POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN REFORMATION EUROPE

Sir Geoffrey Elton

Politics and Society in Reformation Europe

Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday

Edited by

E. I. Kouri Professor of History Oulu University, Finland

and

Tom Scott Lecturer in History University of Liverpool

© E. I. Kouri and Tom Scott 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 978-0-333-41737-9

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

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First published 1987

Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-18816-1 ISBN 978-1-349-18814-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18814-7

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Politics and society in Reformation Europe: essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his sixty-fifth birthday. I. Europe-History-1492-1648 I. Elton, G. R. II. Kouri, E. I. III. Scott, Tom. 940.2'32 0228 ISBN 0-333-41737-2

Transferred to digital printing 1999

Contents

Sir Geoffrey Elton

Preface

Acknowledgements

Editors' Notes

frontispiece

ix

xii

xiii

Notes on the Contributors XV

I

The Impact of the Reformation: Problems and Perspectives 3 Heiko A. Oberman

II

2 Martin Luther and the Political World of his Time 35 Gerhard Muller

3 The Holy Roman Empire in German History 51 Volker Press

4 'Comme representant nostre propre personne'- The Regency Ordinances of Charles V as a Historical Source 78 Horst Rabe and Peter Marzahl

5 Police and the Territorial State in Sixteenth-century Wiirttemberg 103 R. W. Scribner

6 Is There a 'New History' of the Urban Reformation? 121 Hans-Christoph Rub/ack

7 The Common Man and the Lost Austria in the West: A 142 Contribution to the German Problem Thomas A. Brady, Jr

8 Church Property in the German Protestant Principalities 158 Henry J. Cohn

9 The Problem of 'Failure' in the Swiss Reformation. Some Preliminary Reflections 188 Hans R. Guggisberg

v

vi Contents

lO Economic Conflict and Co-operation on the Upper Rhine, 1450-1600 210 Tom Scott

III

II Luther in Europe: His Works in Translation, 1517-46 235 Bernd Moeller

12 Europe as Seen Through the Correspondence of Theodore Beza 252 Bernard Vogler

13 Bodin's Universe and its Paradoxes: Some Problems in the Intellectual Biography of Jean Bodin 266 P. L. Rose

14 'History of Crime' or 'History of Sin'? Some Reflections on the Social History of Early Modern Church Discipline 289 Heinz Schilling

15 What is a 'Religious War'? 3ll Konrad Repgen

16 Cardinal Reginald Pole and the Path to Anglo-Papal Mediation at the Peace Conference of Marcq, 1553-55 329 t Heinrich Lutz

17 Orange, Granvelle and Philip II 353 H. G. Koenigsberger

18 The Shape of Anti-clericalism and the English Reformation 379 A. G. Dickens

19 For True Faith or National Interest? Queen Elizabeth I and the Protestant Powers 411 E./. Kouri

20 Queen Elizabeth I, the Emperor Rudolph II and Archduke Ernest, 1593-94 437 R. B. Wernham

21 The Settlement of the Merchants Adventurers at Stade, 1587-1611 452 G. D. Ramsay

Contents vii

22 Two Revolutions in Early Modern Denmark 473 E. Ladewig Petersen and Knud J. V. Jespersen

23 The European Powers and Sweden in the Reign of Gustav Vasa 502 Sven Lundkvist

24 The Conclusive Years: The End of the Sixteenth Century as the Turning-Point of Polish History 516 Antoni M{lczak

IV 25 The Reformation and the Modern World 535

Thomas Nipperdey

Index 553

Preface The knighthood recently conferred upon Sir Geoffrey Elton acknow­ledges his unique contribution to the history of Tudor and Stuart England over more than thirty years and his unrivalled place in the first rank of British historians, to which his presidency of the Royal Historical Society and his appointment to the Regius Chair in Cam­bridge have already borne witness. His many studies on the Tudor polity and his broader reflections upon the historian's craft reveal the true affection in which Geoffrey Elton holds his adopted country; yet he has never disavowed the intellectual heritage of his Continental back­ground.

The son of Victor Ehrenberg, the eminent historian of ancient Greece, Geoffrey Rudolph Elton was born in Tiibingen in 1921 into a family which over the generations had established a modest scholarly and professional dynasty. In 1929 his father was appointed to the chair of ancient history at the German University in Prague, but the darkening menace of National Socialism brought Victor Ehrenberg and his family to England in 1939. The dislocations and privations of the war and its aftermath may have disrupted, but could not destroy, the single-minded determination with which Geoffrey Elton applied himself to historical research as a student, under Sir John Neale in London, in new and unfamiliar surroundings.

In his subsequent career as scholar, teacher, research supervisor and editor, briefly at Glasgow and thereafter as a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, Geoffrey Elton has been associated above all with the history of England. Although, as he insists, England is not part of Europe in its modern historical development, he has nevertheless maintained links of learning and of friendship with the world of Continental scholarship.

Among Geoffrey Elton's scholarly achievements, which include some twenty books, his works on the international history of the Reformation have always held an important place. In 1963 Reforma­tion Europe, 1517-1559 was published and has since remained no less a trusty textbook to generations of students than his England under the Tudors. So popular- and provocative- did it prove that it was trans­lated into several languages including German and Japanese. In 1963 Geoffrey Elton also edited a collection of sources, Renaissance and Reformation, 1300-1648, now in its third edition, in the series Ideas and

ix

X Preface

Institutions in Western Civilization. The crown was set upon his contribution to European scholarship by the appearance in 1968 of the eagerly awaited second volume of The New Cambridge Modern History, entitled The Reformation, 1520-1559. As well as an Introduction of magisterial authority and magical concision, he wrote both the chapter on 'The Reformation in England' and a lucid survey of 'Constitutional Development and Political Thought in Western Europe'.

It was entirely fitting, therefore, that he should be invited to join the board of management of the internationally renowned Archive for Reformation History, in whose 1977 issue he contributed the portrait 'Thomas Cromwell Redivivus', a Continental clarion for the figure at the centre of his historical endeavours. Elton's mastery of both English and European Reformation history has found further expression in numerous other articles collected in his Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, including his study in German on England and the Reformation in Upper Germany.

Published forays into his mother tongue do not stand alone. Who can forget Geoffrey Elton addressing the International Luther Con­gress in Erfurt in August 1983 in fluent and faultless German, without text or notes, and in language so pithy that it astonished the staid assembly of scholars and divines? The Luther quincentenary took Elton to other conferences in West Germany, where his iconoclasm and pricking of conceits were worthy of the great Reformer himself. With the same vigour he has presented problems of Reformation history to audiences in all five continents.

In honour of his sixty-fifth birthday this collection of essays on Politics and Society in Reformation Europe by friends and colleagues at home and overseas pays tribute to Sir Geoffrey Elton's standing beyond England's shores in the world community of historians. In bringing together scholars from many countries, the editors, whose own doctoral research, guided by Geoffrey Elton, was devoted to European history, have sought to convey the wealth of original and challenging scholarship in which the Reformation era now abounds. No single volume can do justice to every facet of current debate. The collection therefore concentrates upon two principal themes: the politi­cal conditions within Germany in the age of the Reformation and the interaction of religion and society; and the dissemination of Protestan­tism beyond the German-speaking lands, and its repercussions upon international relations and the development of the early modern state. Spanning these topics are introductory and concluding surveys which reflect upon the Reformation's impact on the modern world.

Preface xi

In his recent biography of F. W. Maitland, Geoffrey Elton stresses that the historian's graces can come only from hard work, hard thought and concentrated research. By their plurality of subject and approach the authors in this Festschrift seek to observe another of his fundamen­tal maxims: that true historical understanding derives not from rever­ence towards established opinion but from the critical scrutiny of evidence and the courage to engage in controversy and debate. In their willingness to submit their arguments to one of the most trenchant critics of our time, they fulfil Sir Geoffrey's most earnest desire: to uphold 'the comity of scholars in a discommodity of nations'.

E. I. KOURI TOM SCOTT

Acknowledgements The editors acknowledge with gratitude the financial assistance of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn towards the publication of this volume. They also wish to thank Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce the map of the Swiss Confederation on page 189. To the several translators and secretaries who have helped in the preparation of this volume goes the editors' profound gratitude.

E.I.K. T.S.

xii

Editors' Notes For clarity, upper and lower case are used to distinguish between Estates (Stiinde; corporations) and estates (Giiter; lands). The adjective stiindisch is rendered as Estatal.

Place-names are rendered according to existing political frontiers, except where common English forms exist.

Personal names have been anglicised in the case of ruling houses and territorial princes, but the native style has been retained for all other names, including the ecclesiastical Electors.

E.I.K. T.S.

xiii

Notes on the Contributors

Thomas A. Brady, Jr is Professor of History at the University of Oregon. As well as numerous articles on aspects of the Reformation in Germany he is the author of Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520-1555 and Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450-1550.

Henry J. Cohn is Reader in History at the University of Warwick. Besides articles on the German Peasants' War and anti-clericalism in the German Reformation, he is the author of The Government of the Rhine Palatinate in the Fifteenth Century and has edited Government in Reformation Europe, 1520-1560.

A. G. Dickens is Emeritus Professor of History at King's College, London, and former Director of the Institute of Historical Research. Among his many books on the English and Continental Reformations are The Age of Humanism and Reformation, The German Nation and Martin Luther, his collected essays Reformation Studies and, most recently, with J. M. Tonkin The Reformation in Historical Thought.

Hans R. Guggisberg is Professor of History at the University of Basel and Managing Editor of the Archive for Reformation History. He has published widely on aspects of the Swiss Reformation and the interna­tional diffusion of Protestantism. Among his books are Das europiiische Mittelalter im amerikanischen Geschichtsdenken des 19. und des friihen 20. Jahrhunderts and Basel in the Sixteenth Century.

Knud J. V. Jespersen is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Odense University, Denmark. His research on Scandinavian military and diplomatic history has appeared in several books and articles, most recently in The Scandinavian Journal of History and The Historical Journal.

H. G. Koenlgsberger, Emeritus Professor of History at King's College, London, is currently President of the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions. Among his many publications are The Practice of Empire and The Habsburgs and

XV

xvi Notes on the Contributors

Europe. In 1986 his collected essays Politicians and Virtuosi appeared.

E. I. Kouri is a visiting Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and was recently appointed to a professorship of history at Oulu University, Finland. Among his books are England and the Attempt to Form a Protestant Alliance in the late 1560s, Elizabethan England and Europe and Der deutsche Protestantismus und die soziale Frage, 1870-1919.

Sven Lundkvlst is Professor of History and Director of the Riksarkivet, Stockholm. His research interests have focused on Sweden's commer­cial, social and military history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His best-known book is Gustav Vasa och Europa: Svensk handels- och utrikespolitik 1534-1557.

t Heinrich Lutz was Professor of Modern History at the University of Vienna and President of the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. His most recent books included Ragione di stato und christliche Staatsethik im 16. Jahrhundert, Christianitas afflicta, Reformation und Gegenreformation and Das Ringen um deutsche Einheit und kirchliche Erneuerung.

Antoni Ml)czak is Professor of History at Warsaw University. His research has concentrated on commerce and international relations in the Baltic and on travel and travellers in early modern Europe, on which he has written Mirtdzy Gdanskiem a Sundem: Studia nad hand/em baltyckim od po/owy XVI do polowy XVII w and Zycie codzienne w podrozach po Europie w XVI i XVII wieku.

Peter Marzahl is Lecturer in History at the University of Constance. His principal area of research is the Spanish colonies in America, on which he has published Town in the Empire: Government, Politics and Society in Seventeenth Century Popayan.

Bernd Moeller is Professor of Church History at the University of Gottingen and President of the Society for Reformation History. He has written on many aspects of German Reformation history, and his books include Johannes Zwick und die Reformation in Konstanz, Imperial Cities and the Reformation and Deutschland im Zeitalter der Reformation.

Notes on the Contributors xvii

Gerhard MUller is Landesbischof of Brunswick, having until recently been Professor of Church History at the University of Erlangen­Nuremberg. Among his many publications are Die romische Kurie und die Reformation 1523-34, Die Rechtfertigungslehre: Geschichte und Probleme and Reformation und Stadt: Zur Rezeption der evangelischen Verkiindigung. He has also edited several volumes of the Nuntiatur­berichte aus Deutschland.

Thomas Nipperdey is Professor of History at the University of Munich and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His many books include Die Organisation der deutschen Parteien vor 1918, Reformation, Revolution, Utopie, and Deutsche Geschichte 1800-1866.

Helko A. Oberman is Professor of History at the University of Arizona. His research spans the late medieval origins of Reformation theology to the international diffusion of Protestantism. Most recently he has published Masters of the Reformation, Luther: Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel and The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation.

E. Ladewig Petersen is Professor of History at Odense University, Denmark. His research interests include the late medieval and early modern history of international relations. Among his many publica­tions are The Crisis of the Danish Nobility, 1580-1660 and Fra domaenestat til skattestat: Syntese og fortolkning.

Volker Press is Professor of History at the University ofTiibingen. He has published numerous articles on the constitutional and political history of the German Empire and its territories. His books include Calvinismus und Territorialstaat: Regierung und Zentralbehorden der Kurpfalz 1559-1619 and Kaiser Karl V., Konig Ferdinand und die Entstehung der Reichsritterschaft.

Horst Rabe is Professor of History at the University of Constance. Among his many books are Naturrecht und Kirche bei Samuel von Pufendorf, Reichsbund und Interim, Autoritiit: Elemente einer Begriffs­geschichte and Die Entdeckung der Kindheit.

G. D. Ramsay is Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where

xviii Notes on the Contributors

for many years he was a Tutor. His most recent publications include The City of London in International Politics and The English Woollen Industry.

Konrad Repgen is Professor of History at the University of Bonn. His many books include Die romische Kurie und der Westfiilische Friede (2 vols). He is general editor of the Acta Pacis Westphalicae ( 15 vols to date).

P. L. Rose is Professor of European History at the University of Haifa, Israel. Among his numerous publications on European intellectual history are The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics: Studies on Human­ists and Mathematicians from Petrarch to Galileo and Bodin and the Great God of Nature.

Hans-Christoph Rublack is Professor of Modern History at the Univer­sity of Tiibingen and Managing Editor of the Archive for Reformation History Literature Review. Among his recent books are Gescheiterte Reformation: Friihreformatorische und protestantische Bewegungen in siid- und westdeutschen geistlichen Residenzen, Stadt und Kirche in Kitzingen (with Dieter Demandt), and Eine biirgerliche Reformation: Nordlingen.

Heinz Schilling is Professor of History at the University of Giessen. Alongside numerous articles on the history of the Reformation in northern and north-western Germany, he has published Nieder­liindische Exulanten im 16. Jahrhundert and Konfessionskonjlikt und Staatsbildung: Eine Fallstudie iiber das Verhiiltnis von religiosem und sozialem Wandel in der Friihneuzeit am Beispiel der Grafrchaft Lippe.

Tom Scott is Lecturer in History at the University of Liverpool. He has published several articles on aspects of town-country relations and on the German Peasants' War. He is the author of Freiburg and the Breisgau: Town-Country Relations in the Age of Reformation and Peasants' War and the editor of Die Freiburger Enquete von 1476: Que/len zur Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt Freiburg im Breisgau im 15. Jahrhundert.

Bob Scribner is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and University Lecturer in History. Besides many articles on the social history of the German Reformation and popular culture he has written For the Sake

Notes on the Contributors xix

of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation and The German Reformation.

Bernard Vogler is Professor of History at the Institut d'Histoire d'Aisace in Strasbourg, and is currently Vice-President of the Interna­tional Commission for Comparative Church History. His recent books include Le clerge protestant rhenan au siecle de Ia Reforme ( 1555-1619), Le monde germanique et heiVt!tique a tepoque des Reformes ( 1517-1620) and L'Aisace au siecle d'or et pendant Ia guerre de Trente Ans ( 1520-1648).

R. B. Wernham is Emeritus Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. His most recent publications include The Making of Elizabethan Foreign Policy and After the Armada. He is also the editor of List and Analysis of State Papers, Foreign, for the Reign of Elizabeth I, contained in the Public Record Office.