This collection of twenty-one essays, seven in German and fourteen in English (with short summaries provided in the alternate language), was brought together in the wake of a conference held in Sibiu (Hermannstadt) in Romania. The essays are on coherent themes about the religious and moral life of towns and villages in Transylvania, predominantly focusing on Lutheran churches and communities. One section of three essays focuses specifically on the career of a rural Lutheran pastor, Damasus Dürr. A feature of this fascinating collection is the wide range of different sources that authors employ to uncover aspects of Saxon religious life. Why did the German-speaking (or Saxon) community in Transylvania swiftly and almost entirely abandon Catholicism? One possible answer lies in the literary and religious culture of the Saxon community before the Reformation. Essays by Adinel C. Dincă and Paula Cotoi analyse the circulation of texts, including collections of sermons, in urban and rural Saxon parishes in the pre-Reformation period. Alexandru Ştefan assesses the use of seals by Saxon clergy in documents from the early sixteenth century, arguing that seals became simpler and more practical as their use increased with the development of wider literacy in the period.
Articles consider different contexts and settings for Lutheran reform. Edit Szegedi's essay provides crucial analysis of the legal and institutional basis of the Lutheran Church in Transylvania. During the 1550s the Transylvanian diet extended legal protections to a Lutheran Church in the Saxon lands, and a lengthy process followed of building up the Lutheran Church in the context of evolving rights given to other Churches. This process reached its culmination in 1595 when the diet pronounced that Transylvania had four ‘received religions’ (described as Catholic or Roman, Lutheran, Calvinist and Arian). Authors assess the impact of the Reformation in a number of different towns. Emőke Gálfi analyses the castle district of the Transylvanian capital at Alba Iulia following the secularisation of Catholic property in 1556. Articles by Zsolt Simon and András Péter Szabó outline the financial organisation of the Lutheran Church in the Saxon towns of Braşov and Bistriţa. The Reformation had first been introduced in Braşov in 1542 with several churches served by eleven ministers. Simon explores the sources of income that supported these ministers and analyses the money spent on repair of church buildings in the latter decades of the sixteenth century. Mária Lupescu Makó and Radu Lupescu turn their attention to the town of Cluj, where the urban elite spoke both German and Hungarian. The town had been an important centre for Dominicans and Franciscans, but the religious landscape of Cluj was transformed between the 1540s and 1560s. Gáspár Heltai (Kaspar Helt) was the Wittenberg-educated preacher and printer in Cluj who provided an influential voice in favour of religious reform (he supported first Lutheran, then Calvinist, and finally Anti-Trinitarian ideas). Friars were expelled from Cluj by the council at the end of 1551 but returned in 1552 when the town was under threat from imperial troops. However, in changed political circumstances in March 1556 the friaries in Cluj were looted, with pictures and sculptures burned.
In turning to the moral and social life of Lutheran communities, Julia Derzsi focuses on regulations and church orders concerning marriage. Mária Pakucs-Willcocks assesses ideas about a good marriage at the end of the sixteenth century through a fascinating study of a divorce case in Sibiu. Catharina Raw was likely successful in her appeal for separation from her husband Matthias, who was a member of the town council. While Matthias's social status afforded him some protection from the consequences of the scandal, he was removed from his offices in the town according to one source because ‘he lived badly with his wife’ (p. 317). The article by Enikő Rüsz-Fogarasi focuses on the role of clergy wives who were supposed to offer an example of modesty and piety to women in their communities. Some pastors’ wives (or at least widows) were able to acquire more active and autonomous social roles. Rüsz-Fogarasi highlights that the wife of Gáspár Heltai, Zsófia Gyulai, cannot be relegated to the sidelines in considering Heltai's career, not least since after her husband's death Zsófia took on running the print shop in Cluj and proved herself a very capable business owner.
Three articles focus on the surviving volume of sermons of a Wittenberg-educated Lutheran pastor, Damasus Dürr, who worked in the village of Apoldu de Jos (Kleinpold) to the west of Sibiu. Robert Kolb assesses how a Wittenberg style of preaching is evident from Dürr's sermons with a focus on repentance and forgiveness of sin. Wien considers how Dürr's sermons provide insight about the transfer of ideas about princely power and political authority. The remarkable survival of so many late medieval Saxon churches provides a rich basis for discussion of how Lutheranism changed spaces for worship and about Lutheran visual and material culture. Maria Crăciun analyses the forms of decoration adopted by Lutherans for the pulpits of their churches. Crăciun analyses in detail a pulpit installed in the church at Braşov in 1696, arguing that the decoration of this pulpit represents a strong assertion of established traditions of Lutheran culture that proved resilient in the face of the Habsburg takeover of Transylvania at the end of the seventeenth century.
