schulze, Manfred, Fürsten und Reformation: Geistliche Reformpolitik welicher Fürsten vor der Reformation (Tübingen: Mohr, 1991).Google Scholar

10. MSA 1:56–140.

11. MSA 1:70–71., 87, 129–30., 138–39.

12. For a detailed analysis of the weighty matters here dispatched in one brief sentence, see my article, “Erasmus, Melanchthon, and the Office of the Christian Magistrate” 22–29. (as in note 1).

13. Published in December 1521. Text in MSA 2/1:16–185.

14. WA-Br 2:357–61 (LW 48: 258–62).

15. WA 11:249–51 (LW 45:88–91).

16. Luther's initial contribution was the Invocavit sermons of 9–16. March 1522, with their blueprint for a cautiously paced reform in which changes, made only after preaching had prepared the public to accept them, were carried out with the knowledge and consent of the secular authorities in their capacity as the guardians of public order; WA 10/3:1–64 (LW 51:70–100).

17. WA 10/3:371–85.

18. WA 11:245–80. (LW 45:81–129., where the title is given as On Temporal Authority). In this treatise the contrast between spiritual authority and secular authority is very sharply drawn, with secular rulers lectured severely on the worldly nature of their office and the impropriety of interfering in God's kingdom and government (see below, note 22). As the opening paragraphs of the work make clear, however, Luther's principal motive in this was to keep bad princes (that is, the vast majority of them) from misusing their authority to impede the progress of the Reformation. Unlike Melanchthon, Luther was never able to embrace the idea that the state and secular magistracy are intrinsically Christian. On the other hand, Luther was always prepared, in the right circumstances and with appropriate reservations, to accept the help and support of friendly rulers in achieving a genuinely Christian order in church and society, and his wariness of secular intervention tended to soften in direct proportion to his confidence in the good intentions of the rulers in question. This tendency reached its peak in the works of the 1530s to be discussed below.

19. MSA 1:168–70.

20. See CR 21:67–70., items 13 and 15.

21. As, for example, in the Scholia on Colossians of 1527 (MSA 4: 263–64).

22. WA 11:246–47, 261–71 (LW 45:83–85, 104–118).

23. Another work in the same category was Luther's Letter to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Rebellious Spirit (1524), in which Luther upheld the duty of secular government to punish all who resort to force and cause public disorder but, at the same time, argued that only the word of God could destroy heresy, that the Antichrist would be vanquished “without human hand” (Dan. 8:25), and that secular rulers should “for the present,” take no action against sects that only “fight with the Word” (WA 15:210–21 [LW 40:49–59]). For examples of the use of Luther's early works to defend religious dissidents against governmental repression, see below, p. 00, with note 29.

24. MSA 1:169: “Ecclesiastical traditions are civil laws and a means of instruction, pertaining not at all to spiritual government” (my translation). In my article, “Erasmus, Melanchthon, and the Office of the Christian Magistrate,” 30–32 (see note 1), the Themata are dealt with in much greater detail than was possible here.

25. For Melanchthon, see (in addition to the works cited in note 2 above) my article, “Erasmus, Melanchthon, and the Office of Christian Magistrate,” 32–33 (as in note 1). For Luther, see especially Karl Trüdinger, Luthers Briefe und Gutachten an weltliche Obrigkeiten zur Durchführung der Reformation (Münster Westfalen: Aschendorff, 1975), 41–92.Google Scholar

26. WA 26:202–240 (LW 40:273–320).

27. This was a reworking in new circumstances of the argument already used in 1520 in To the Christian Nobility to establish the special obligation, in an emergency, of Christian princes, acting by virtue of (1) their participation in the priesthood of all believers and (2) their lofty status as the wielders of authority over the whole community to summon a church council (WA 6:406–414. [LW 44:126–39]).

28. WA 26:195–201 (LW 40:269–73).

29. See, for example, the arguments of the anonymous Nürnberger who provoked the controversy in Nürnberg referred to in the next paragraph (Nürnberg 1530, 20–24., 41–54).

30. All the surviving documents are included in Nürnberg 1530.

31. In a letter of 17 March 1530 from Lazarus Spengler in Nürnberg to Veit Dietrich, a Nürnberger living in Wittenberg, where he was Luther's confidant and amanuensis (WA 31/1:183–84).

32. The standard account of the controversy in Strassburg, 1533–34., is François Wendel, L'Église de Strasbourg, sa constitution et son organisation, 1532–1535. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1942), 25–125. Melanchthon learned of this controversy from Martin Bucer; see the letter to Bucer dated 15 March 1534 (CR 2:710–13). There were similar disputes in these years in other communities, including Augsburg in 1534–35. and Pfalz-Zweibrücken at about the same time (with involvement by Bucer and other Strasbourg reformers in both cases), but so far I have not been able to establish that the Wittenbergers could have known about those disputes soon enough to be influenced by them in the process of rethinking under consideration here.Google Scholar

33. Bekenntnisschriften, 35–43, 135–36. One finds here the first tentative signs of the “strategic changes of emphasis” described below in connection with the Loci communes of 1535. Among these signs is Melanchthon's citation as a proof text, for the first time that I know of, of Ps. 2:8–10., which the Nürnberg reformers had already used in defense of the cura religionis.

34. Der LXXXII. Psalm ausgelegt, WA 31/1:189–218 (LW 13:41–72).

35. The very prospect of the diet (May–September 1530), at which Emperor Charles V was (according to his summons to the estates) to preside over a friendly attempt to reconcile conflicting views and end the religious schism, tended wonderfully to concentrate the minds of Protestant rulers and their theological advisers on the best possible arguments in defense of all the reforms that they had undertaken in the previous decade. Moreover, the unhappy outcome of the diet, with the Protestant estates refusing to accept a hostile recess containing an implied threat of armed reprisal, raised anew the question of the legitimacy of armed resistance to the emperor should he make war on the Protestant princes because of their religion. See Scheible, Heinz, ed., Das Widerstandsrecht als Problem der deutschen Protestanten, 1523–1546 (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1969), especially items 12–19. The early 1530s, in other words, were a period in which every possible aspect of the duty of Christian princes to promote and defend true religion had to be carefully reconsidered.Google Scholar

36. CR 21:253–554; the locus “De magistratibus” is on 542–54.

37. CR 2:710–13.

38. CR 2:710: “All of us here have long been of the opinion … that it pertains to the office of magistrate to prevent and to punish, in the same manner as in the case of other external offenses, all blasphemy and seditious doctrines that are publicly expressed” (my translation).

39. See WA-TR 5, no. 5511 (winter of 1542–43), where Luther observes that those who want to become good theologians should first read the Bible and then study Philip's Loci communes, than which no better book has been written since Holy Scripture itself.

40. Der CI. Psalm, durch D. Mar. Luther ausgelegt, WA 51:200–264 (LW 13:145–224).

41. WA 51:199.

42. Letter of Georg Helt to Stephan Roth, 17 March 1535, cited in WA 51:198.

43. Most brilliantly and influentially (though without any sense of historical development) in Johannes Heckel, “Cura religionis: Ius in sacra, Ius circa sacra,” in Festschrift Ulrich Stutz (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1938), 224–98.Google Scholar

44. The first to take serious note of the commentary was Wolfgang Sommer, Gottesfurcht und Fürstenherrschaft: Studien zum Obrigkeitsverständnis Johann Arndts und lutherisher Hofprediger zur Zeit der altprotestantischen Orthodoxie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1988), 23–73.Google ScholarSee 23–27 for the author's documentation of the neglect of this work in earlier scholarship. In fairness, it should be observed that in volume 3 of his Martin Luther (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1987), 15–16., Martin Brecht includes a brief but perceptive analysis of “this somewhat forgotten work.”Google Scholar

45. CR 21:542–54.

46. CR 21:553–54.

47. This phrase, praecipua membra ecclesiae, was actually first used in Melanchthon's De potestate et primatu papae tractatus of 1537 (Bekenntnisschriften, 488), though the idea had been around since Luther's To the Christian Nobility of 1520; cf. above, note 28.

48. Actually, “for the sake of the churches” (propter ecclesias), another phrase introduced only later (in the De officio principum of 1539 [MSA 1:398]), though the idea itself is already present in 1535.

49. Melanchthon was wont to argue that heathen secular rule, though legitimate and beneficial, was “not in proper order” and incomplete because it ignored the primary purpose of secular government, namely the abolition of idolatry and the establishment of true religion; see MSA 1:395–96 (De officio principum, 1539), and CR 4:1041 (Iudicium theologorum, 1540). Cf. Luther's quite different view in the commentary on Psalm 101 (below).

50. WA 31 /1:183–84 (Lazarus Spengler to Luther, 17 March 1530).

51. Nürnberg 1530, 20–24, 41–54.

52. WA 31/1:207–211 (LW 13:61–64).

53. In addition to WA 31 /1:211–13 (LW 13:64–67), see Luther's treatise of 1532, On Infiltrating and Clandestine Preachers (WA 30/3:518–27 [LW 40:383–94]).

54. WA 31/1:198–307 (LW 13:51–60).

55. CR 2:712. Cf. CR 21:554 (1535 Loci). On at least two earlier occasions, Melanchthon had already used Ps. 82:6 in the sense assigned to it by Luther in his commentary: first, in a letter of 3 June 1530 to Archbishop Albert of Mainz (MSA 7/2:164); and second, in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, 1531 (Bekenntnisschriften, 328).

56. WA 51:216–45 (LW 13:166–201).

57. Luther was also well aware of the prince's human weaknesses (obstinacy, weakness for food and drink, overly indulgent attitude toward the court nobility), and tried to offer corrective advice in the psalm commentary. See WA 51:197–99.

58. Cf. Sommer, Gottesfurcht und Fürstenherrschaft, 26 (as in note 44); Brecht, Martin Luther, 3:15; and note 18 above. Melanchthon was, of course, an inveterate drafter of theoretical models.

59. WA 51:216–24, 230–37 (LW 13:166–77, 184–93).

60. WA 51:238–39, 242–43 (LW 13:193–94, 198–99).

61. WA 51:239–41 (LW 13:195–97).

62. See documents 4 and 5 in Nürnberg 1530, 73–118.

63. See Sommer, Gottesfurcht und Fürstenherrschaft, 82–104 and passim (as in note 44).

64. WA 32:440 (Wochenpredigten über Matt. 5–7, 1532): “A prince can indeed be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he must rule; and in so far as he rules, he is not called a Christian but rather a prince. The person is a Christian, but the office or principality has nothing to do with his Christianity” (my translation).

65. Trüdinger, , Luthers Briefe, 78–79 (see note 25); WA 26:197–98.Google Scholar

66. See, for example, the letter to Daniel Greiser, 22 October 1543 (WA-Br 10:436), in which he objects sharply to the new excommunication ordinance of Duke Maurice of Saxony, according to which secular officials were to control the imposition and enforcement of excommunication. See also the letters to Gabriel Zwilling, 30 September 1535 (WA-Br 7:280–81); to Sebastian Steude, 24 August 1541 (WA-Br 9:501–502); and to the mayor and city council of Creutzberg, 27 January 1543 (WA-Br 10:255–58).

67. Quatenus ad magistrates civilis officium pertineat abolere impios cultos. Text in CR 3:224–29 Date according to Melanchthons Briefivechsel: Kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe. Regesten, ed. Scheible, Heinz (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977-), no. 1739.Google Scholar

68. Illustrium principum iuniorum Saxoniae, Io. Friderici II. et IO. Wilhelmi, fratrum, declamationes … cum praefatione Lutheri, D. Martini (Wittenberg: Georg Rhau, 1543). The preface, without the declamations, is in WA 54:14–15.Google Scholar

69. WA 26:197–98.

70. Among these was Luther's close friend, Wenzeslaus Linck, the most likely author of the contribution to the Nürnberg controversy that most closely foreshadows the arguments and the evidence that Melanchthon would use in 1534–1535; see Nürnberg 1530, 29–33., 93–118.