Thursday, July 24, 2014

Who's In Charge? German Social and Spiritual Norms in Late 1400's

A traditional way of looking at the late medieval Christian world is to point out the plentiful dualities found along every walk of life. God and Man, Man and Society, Man and Woman, come up in any day. Pairings such as Rural and Urban, Continuity and Reform, reflect the dynamism in populations and local concerns. The broad comparisons of Earth and Heaven, Sin and Salvation, and Secular and Spiritual matters and practices plunge us into the medieval world. The days would bring examples of Relic and Forgery, confronting the Past and Present. Thomas A Brady makes a case for a much broader view, in actuality (albeit more complex), pointing out the variety of multi-polar aspects and views, across German lands.

The old understanding of two swords, that is, both systems for justice, that of the temporal (or secular) and those spiritual realms that ruled the Christian world, was an idea repeated when the Church wanted to keep or extend its authority. Or when kings or princes or other powers wanted to exert their own. As can be expected, the history of this is long and the greater, more recent points of this longstanding argument - like the Council of Basel 1433-49 - which  Brady later discusses at length, highlight the forms this long-reaching, ongoing tug-of-war took on.

As example, Brady gives an exchange in 1480 between a local Margrave and the bishops of Würzburg and Bamberg. This Margrave (like Marquis) Albert Achilles, saw the call by the pope for a war against the Ottoman's as a rise in his taxes, since, he would have to send something to Rome as a good and faithful servant of the Church. Crucially he thought he should get some of that money from the bishops in charge within his Franconian domain.
"The prince-bishops of Bamberg and Würzburg objected that this would violate clerical immunity from temporal jurisdiction.... Lay rulers longed to liberate the lands and incomes from the Church's "dead hand."" [p. 59]
Brady concludes this was a sign of the times. The clerics wanted things to remain as they were, free from demands put on them by the local Margrave, even when these were for a policy they couldn't disagree with. But also, it made sense to Albert Achilles that these leaders should be able to contribute, especially since they were, in effect, the other sword.

Many an abbey or monastery, as well as lands held (even personally) by this bishop or that, essentially had their own contracts or agreements with certain parishes, the diocese or local nobility, as benefices etc. and that were fixed in the past, and whose current protectors wanted to continue to exclude or limit external control. Then there were those lords who wanted to consolidate their control over all the various parts of their promised dominion(s). Especially lands that the various churches let lay fallow and unproductive. These were just the sorts of 'points of neglect' that a forward thinking prince might want to take under his wing.

These kinds of conflicts happened, as the fifteenth century saw a broad swelling in the criticisms and castigation of many of the various clerical Orders, as well. The stories of corrupt parsons or friars, gluttonous Dominicans and hypocritical Benedictines filled more than just Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. But also, as Brady says, the religious community in German lands had been populated by old noble families, for generations, and which filled,
"... by the fifteenth century many such institutions, [these which] lay fast in the grip of the regional nobilities,[and] which defended their possession by requiring genealogical proofs for admission." [p. 57]
If the ranks of the clergy were full of nobles who jealously guarded the entrance to those institutions and could continue to control who would eventually make decisions, then there could be no redress. Except when that could be to the local prince, margrave or local lord. But, in this case, the local lord had turned it all around and Margrave Achilles made the bishops pay and was so incensed, he told them he would make them an example for all the other princes who would thereby learn how to deal with church officials. He was also, as Margrave, a servant to Emperor Frederich III, who conveniently then had his own pressing concerns elsewhere.

This all goes to show it wasn't just the relations between a bishop and the pope, that mattered, or the bishop and the local prince. Even when a prince and a bishop could agree, there were of course, the people to account for, as well as, who may be best able to pay.

The people had expectations for both secular and spiritual authorities. They expected the church and the bishop or their local Marian cult or pastor, to act as mediator between them and God, not between them and Rome. They expected the state, such as it might be to lead in efforts to protect them from other states. But more often, in German lands, the most direct power lay in local smaller institutions. Meanwhile the bishops and clerics were often absorbed in courting wealthy, worldly powers, and Rome, which in truth, gave poorer responses from the far-off, and relatively weak, though larger, institutions. This was nobody's fault. The institutions had all grown into these relations over long stretches of time. [p. 59] But this was the physical world. The masses of people were taught all year long to understand they were incomplete without the salvation promised to them from God. But the Roman sacraments, the eucharist and festivals had to be supplemented by the many local festivals, holidays, faces, relics and practices. All of which, grounded in the natural seasonal cycle, in time, still wanted something more. In a word, sublimation.

People wanted salvation, people wanted justice. Since on those occassions that church or bishop, prince or emperor could not bring it, for whatever reason, more and more sought ways to capture it themselves. This tension and a desire to find a way out of it produced many novel approaches.

Brady gives us three or four examples to point out these trajectories. Erasmus, a contemporary of Luther focused on good works of the faithful individual rather than, penance or 'trips to Rome'. [pp. 61-2] This too, could and did directly counter the common stereotype of the day's lazy clergy, the gluttonous bishop or the stuffed collars, the pretenders who begged alms for false pieties.
The Devotio Moderno,  also Dutch in origin, similarly had a very devout, disciplined rigor in all matters of the faith, and was widely read, but was not canonical. Brady says there were over fifty editions of this printed between 1472 and 1500. [p.65]
There was the case of the miracle of the Wilsnack blood earlier in the fourteenth century. Cakes of the eucharist were said to grow red with the blood of Christ. The question Where did it come from or How did that get there was never fully explained. In a way, Brady suggests, it was there because people were missing something and wanted it to be there. This miracle generated a fabulous pilgrimage, was also denounced by prominent critics as it opened radical theological discussions, but was left to remain in place until 1552.
The last example Brady gives of the novel responses to the tensions of the age was that of the prophecies of the drummer of Niklashausen. He of course, was burnt at the stake on July 19, 1476 on order of the Bishop of Würzburg.
______________________________________________
quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650;  University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009

No comments: