This book examines the ways Lutherans and Catholics maintained a peaceful coexistence in the towns of the Lusatian League in Upper Lusatia in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By studying how reform occurred in these small and medium-sized towns, Christ shows how biconfessionalism lasted for over a century in a region less studied than the imperial cities and areas such as Saxony. The author argues that this religious coexistence led to a syncretism, or combination, of Catholic and Lutheran belief systems, practices, and religious spaces. The Reformation in Upper Lusatia was neither fully Catholic nor fully Lutheran, but a syncretistic combination of confessional elements that both groups could accept. These settlements were negotiated by town councils, clergy, and artisans, and not imposed from above by the king or his administrators.
Upper Lusatia in the sixteenth century was part of the Kingdom of Bohemia within the Holy Roman Empire. Six towns—Kamenz, Bautzen, Lauban, Görlitz, Zittau, and Löbau—had together created the Lusatian League in 1346. By the sixteenth century they had received, from the kings of Bohemia, numerous privileges of self-government that they guarded carefully. The Catholic kings of Bohemia allowed both the Lutheran majority and Catholic minority to practice their faith in Upper Lusatia as long as they kept the peace. The only significant problem the Lusatian League had with the king of Bohemia was not over religion, but occurred when the mercenaries it had provided to Ferdinand I left the day before the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547. Ferdinand punished the League cities for this by taking away their political privileges and bringing them under the oversight of his bailiff. The cities gradually regained their privileges over the next fifteen years, but they were very careful not to bring royal displeasure upon themselves. For example, the author describes how Andreas Günther, the mayor of Kamenz for twenty-six years, was accepted as a Catholic in a Lutheran town. The town leaders recognized his standing with the king of Bohemia and the benefits that it gave to the town, especially after the Mühlberg debacle.
The author focuses especially on several individuals who held positions of authority in League towns, such as Lutheran and Catholic mayors, a Catholic dean and town councillor, Lutheran preachers, and a Zwinglian. He makes effective use of state and town archives, including town chronicles, works by the individuals under consideration, records of Lutheran preachers, sermons, and town records.
Christ examines several cases of Lutherans and Catholics negotiating settlements. Bartholomäus Scultetus, the Lutheran scholar and mayor of Görlitz, advocated for the new Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Whereas in many Lutheran areas the calendar reforms were rejected as papal, Scultetus convinced the king and the town councils in the League to accept the calendar for scientific reasons, and it was adopted without trouble in Upper Lusatia.
Also notable is Johann Leisentrit, the dean of the collegiate church of Bautzen and papal administrator for Upper and Lower Lusatia. In Bautzen, only Catholics could administer baptism, so Lutheran infants were baptized by Catholic clergy prior to 1585. Leisentrit allowed his clergy to perform the Lutheran baptisms according to Martin Luther's instructions and in the vernacular. When Leisentrit composed a hymnbook, he included some Lutheran songs with alterations, but some he kept unchanged and in the vernacular. He considered Lutheranism to be heresy, but he recognized that to keep Catholicism relevant in Lutheran areas he needed to incorporate elements of Lutheranism that could be considered as common ground between the confessions.
Lutherans and Catholics also shared religious spaces. Throughout the sixteenth century Lutherans and Catholics shared a church in Bautzen and Lauban. In Görlitz, a reproduction of the Holy Sepulchre remained in use for both Catholic and Lutheran pilgrims. Christ shows how church spaces in Upper Lusatia often lacked a clear confessionalization just as other aspects of the Reformation in Upper Lusatia did.
Christ also shows how this syncretism did not extend to other religious groups. Accusations of crypto-Calvinism could end the career of a Lutheran preacher. Calvinists, Anabaptists, Zwinglians, and the followers of the cobbler philosopher Jakob Böhme were not tolerated. Only Schwenkfelders managed to remain a small minority amid the Lutherans and Catholics.
Years ago, Bernd Moeller in his Imperial Cities and the Reformation (1972) argued that the Reformation was an urban grassroots movement, which built upon an older thesis that the Reformation was primarily urban. Studies since have examined how reform was driven by town councils, by territorial princes, and by social groups within and around towns. Christopher Close in The Negotiated Reformation (2009) argues that in the imperial cities reform was a product of negotiations among many towns within a region. Martin Christ has built upon these studies to show how, within the towns of the Lusatian League, leaders were able to negotiate Lutheran and Catholic beliefs, practices, and spaces to keep the peace. Smaller towns were much more numerous than the larger imperial cities and this work broadens our understanding of reform in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It is a welcome addition to Reformation studies.
