Reforming Mary OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY Series Editor David C. Steinmetz, Duke University Editorial Board Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich- Irena Backus, Université de Genève Wilhelms-Universität Bonn Robert C. Gregg, Stanford Susan E. Schreiner, University of University Chicago George M.
Marsden, University of John Van Engen, University of Notre Notre Dame Dame Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia THE GOSPEL OF JOHN IN THE THE CONFESSIONALIZATION OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY HUMANISM IN REFORMATION The Johannine Exegesis of Wolfgang Musculus GERMANY Craig S. Farmer Erika Rummell PRIMITIVISM, RADICALISM, AND THE THE PLEASURE OF DISCERNMENT LAMB’S WAR Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian The Baptist-Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth- Carol Thysell Century England REFORMATION READINGS OF THE T.
Underwood APOCALYPSE HUMAN FREEDOM, CHRISTIAN Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg RIGHTEOUSNESS Irena Backus Philip Melanchthon’s Exegetical Dispute with WRITING THE WRONGS Erasmus of Rotterdam Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Timothy J. Wengert Commentators from Philo through the Reformation CASSIAN THE MONK John L. Thomspon Columba Stewart THE HUNGRY ARE DYING IMAGES AND RELICS Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Susan R. Holman Sixteenth-Century Europe John Dillenberger RESCUE FOR THE DEAD The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in THE BODY BROKEN Early Christianity The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Jeffrey A.
Trumbower Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century AFTER CALVIN France Studies in the Development of a Theological Christopher Elwood Tradition WHAT PURE EYES COULD SEE Richard A. Muller Calvin’s Doctrine of Faith in Its Exegetical THE POVERTY OF RICHES Context St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered Barbara Pitkin Kenneth Baxter Wolf THE UNACCOMMODATED CALVIN REFORMING MARY Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Tradition Sermons of the Sixteenth Century Richard A. Muller Beth Kreitzer Reforming Mary Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century beth kreitzer 1 2004 1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright 䉷 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kreitzer, Beth.
Reforming Mary : changing images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran sermons of the sixteenth century / Beth Kreitzer.—(Oxford studies in historical theology) Includes bibliographical references and index. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint—Sermons—History and criticism. Lutheran Church—Sermons—History and criticism. Sermons, German—History and criticism.
Sermons, Latin—History and criticism. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint—History of doctrines—16th century. Lutheran Church—Doctrines—History—16th century.91'088'241—dc21 2003051789 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my parents This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I have many people I wish to thank and to whom I must express a debt of gratitude. Many thanks to the members of my dissertation committee at Duke: Elizabeth Clark, Susan Keefe, Kalman Bland, and Thomas Robisheaux.
I would especially like to thank David C. Steinmetz for his guidance and his example, as well as for his work on my behalf. This study could not have been completed without the help and support of numerous people and organizations. I have used the col- lections of various libraries and received vital help from their staffs: Roger Loyd and the staff of the Duke Divinity School Library; the Rev.
Terrance Dinovo at the Luther Seminary Library, who helped with the Lutheran Brotherhood microfiche collection; Dustin Strong and Ros Parnes, the intrepid interlibrary loan staff at the Bellarmine College Library, Louisville, Kentucky; and the library staff at the Southern Baptist Seminary library in Louisville. A special note of thanks goes to Gillian Bepler and the staff at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel: their help and access to their collections was a necessity for my research. Funding for this research and writing was given to me by the following: the Duke University Graduate School; the Graduate Pro- gram in Religion; the Center for International Studies at Duke; the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Duke; and the Insti- tut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz. Funding along with emo- tional and mental support were also provided by my husband, Lucas Lamadrid, who read and commented on the majority of this study.
He has helped me in numerous ways, even with occasional babysit- ting. This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Abbreviations, xi Introduction, 3 1. The Purification of Mary, or Candlemas, 65 4. Mary in Luke 2:41–52: A Family Visit to Jerusalem, 79 5.
The Wedding at Cana, 93 6. Other Marian Holidays and Herrenfesten, 109 Conclusion, 133 Appendix: Biographies of Lutheran Preachers, 143 Notes, 153 Bibliography, 209 Index, 225 This page intentionally left blank List of Abbreviations ADB Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1875–1912. Jöcher Allgemeines Gelehreten⫽Lexicon.
Christian Gottlieb Jöcher. [Leipzig, 1750–1897] Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1960–61. LW Luther’s Works. Louis: Concordia, 1955–86; vols.
NDB Neue Deutsche Biographie. von der Historischen Kom- mission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaf- ten. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1953–. RTK Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche.
Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1896–1913. Martin Luthers Werke. Weimar: Böhlaus, 1883–. Note: In the German and Latin texts provided in the notes no attempt has been made to standardize spelling, but the spelling, cap- italization, and punctuation of the originals have been preserved to the extent possible.
For ease of reading, many of the abbreviations have been spelled out, with the added text placed in brackets. The superscript letters, for example, “o” or “e” placed above other letters, have been standardized as umlauts. Reforming Mary This page intentionally left blank Introduction Few contemporary historians of the modern era seem to have no- ticed Henry Adams’s fin-de-siècle proposition that in the Middle Ages “the Virgin had acted as the greatest force the Western world ever felt, and had drawn man’s activities to herself more strongly than any other power, natural or supernatural, had ever done.”1 Me- dievalists may have always known it, and Catholic theologians may have believed it, whether they were embarrassed or empowered by it. But Adams himself, the author of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904), was sure that the Virgin of the thirteenth century rivaled the “dynamo,” or steam engine, which powered the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
However, historians of the sixteenth century have tended in other directions in their research, addressing the changing relationship between Christian Europe and the Virgin only obliquely, in the context of other topics, or more generally in discus- sions of piety, liturgy, and the saints. There is one question that has not been satisfactorily answered by modern historical scholars: if, as Adams believes, “all the steam in the world could not, like the Vir- gin, build Chartres,” how is it that this most powerful force of the late medieval period should come to be so difficult to discover in the modern world?2 Even if one can sense the Virgin as a force in Lourdes or Medjugorje, or among the throngs that gather there, no scholar would suggest that she is a recognizable force behind mod- ern western culture. In the following pages, I hope to offer a small piece of the puzzle, through an investigation of the way Mary is pre- sented in the sermons of Lutheran pastors in the sixteenth century. The sixteenth century is a period uniquely poised for an investi- gation into the decline of Mary’s power, for in this time not only Protestants but also some Roman Catholics such as Erasmus were 4 introduction rejecting the abuses and excesses into which the Marian cult had fallen, and were calling for a renewal of morality and spirituality in religious and social life.
While Erasmus rejected what he saw as popular abuses but maintained Marian devotion, even pilgrimaging to Walsingham, Protestants criticized more than pious excess or popular misunderstanding, striking at the heart of many dearly held notions of Marian theology. Their rejection of any role for merit in human salvation in particular undermined Mary’s cult. In this study, I will focus on the treatment of Mary and the continuities and changes in theological ideas concerning Mary and her presentation beginning with Martin Luther, and continuing with clergy in the Lutheran tradition. Luther, the ear- liest of the Protestant reformers and the most important reformer in the early years, is usually considered independently of the tradition he helped to found, but we will begin to understand the trajectory of Mary’s image and her role in early modern life only if we investigate other members of the tradition through- out this period.
Lutheran Sermons and Postil Literature In order to explain my choice of sermons as the source material of this study, let me first note that a number of other sources could have been (and still need to be) mined for their presentation of Mary, including more “official” publications such as biblical commentaries, confessional writings (which some assume are hegemonic for the Lutheran tradition and answer all questions), catechisms, or other treatises. Devotional literature and liturgical materials, along with artistic representations, could also have made interesting objects for studying how the Virgin Mary is portrayed in the Lutheran context.3 These various media, whatever contribution they might make to filling out our picture of Mary more completely, have their own merits and demerits as subjects for study, and still beg the question of how they were received by their various audiences. The sermon, it must be admitted, is not a perfect art form—or, in this case, historical source. The sermons drawn upon for this study were all pub- lished in the sixteenth century—they may be representative of the thousands of sermons that sit in archives, were lost, or were never recorded, but they are already at least somewhat exceptional in that they were not only recorded but also thought worthy of publication, that is, the publisher thought these works would find a profitable market.4 Some sermons were published because their author was exceptional and popular, for example, Luther, while others were published because the sermons themselves were seen as better than average or in some other way significant.
Some of the sermon collections were edited or at least overseen by the preachers themselves, but the majority were collected and edited by others, occasionally without the author’s permission, which often happened to Luther, or after his death, as in the cases of Johann Spangenberg and Joachim Mörlin. The hand of an editor must almost always be assumed in the final work. The issue of censorship should also not be forgotten, for introduction 5 works were often censored before going to press or occasionally suppressed or even destroyed after publication. A number of scholars have argued that cen- sorship was a major factor in the decline in sermon publication in other areas of Europe such as France and England, for both Catholic and Protestant au- thors.5 An even more basic question relating to sermons is how they were re- corded.
We know that preachers often did not write out their sermons ahead of time—Luther himself rarely preached from a manuscript, but usually only from an outline.6 Luther and others did on occasion write out sermons for their published postils, for example, Luther’s Wartburg Postil for Christmas and Advent, which he conceived as a book of model sermons to aid preachers. A “postil” (or “postill,” from postilla) is simply a sermon collection arranged by and covering the Sundays and often festivals of the church year.7 However, many of the sermons that appear in these collections were originally compiled by one or more note takers.