THE SUFFERING BODY IN SIXTEENTH-

CENTURY LUTHERAN DEVOTIONAL

LITERATURE1

One of the central yet under-studied goals of Lutheran reformers was to change in
dramatic fashion the way their contemporaries understood and sought to cope
with the suffering that was so much part of early modern existence. According to
the reformers, many of the traditional ways of approaching suffering were essen-
tially pagan in origin, because they either relied on superstitious means of
manipulating God, or they attempted to barter with God by means of good
works for health, protection or salvation. The reformation of suffering that
the Lutheran reformers undertook is readily evident in the literature they pro-
duced: catechisms, church ordinances and, above all, works of devotion.2 This
reformation also had important implications for how lay Lutherans, the intended
audience for these works, were supposed to think about and experience their own
bodily existence, especially as they suffered. The Protestant Reformation marks a
crucial Wendepunkt in what one might call the history of suffering in the West; it
also, and relatedly, marks a crucial turning point in the history of attitudes towards
the body. This essay examines these related histories and discusses not only
Protestant rejections of traditional attitudes toward the suffering body, which
have been studied, but also Protestant affirmations about the body and its suf-
fering in the Christian life, which have received relatively little scholarly attention.
In this way, the essay seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of early
modern Protestant culture as a culture shaped as much by what Protestants
sought to build or create as by what they tried to dismantle and destroy.

I
THE SUFFERING BODY IN LATE MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY
As is well known, the body and its suffering figured prominently in the ritual
life, theology and devotion of traditional Christianity. The Latin Church
offered its adherents numerous opportunities to contend with suffering
through observance of various rituals, and these rituals either required

1
Portions of this essay draw on Ronald K. Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral
Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford and New
York, 2012), esp. 189192 and 199207.
2
For a thorough treatment of the theme of suffering in these sources, see Rittgers,
Reformation of Suffering, chs. 49.

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 34 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

bodily participation (for example, processions and pilgrimages) or sought to

mediate divine protection and healing to the human body (for example, unc-
tion and various blessings). Late medieval penitential theology accorded a
prominent role to bodily suffering in the economy of salvation, viewing such
affliction as a penance for the penalty of sin. Suffering was seen as a species of
fasting, one of three categories of satisfaction for sin.3 To cite but one example,
a vernacular confessional manual entitled the Sinners Mirror for Confession
(1510) instructs penitents to make the following request of their confessors:
I ask you lastly . . . that you would now place on me a small and brief
sacramental penance that I can perform already in this hour or on this
day. I also ask that you would apply to me, counting it as a penance, the
merit of our Lord Jesus Christs suffering . . . along with all my good
works, or those which others have done for me (be they prayers, fasts,
alms-giving, pilgrimages), plus all the grace and indulgence I have
obtained, and also all the sickness and adversity I have suffered, and,
finally, all of the concern and work . . . by which I meet my material
needs. Apply to me all of these things as a satisfaction for my sin.4

3
Thomas Aquinas viewed bodily suffering as a species of fasting that compensated God for
sin through renunciation of bodily goods for the honour of God. See S. Thomae Aquinatis,
Doctoris Angelici, Summa Theologiae, Tertia Pars et Supplementum, ed., Pietro Caramello
(Torino, 1976), 4950 (Supplementum, q. 15 a. 3, Reply to objection 5). Several late
medieval sources make similar claims. Johannes de Friburgo asserts, Sicut vigilie peregri-
nationes discipline et omnia opera carnem affligentia reducuntur ad ieiunium; See Summa
confessorum, Liber III, Titulus XXXIIII, Questio cv, Herzog August Bibliothek (hereafter
HAB) A: 16.2 Theol. 2 (Augsburg, 1476). (There are no folio numbers in this edition.)
Guido de Monte Rocherii states that omnes afflictiones corporales are included in fasting;
see Manipulus curatorum, HAB A: 493.5 Theol. 2 (1) (Strasburg, 1483), fo. 8rv. The
Summa rudium maintains, Sic vigilie peregrinatores et omnia carnem affligencia redu-
cuntur ad ieiunium, HAB E 363 Helmst. 2 (1) (Reutlingen, 1487), fo. k3v.
4
Pitt auch zu dem letzten ewr wirdikeit/ wollet mir itzunt ein kleine kurtze sacramenta-
lichen pu auff setzten, die ich pald in diser stund/ oder in disem tag mug aurichten/
auch wollet mich tailhafftig machen und zu pu auff setzten/ das verdien des leides ihu
xpi [Greek] unsers herren/ auch in ainer gemain zu pu geben fur mein sundt/ alle meine
gutte werck die ich than/ oder die andere person fur mich thun/ es sey peten/ fasten/
almusen geben/ wallen/ auch allen gnad und applas den ich lo/ auch mir alle mein
kranckheit und widerwertikeit die ich leid/ auch zu dem letzten alle mein sorg und
arbait/ die ich in meinem standt oder ampt/ und domit ich mein zeitliche narung
gewynn/ die ding alle setzt mir auff zu einem genug than uber mein sundt, Peycht
Spigel der Sunder, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Typ 520.10.201
(Nuremberg, 1510), fos. L2rv (my emphasis).

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 THE SUFFERING BODY IN DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE 35

There is evidence to suggest that lay Catholics believed deeply in the suffering-
as-penance theology of their church. The sixteenth-century Catholic burgher
and diarist Hermann von Weinsberg interpreted a hernia that he developed as
a child as a secret cross or purgatory that he hoped would reduce the
penalty he owed God for his sins.5
Bodily suffering also figured prominently in the mystical tradition of the
late medieval church. Mystics such as Henry Suso and Margaret Ebner saw the
body and its suffering as a means of access to the divine. 6 In Susos popular
Life of the Servant (1362/3),7 God says to the Servant (der diener), a stylized
version of Suso,
Dont you know that I am the gate through which all true friends of
God (waren gotesfrund) must force their way if they are to achieve
true blessedness? You must fight your way through by means of my
suffering humanity (gelitnen menscheit) if you are really to come to
my pure Godhead (blossen gotheit).8
The Servant takes this admonition to aggressive cross-bearing quite literally:
he affixes to his back a wooden cross with thirty iron nails hammered into it
and wears it under his garment night and day for eight years. 9 This is all in an
effort to deepen his compassion for Christs sufferings and to seek to effect a

5
Matthew David Lundin, The Mental World of a Middling Burgher: The Family Archive
of Cologne Lawyer Hermann Weinsberg (15181597), (Harvard University Ph.D. thesis,
2006), 74, n. 114. This thesis has been published as Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century
Townsman Writes His World (Cambridge, Mass., 2012); see esp. 67.
6
Caroline Walker Bynum, The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle
Ages, in Caroline Walker Bynum (ed.), Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender
and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1991), 235.
7
Suso wrote and circulated the Vita prior to 1362/3, but near the end of his life (d. 1366) he
revised it and collected it along with other works in the Exemplar, so that posterity would
have a corrected edition of the works he believed God had inspired him to write. See Karl
Bihlmeyer (ed.), Heinrich Seuse: Deutsche Schriften (Stuttgart, 1907; repr. Frankfurt am
Main, 1961), 133. The Vita may be found in Bihlmeyer (hereafter Vita). Frank Tobin
provides an English version of The Life of the Servant in Henry Suso: The Exemplar (New
York, 1989) (hereafter Life of the Servant).
8
Life of the Servant, 84; Vita, 34.812. Here I follow Tobins translation and insert the
original German from Bihlmeyer in parentheses where it is important. Suso nowhere
claims that he is the Servant and Bernard McGinn warns against reading this text as a
simple autobiography: Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany,
(New York, 2005), 1956, 203.
9
Life of the Servant, 889; Vita, 414.

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 36 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

kind of union between his body and Christs body.10 The Servant fashions the
wooden cross for his back because of his desire to bear on his body some sign
of his heartfelt sympathy for the intense sufferings of his crucified Lord.11
Margaret Ebner similarly wished for her whole body to take on the pains of
Christs Passion.12 She accorded a highly significant role to her own severe
and rather unusual bodily afflictions in her mystical journey. Among other
things, she suffered from bouts of prolonged silence when she was physically
unable to speak, and also bouts of uncontrolled shouting, laughing and
crying. Ebner writes, I was determined, as far as possible, always to live
according to the will of God . . . In His mercy He helped me to do that by
frequent severe illness since He was preparing me then for Himself.13 Rather
than seeking healing for her illnesses, she saw them as a gift that prepared her
for union with Christ.14 Her experience of this union was also very fleshy.
She records how she kissed the open and bleeding heart of Christ on the cross
and nursed the infant Christ at her breast.15
Ebner and Suso clearly show that the late medieval mystics own bodily
passion was intended to achieve a somatic union with the Passion of the
Saviour. Through both self-imposed and God-imposed suffering they sought
to experience God in their bodies by achieving union with the crucified Christ.
They sought to enter into the Passion through their own passion, believing that
their bodies could become a locus of identity with their suffering Lord.

II
LUTHERANS AND THE SUFFERING BODY
Luther rejected all of this. He argued that traditional rituals were unbiblical and
that much popular piety was designed to escape divinely imposed bodily

10
McGinn writes, The description of these self-induced tortures in chapters 1518 con-
stitutes one of the classic accounts of the human body being made the locus of identity
with Christ through severe acts of asceticism (whether or not these are to be taken
literally). McGinn, Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany, 214. See also Bynum,
The Female Body and Religious Practice, 184.
11
Life of the Servant, 889; Vita, 41.35.
12
See Revelations in Margaret Ebner: Major Works, trans. and ed. Leonard P. Hindsley (New
York and Mahwah, 1993), 95; Offenbarungen, in Margaretha Ebner und Heinrich von
Nordlingen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Mystik, ed. Philipp Strauch (Freiburg
and Tubingen, 1882; repr. Amsterdam, 1966), 19.1821.
13
Revelations, 89; Offenbarungen, 8.25.
14
Bynum observes that female mystics tended to experience less frequent healings than
male mystics, at least in part because they wished to retain their sickness for the spiritual
benefits it might bring; see Bynum, The Female Body and Religious Practice, 1889.
15
Revelations, 96 and 134; Offenbarungen, 21.1521, and 89.2026.

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 THE SUFFERING BODY IN DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE 37

suffering rather than embrace it for the good that God wished to accomplish
through it. He was especially critical of indulgences, the cult of the saints and
the veneration of relics in this regard.16 Luther also insisted that suffering could
not function as a penance for sin, for Christ had paid the full penalty for sin by
His death and resurrection, leaving no leftover penalty for humanity to con-
tend with. Luther taught in the Sermon on Indulgence and Grace (1518) that
Christians should seek to endure the tribulations sent by God, not because they
rendered satisfaction for sin but because they contributed to Christians spir-
itual improvement, which he argued was Gods purpose in sending them.17 He
insists that all penalty, indeed, everything that God lays upon Christians is
edifying (besserlich) for them and able to be borne by them.18 The logical
corollary of this position was that suffering could not be a punishment for
sin, at least where the faithful Christian was concerned. Suffering was and could
only be edifying, never salvific. Finally, while he was influenced by late medieval
German mystics, Luther did not adopt their passion mysticism, that is, he did
not seek to achieve somatic union with the suffering Christ either through
asceticism or contemplation. As he argued in A Meditation on Christs
Passion (1519), They contemplate Christs passion aright who view it with a
terror-stricken heart and a despairing conscience.19 One meditated on the
Passion in order to understand the depth of ones sin and the depth of Gods
love and mercy, and to behold the cruciform model for ones life.
Following Luthers lead, Lutheran theologians and pastors continued to
reject traditional rituals, traditional penitential theology and (much of) trad-
itional mysticism as ways of understanding and coping with suffering. From
the Catholic perspective, these rejections amounted to a demotion of the role of
the human body in Christian spirituality. Important modern scholars agree.
Lyndal Roper has asserted, Protestants greatly weakened the link between the
physical and the divine. As they did so, they forced a reassessment of the
theological understanding of the body. Susan Karant-Nunn has similarly
maintained that the physicality of traditional piety underwent reduction in
the Lutheran Reformation, specifically as a result of the removal of much

16
See Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 1047.
17
D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar and Vienna, 18831999) (hereafter, by custom, cited
as WA for Weimarer Ausgabe), 1: 244.34245.4.
18
WA, 1: 244.40245.4. In the Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute (1518)
Luther writes against those who believe that their sins can be forgiven through their own
sorrow for sins and works of satisfaction. WA, 1: 542.3438; Luthers Works, 55 vols., ed.
Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia and St. Louis, 195586) (here-
after LW), 31: 103.
19
WA, II, 137.1012; LW, 42: 8.

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 38 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

religious art from evangelical churches.20 There is much to these claims. After
all, there was not a lot for the body to do in Lutheran piety and ritual. One could
kneel for things like prayer, Communion and confession. One might also fast
now and again, and listen to sermons and devotional literature. Finally, one
could sing and listen to music. The Lutheran Christian did not seek to experi-
ence God bodily, at least not in ways Catholic laypeople and mystics did, es-
pecially in the midst of suffering. There were no Lutheran stigmatics. Pain no
longer saved, something that followed necessarily from Luthers evangelical
soteriology. This was reflected in Lutheran art, especially its depictions of the
body of St Dysmas, the penitent thief on the cross. Commenting on the striking
change in the way Lucas Cranach the Elder (14721553) portrayed the penitent
thief before and after his conversion to the evangelical faith (see Plate 1 (1502)
and Plate 2 (1538)). Mitchell Merback observes,
When we recall the brutally literal and physical terms in which late
medieval Christian culture, artists in particular, cast the story of the
Good Thiefs path to redemption, we realize how deliberately
Cranach has here blocked the popular expectation that redemption
was achievable, in large part, through an earthly purgatory of pain
. . . In Lutheran iconography, then, we can no longer speak of St
Dysmas, the Penitent Thief who dies the spectacular death of a
pseudo-martyr, but only a model converted heathen. Pain does
not work to save him. 21

20
Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern
Europe (London, 1995), 173; cited in Mitchell Lewis Hammond, Medicine and Pastoral
Care for the Dying in Protestant Germany, in Mary Lindemann (ed.), Ways of Knowing:
Ten Interdisciplinary Essays, (Boston and Leiden, 2004), 136; Susan Karant-Nunn, The
Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (Oxford,
2010), 67.
21
Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of
Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago, 1998), 290 and 291. It
should be noted that Merbacks comments are in reference to Cranachs 1539
Crucifixion with Centurion (see image 113 on page 288). I have opted for Cranachs
1538 Calvary (Plate 2), as I believe it expresses Merbacks point especially well without
the distraction of the centurion figure, particularly in contrast with Cranachs own c.1502
Calvary (Plate 1). On the dating of this work, see Dieter Koepplin and Tilman Falk, Lukas
Cranach: Gemalde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik. Ausstellungen im Kunstmuseum Basel, 15.
Juni bis 8. September 1974, 2nd edn, 2 vols., (Basel and Stuttgart, 1974), i, 170, no. 63.
Merback is cautious about identifying the broken-back figure in the pre-Reformation
work as the Good Thief. The figure occupies the traditional position of St. Dysmas, but
his extreme pain and grotesque configuration give Merback pause, causing him to
wonder if Cranach did not reverse the positions of the two thieves in this work (see

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 THE SUFFERING BODY IN DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE 39

1. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Crucifixion of Christ, 1502. Berlin/Kupferstichkabinett,

Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany/Volker-H. Schneider/Art Resource, N.Y.

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 40 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

Faith saves Dysmas, not his bodily mortification, which seems almost non-
existent in the 1538 painting; his body and its suffering appear to have
little to do with his salvation it is the condition of his soul that
really matters.
Two key emphases in Lutheran devotional literature could be seen as
adding to this spiritual demotion of the body. There is widespread agree-
ment in this literature that internal spiritual trials are more difficult to bear
than external bodily afflictions.22 The Augsburg pastor Caspar Huberinus
(150053) makes this point in his frequently published Concerning the
Christian Knight (1545), where he differentiates not only between external
and internal Anfechtungen, but also between the internal assaults that lead
to despair of divine comfort and those that cause one to doubt the existence
of God Himself, the highest, most difficult and greatest (die allerhohest/
schwerest vnd grossest) temptation of all.23 The exiled former palace preach-
er and superintendent of the county of Nassau-Dillenburg Erasmus
Sarcerius (150159), says much the same thing in his Cross Booklet
(1549), where he asserts that internal assaults are far more difficult to

186). After e-conversations with Merback, Christopher Wood and Joseph Koerner, I have
learned that there really is no consensus among art historians as to the identity of this
figure, and there is very little if any literature available on the topic. My own sense is that
when viewed within the context of attitudes toward suffering in late medieval Passion
piety and spirituality, especially in the works of Henry Suso and Margaret Ebner, there
does not appear to be any necessary reason for concluding that the figure must be Gestas,
the Bad Thief. In fact, in light of what Suso and Ebner say about the extreme suffering of
Christs true servants, one would be more inclined to conclude the opposite that there
are good reasons for saying that the figure is Dysmas. Still, in light of Merbacks uncer-
tainty and the dearth of literature by art historians on this issue, the figures identity must
remain an open question. For the reasons cited above, I identify him as Dysmas, but I do
so tentatively. Karant-Nunn also comments on the important change in Cranachs de-
piction of Christ and the two thieves that took place as a result of his conversion to the
evangelical faith. See Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Feeling, 71.
22
The internalization of piety and concomitant focus on the soul rather than the body pre-
dated the Reformation and was also a feature of Catholic reform in the early modern
period. See Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge,
1999), 212. Bernhard Jussen and Craig Koslofsky have argued that the separation of
internal from external was a major feature of the cultural history of the late medieval
and early modern period. Human bodily gestures and actions were no longer held to
form and shape the soul, now they only served it. See Kulturelle Reformation:
Sinnformationen im Umbruch 14001600 (Gottingen, 1999), 603.
23
Caspar Huberinus, Vom Christlichen Ritter (Neuburg an der Donau, 1545), in Caspar
Huberinus, Works (Zug, 1983); Yale Divinity School Library, Fiche B3511, fos. R4vSr.

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 THE SUFFERING BODY IN DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE 41

2. Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Crucifixion, 1538. Oil on panel, 47g x 32 in. (121.1 x
82.5 cm), 1947.62. The Art Institute of Chicago via Art Resource, N.Y.

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 42 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

endure than external afflictions.24 Matthias Vogel (151991), a pastor and

superintendent in Goppingen, states in his Consolation- or Medicine-Book
for Souls (1571) that the most difficult cross to bear is a troubled conscience,
a statement that one can also find in the Dresden preacher Peter Glasers
(152883) Cross Booklet (1587), and in the Freiberg (in Saxony) theologian
Hieronymus Wellers (14991572) Book of Job (1563).25 Glaser asserts, The
Christians cross takes many forms, both internal and external. The internal
is the most difficult [to bear].26 Weller maintains that one of the things the
Christian learns from Job is that the internal fears, terrors and tribulations
are much more unbearable and difficult than external opposition and mis-
fortune. One even finds such statements in Matthias Flacius Illyricuss
(152075) A Spiritual Consolation for This Dejected Church of Christ in
Magdeburg (1551), which was directed to Lutheran Christians living in a
city besieged by imperial forces. Similarly to Caspar Huberinus, the erst-
while Wittenberg Professor of Hebrew maintains that diabolical assaults of
conscience that deprive the Christian of divine consolation and of God
Himself are the bitterest form of suffering a Christian can experience.27
Late medieval mystics had also emphasized the great difficulty of bearing
internal suffering, but for them such affliction usually took the form of
divine dereliction in which they ceased to experienced Gods love and

24
Welche heimliche vnd jnnerliche anfechtung [e.g. fear of death, fear of hell and eternal
damnation, battles with the sinful flesh] weit vbertreffen/ alle eusserliche gefehrligkeit.
Erasmus Sarcerius, Creutzbuchlein Darinnen vier vnd zwenzig Vrsachen vermeldet werden,
Warumb die reine Lere des Euangelii, trewe Prediger, vnd frome Christen, one Creutz vnd
Leiden nicht sein mo[e]gen (Leipzig, 1549), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University, 1971 617, fo. P.
25
Dann kein schwerer Creutz/ oder Leiden ist/ denn wenn das Hertz/ oder Gewissen im
Menschen betru[e]bt/ vnd angefochten ist. Matthias Vogel, Trost oder Seelenartzneibuch
in welchem fast wider alle Anfechtungen, vnd Tru[e]bsalen . . . Insonders heilsame, vnd edle
Recept, oder Artzneytru[e]nck . . . aus den fu[e]rnembsten Trostspru[e]chen heiliger
Go[e]ttlicher Schrifft, als gesunden Kra[e]utern . . . getrewlich zubereitet, begriffen, vnd
. . . registrirt sein (Frankfurt am Main: Braubach, 1571), HAB H: G 71.2 Helmst. (1), fo.
124. Peter Glaser, Creutzbuchlein . . . Allen betru[e]bten vnd angefochten Christen, sehr
tro[e]stlich vnd nu[e]tzlich zu lesen (Dresden, 1587), HAB H:YJ 132.8 Helmst. (1), fo.
B5r. Hieronymus Weller, Das Buch Hiob . . . vom Ersten bis auff das zwey vnd zwenzigste
Capit (Wittenberg, 1592), HAB H: C 30. 4 Helmst (2), fo. B2v.
26
Der Christen Creutz ist mancherley/ jnnerlich vnnd eusserlich. Das jnnerliche ist das
schwerste, Glaser, Creutzbuchlein, fo. B5r.
27
Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Ein geistlicher trost dieser betru[e]bten Magdeburgischen
Kirchen Christi, das sie diese Verfolgung vmb Gottes worts, vnd keiner andern halben,
leide (Magdeburg, 1551), HAB A: 248.13 Theol. (26), fo. Av.

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 THE SUFFERING BODY IN DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE 43

presence; for Lutherans, internal affliction had more to do with loss of

confidence in the forgiveness of sin and therefore fear of divine wrath.
The dread, despair and pain of a conscience that could find no peace, that
is, no assurance of divine absolution, were held to be more difficult to endure
than any external cross. When God seemed to be against the sinner, or worse
yet, when the suffering Christian feared that God was not even there, then all
was lost, because God Himself was lost, and life without God, at least without
the gracious God, was deemed unbearable. This is why forgiveness of sin was
held to be so important: it was seen as the most important kind of consolation
for the most difficult form of suffering, spiritual despair.
Such consolation was considered nothing short of miraculous by Lutheran
consolers, and such internal miracles were taken to be far more important
than external miracles of bodily healing. This is the second key emphasis of
the Lutheran consolation literature that might be seen to have demoted the
role of the body in the Christian life. The Strasbourg pastor, theologian and
church convent president Johannes Marbach (152181), argues in his On
Miracles and Wondrous Signs (1571) that the ability of the Wittenberg gospel
to console troubled consciences is evidence of its divine origins.28 A number
of Lutheran consolers make this case. After asserting that Christ does not
work special signs and wonders for His followers, as the heavenly prophets
(that is Spiritualists) insist, the Kassel Superintendent Johannes Kymaeus
(14981552) argues in his Passion Booklet (1539) that the Saviour still inter-
venes miraculously albeit invisibly in the lives of true believers by
relieving their doubt and anxiety as they face their own private hells.29
Similarly, Caspar Huberinus argues in his popular German Postil (1545)
that when Jesus healed the Roman officials son in John 4:4754, this was a
little miracle (ain wenig mirackel) that corresponded to the officials weak
faith; the real miracle occurred when the official believed and experienced

28
Regarding the power of the Wittenberg gospel to console (and the alleged inabilility of
Catholic theology to do the same), Marbach asserts, Dann jren keiner vermag ein einig
gewissen/ so von einer sunde getruckt vnd geu[e]bt ist/ tro[e]sten vnd fro[e]lich
machen. Johannes Marbach, Von Mirackeln vnd Wunderzeichen (1571), HAB A: 456.1
Theol. (1), L3v.
29
Denn ist Christi eigene krafft vnd gewalt/ aus no[e]ten vnd der helle helffen/ nicht mit
seltzamen wunderwercken die augen speisen/ Den zweivel wil er aus dem hertzen nemen/
nicht aus dem augen/ auff das der glaube raum habe vnd bestehe/ wider die pforten der
hellen/ das wir jnn Christo die sunde vnd den tod vberwinden/ welchs die rechte gerechtigkeit
ist, Kymaeus, Passional Buch (Wittemberg, 1539), HAB H: C 313.2 Helmst. (2), fo. XXXIIr;
5http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/c-313-2f-helmst-2/start.htm?image000000354(accessed 12
July 2017).

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 44 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

internal healing, that is, forgiveness of sin.30 In his Exhortation to Patience and
Belief in God (1551), Matthias Flacius Illyricus seeks to remind persecuted
Lutherans in Magdeburg of the miraculous power of the Word. As an ex-
ample of this power he cites the way many inhabitants of the city were able to
die so peacefully during an outbreak of plague three years previously.31
Members of the Wittenberg circle thought they did not need New
Testament miracles because they believed they had access to the most im-
portant miracle of all, consolation for the troubled conscience, along with its
source, the Word of God.32 Suffering Christians in Catholic (and Spiritualist)
communities might experience miraculous healings and suchlike, but ac-
cording to Wittenberg evangelicals these signs were not to be trusted, and
in any case they diverted attention from the divine miracles of consolation
that they believed took place on a regular basis in their communities; these
latter miracles only occurred among Wittenberg evangelicals because they
alone possessed the Word.
Of course, in emphasizing the priority of internal trials over external suf-
fering, and the wonders of internal consolation over external healing,
Lutheran theologians and pastors did not think they were demoting the
body; they thought they were restoring it to its proper place in authentic
Christian devotion. They still thought that the human body had an important
role to play in Christian piety. And they still thought that Christ Himself
participated in the Christians suffering. It is important to stress this point.
Lutherans might have greatly weakened the link between the physical and the
divine, but they did not sever the connection entirely, especially where the
suffering body was concerned.
As a number of Reformation theologians have emphasized of late,
Lutheran soteriology was not a purely forensic affair; Lutherans believed in
forensic imputation of alien righteousness and the union of the believer with

30
Caspar Huberinus, Postilla Teutsch, Vber die Sonta[e]glichen Euangelien, von Ostern bi
auff das Aduent (Nuremberg, 1548), HAB H: C 622b. 8 Helmst, fo. Kkk8r.
31
Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Vermanung . . . zur gedult vnd glauben zu Gott, im Creutz dieser
verfolgung Geschrieben an die Kirche Christi zu Magdeburg (Magdeburg, 1551), HAB A:
248.13 Theol. (25), fo. B4r.
32
Johannes Habermann argues in his Postilla, Weil denn die Lere des Euangelions mit
vielen Wunderwercken durch Christum vnd seine Apostel ist bekrefftiget worden/ sollen
wir hinfurt kein Zeichen weder von Gott/ noch Wunder von den Predigen begeren noch
foddern/ sondern bey dem wort bleiben/ dasselbige ho[e]ren/ dem gleuben vnd nachfol-
gen. See Postilla, Das ist Aulegung der Episteln vnd Euangelien, auff alle Sontage vnd
fu[e]rnembste Fest, durchs gantze jar (Wittenberg, 1583), HAB S: Alv.: U 45 2, fo. 272 v,
right-hand column.

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 THE SUFFERING BODY IN DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE 45

Christ through faith.33 Christ was present in the souls of believers; the human
body housed the divine. Lutheran theologians and pastors made much of this
faith-effected union between Christ and Christians in the midst of suffering.34
Christ did not simply suffer for Christians, He also suffered with and in them,
something Christian consolers had taught for centuries, although with a
different understanding of faiths role in this union. Johannes Brenz (1499
1570) makes this point in An Excerpt from the 8th Chapter of S. Pauls Epistle to
the Romans Dealing with Suffering and Divine Election (1528). The
Schwabisch Hall preacher asserts that when Christ called out to Saul (later
Paul) from heaven, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? (Acts 9:4), He
gives us to understand that the suffering of believers is His own suffering.35
And since Christ suffers with Christians, Brenz reasons they can be sure that
they will overcome all adversity, because Christ has overcome the world. The
Nuremberg schoolmaster Sebaldus Heyden (14991561) made the same ar-
gument in his How One Should Console Oneself in All Manner of Necessity
(1531). He argues that owing to the union that the Christian enjoys with
Christ via baptism, all misfortune and suffering that we experience or that
happen to us also touch Christ.36
Lutheran consolers believed that Christ was present in the Christian via
faith and baptism and that He shared in the Christians every tribulation,

33
See Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (eds.), Union with Christ: The New Finnish
Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1998); and Olli-Pekka Vainio, Justification
and Participation in Christ: The Development of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification from
Luther to the Formula of Concord (1580) (Leiden, 2008).
34
In his Wie sich ein Christen mensch im leyden trosten solle (1528), the Nuremberg preacher
Wenzeslaus Linck emphasizes that the suffering Christian must not lose sight of the fact
that he is united (verleybt) with Christ and therefore he bears Christs righteousness in the
midst of adversity: Christ is his and he is Christs. Linck stresses the role of baptism in
effecting this union and in prefiguring the role that suffering and death to self will play in
the Christians life. See Wenzeslaus Linck: Erbauungsschriften, Eigene Schriften aus den
Jahren 15261536 nebst vier von Linck ubersetzen bzw. neu herausgegebenen Schriften aus
den Jahren 1524 und 1525, ed. Helmich van der Kolk (Amsterdam, 1978), 901.
35
damit er zu[o] versteen gibt, das der glaubigen leyden seyn aygen leyden sey. Johannes
Brenz, Ain Auzug au dem 8. Capitel S. Pauls zu[o] den Ro[e]mern von dem Leyden und
go[e]ttlicher Fursehung, in Johannes Brenz: Fruhschriften, Teil 2, ed. Martin Brecht,
Gerhard Schafer and Frieda Wolf (Tubingen, 1974), 14.367.
36
Alles vnglu[e]ck vnd leyden / das vns widerferet oder zu[o]stet/ das dasselb auch
Christum beru[e]rt. Sebaldus Heyden, Wie man sich in allerlay notten, des Turcken,
Pestilentz, Theurung, u. tro[e]sten, den glauben stercken, vnd Christliche gedult erlangen
soll, Au siben spru[e]chen heyliger schrifft ku[e]rtzlich angezeigt (Nuremberg, 1531), HAB
H: Yv 2438.8 Helmst. (2), fo. Br.

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 46 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

including those of the body. But this union and this communion were not
experienced through either the bodily senses or through some kind of direct
mystical awareness. Luther may have emphasized the centrality of the ears in
Christian piety, but he never expected believers to hear the actual voice of
God, certainly not apart from Scripture, and then only in a mediated sense.37
Also in keeping with Luther, there is no mention of rapturous union with the
divine essence in the Lutheran consolation literature. Suffering Christians
experienced their union and fellowship with Christ by faith; they believed
that Christ was present within them and that He shared in their spiritual and
bodily sufferings because this is what the Scripture said (Matt. 25:3146; Acts
9:45). This belief was supposed to provide great consolation; it was not
intended to lead to direct experiential awareness of the indwelling Christ.
According to Lutheran sources, more often than not, suffering Christians
were required to believe against their bodily experience that Christ was pre-
sent in their suffering. They felt only pain in their bodies, which they were
tempted to view as evidence of divine wrath or divine absence, but which in
fact was the gentle discipline of their heavenly Father, provided they had the
faith to see it as such. (The proving of faith became the central function of
suffering in Lutheran devotional literature.)38 In this sense the body served an
important pedagogical role in a care of souls based on the Theology of the
Cross. The suffering body taught, or rather, it provided the ideal circum-
stances under which the evangelical Christian could learn, what it meant to
have true faith, faith that believed against experience and trusted the Word.
While there was not much for the body to do in Lutheran piety, there was a
great deal to be done to it, an emphasis that is very much in keeping with
Lutheran convictions about human and divine agency. Nowhere is this peda-
gogical role clearer than in works of devotion aimed at pregnant women.
A 1561 work illustrates this point well. It was entitled A Consoling
Instruction: How Pregnant Women Should Console Themselves Before and
During Birth and How They Should Commend Themselves and Their Little
Children to the Loving God Through Christ. The author of this work was the
Kulmbach palace preacher and general superintendent Otto Korber (c.1490
1552), and appended to Korbers contribution is a pamphlet by a chaplain in
Bentzel (Schlesien) named Martin Girlich (dates unknown); his pamphlet
bears the title One May Instruct and Console a Woman Delivering a Child as
Follows.39 Korber seeks to assure his readers in his work that God is present

37
WA, 57.3: 222.59; LW, 29: 224.
38
Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 1034, 118, 14953.
39
The German title of Girlichs work is Ein Weib in Kindesno[e]ten mag man also vnter-
richten vnd tro[e]sten.

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 THE SUFFERING BODY IN DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE 47

though hidden during birth He Himself is the midwife (jha selbs gar
Hebamme sey) and He is greatly pleased by motherhood and the bearing
of children.40 Korber says that the pains of childbirth are a fatherly chastise-
ment (ein genedige Vaters straffe) that discipline the body on account of sin
and thus prevent both body and soul from being damned to hell, where
the pains are eternal. This suffering must be borne patiently with the sure
knowledge that God will not test His children beyond what they can bear
(I Cor. 10:13).41 In his pamphlet Girlich specifically refers to the bearing of
children as a cross that God imposed on sinful humanity in the Garden of
Eden. Girlich says that humanitys parents deserved to suffer eternally for
their transgression, but God had mercy on them and gave them each a tem-
poral cross to bear. The pains of childbirth are not a form of penance accord-
ing to the Bentzel chaplain, rather they are a reminder to humanity of its
despicable nature (verruckten natur) and of the fact that God is the enemy of
sin, for which Christ alone has atoned.42
Girlich stresses that God uses suffering to drive a woman to the end of her
own resources so that she will call upon Him in faith. When the exhausted
mother and those around her have nearly lost hope and things appear just as
if God does not want to help, and death seems imminent for both mother and
child, at that moment God intervenes and gives wonderful help, so that in a
twinkling of an eye the mother and child are saved and live. Girlich
continues,
And where fear and sadness had been present and death was near,
now, by way of contrast, because God has suddenly helped, there is
not only no sadness and no danger of death itself, rather death has
been transformed into joy and into a two-fold life, since both the
mother and the child live.43

40
Otto Korber, Tro[e]stliche bericht, wie sich die schwangere Weiber, vor vnd in der
Kindsgeburt tro[e]sten, vnd sich sampt dem Kindlein dem lieben Gott, durch Christum
befehlen sollen (Leipzig, 1561), HAB A: 1000.1 Theol. (4), fo. A6r.
41
Ibid., fo. A7rv.
42
Ibid., fo. C2rv.
43
Es ist wol erstlich die noth so gro/ Vnd lesset sich manchmal angesehen/ gleich als Gott
nicht helffen wolte/ Aber wenn die not vnd angst am gro[e]sten ist/ Wenn sich die
schwach Mutter gar hat abgearbeitet/ oder wenn die hoffnung am geringsten ist/ vnd
man meinet/ es werde Mutter vnnd Leibesfrucht vergehen/ Eben daselbst gibt Gott
wu[e]nderliche hu[e]lffe/ das in einem Augenblick die Mutter vnd das Kindlein erlo[e]-
set werden/ vnd leben/ Vnd wie zuuor angst vnd trawrigkeit verhanden/ vnd der Todt
nahe were/ Also widerumb/ nach dem Gott plo[e]tzlich geholffen hat/ so ist nicht allein
kein trawrigkeit vnd kein gfahr des Todts daselbst/ sondern es hat sich auch verwandelt

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 48 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

Here the suffering body plays a function similar to the Law in Lutheran
theology in that it destroys all pretence of self-reliance and agency and
causes the Christian to embrace her own utter impotence, thus preparing
the way for her to receive the consolation, grace and help of the good but
hidden God. Her body and its suffering have helped to teach her how to live by
faith in the God who cloaks Himself with suffering. The afflicted body is thus a
holy but transient classroom in which the Christian was to learn what Luther
called the art (kunst) of faith.44
The Passion continued to play an important role in Lutheran pastoral care
and piety, and this influenced the way Lutherans viewed the suffering human
body as well. Lutheran theologians and pastors agreed with Luthers critique
of the alleged abuses of Passion devotion and urged Christians to see in
Christs suffering evidence of their sin and Gods mercy. Commenting on
the traditional view that contemplation of the Passion should move the
Christian to perform works of penance, Johannes Spangenberg, the
General Superintendent of the County of Mansfeld (14841550), responded
in his The History of the Suffering and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1543),
that is altogether not worth an empty hazelnut! A little later he continues,
Now this is the correct use of the Passion of Christ, that we are admonished,
provoked and driven through it to a penitent life, namely, that we regard, first,
Gods great wrath and earnestness regarding sin, and second, Gods great
goodness and mercy toward the poor, lost person.45 According to
Spangenberg, one beheld in the Passion Gods wrath concerning sin and
Gods mercy for sinners.
But Lutheran theologians and pastors also urged Christians to see more in
the Passion, especially as they suffered. In his Little Book of Consolation (1599)
the Oschatz (modern-day Saxony) archdeacon Hieronymus Tanneberg
(dates unknown) exhorts sick Christians to ask God to help them keep the
bodily suffering of Christ and the martyrs always before their eyes as an

zur frewde/ vnd zu einem zwyfachemleben/ das beide die Mutter vnd das Kind leben/ wie
denn der Herr Christus ein geberendes weib tro[e]stet/ Johan. am 16. Capitel, ibid., fos.
C5rv.
44
WA, 6: 208.10.
45
nicht alle sampt einer tauben hasselnus wert gewest. Johann Spangenberg, Die historia
Vom Leiden vnd sterben/ vnsers HERRn Jhesu Christi (Magdeburg, 1543), HAB H: C
772.8 Helmst. (2), fo. A3r. So ist nu das der rechte gebrauch des Leidens Christi/ Das
wir dadurch zum Busfertigen leben errinnert/ gereitz vnnd getrieben werden/ Nemlich/
das wir ansehen/ denn [sic] grossen zorn vnnd ernst Gottes vber die sunde. Zum andern/
die grosse gu[e]te vnd barmhertzigkeit Gottes gegen den armen verloren menschen, fo.
B4r.

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 THE SUFFERING BODY IN DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE 49

example of how to bear their bodily tribulation patiently.46 Tanneberg also

asserts that Christians have to be conformed to Christ through physical suf-
fering if they want to receive a resurrected body at the Last Day.47 Tanneberg
can even instruct his readers to invoke Christs five holy wounds as they seek
mercy in their bodily suffering.48 This is not the kind of participation in the
wounds of Christ that was typical of traditional Passion spirituality; there is
never a question of actual union between the Christians bodily suffering and
Christs Passion in this literature. Christ bears the believers bodily suffering
but the believer does not bear His physical tribulations. The Christian can
suffer in the body for Christ but not with Christ, because the Saviours suf-
fering is viewed as being unique and as belonging to Him alone.
The Augsburg preacher Urbanus Rhegius (14891541) makes this point in
his Concerning the Sufficiency and Fruit of the Passion of Christ (1522), which
provided an extended commentary on Colossians 1:24: Now I rejoice in my
sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christs
afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. Rhegius has the fol-
lowing to say about the view that Christians must actually fill up some deficit
in Christs suffering with their own suffering: This, now, is the devilish in-
terpretation of the ignorant works-saints; it is such a base error, that one must
attack it. Rhegius interprets the passage to mean that there is much left for
Christians to suffer as they seek to become more perfect imitators of Christ
and as they seek to put to death the old Adam who resides within them.49
Thus Christ suffers in and with the Christian but the Christian does not suffer
in and with (and certainly not for) Christ; the divinehuman relationship of
suffering is seen as unidirectional.50
* * *

From the Lutheran point of view, none of what we have seen thus far
amounted to a demotion of the body; the body was relieved of bearing a
salvific burden that it was never meant to carry, it was rescued from having to

46
See Hieronymus Tanneberg, Trostbu[e]chlein, fo. 47rv.
47
Ibid., fo. 50r.
48
Ibid., fos. 51v52r.
49
Das ist nu der vngelerten werckheligen Teuffelische auslegung/ ein so grober irsal/ das
mans greiffen mag. Urbanus Rhegius, Von volkomenhait vnd frucht des leidens Christi
Sampt erkla[e]rung der wort Pauli Colos.1. Jch erfull, das abgeet den leyden Christi [et]c.
(1522). This work was included in Kymaeuss Passional Buch. See fo. VIIIr;5http://diglib.
hab.de/wdb.php?dirdrucke/c-313-2f-helmst-2&pointer94(accessed 12 July 2017).
50
Karant-Nunn notes that in traditional Passion piety the devout were encouraged to
minister to the suffering Christ as they meditated on His many sufferings; see Karant-
Nunn, Reformation of Feeling, 45.

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 50 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

do violence to itself in order to merit heaven, and was permitted to host the
indwelling presence of the Lord, who shared its suffering. In Lutheran devo-
tional literature the human body remains earthbound, as it were; it belongs
exclusively to the present mundane order, and as such has a certain provi-
sional integrity, part of the affirmation of ordinary life that Charles Taylor
has attributed especially to the Protestant Reformation.51 Its sufferings play
an important role in the gradual spiritual growth of the Christian, and the
indwelling Christ Himself takes on these sufferings, but the body itself never
becomes united with Christs suffering, nor does the flesh become divinized
in this life, as was claimed of many medieval saints. The human body always
remains a human body; it neither can nor needs to be anything more, not this
side of heaven. Lutheran pastors and theologians thought this view of things
would provide relief and solace to their contemporaries, for they thought
traditional Christianity expected too much from the human body and thus
had unduly burdened suffering Christians. Consolation was their goal.
As Lyndal Roper has recently observed, artistic depictions of Luther as the
Stout Doctor reveal something extremely important, even revolutionary,
about Lutheran piety and its view of the human body: Deeply anti-monastic
. . . Lutheranism could espouse an attitude to the body that sought not to
transcend physicality but to embrace it, in all its aspects.52 The pleasures of
the human body including food, strong drink, sex, and conversation
along with its pains played a role in Lutheran devotion that was quite different
from what one finds in most Catholic spirituality of the period. Both con-
fessions could hold forth the resurrected body as a source of consolation and
hope for suffering Christians, but they had very different views of how the
pre-resurrected body and its suffering related to future glory. These differ-
ences had a profound influence on the shape of early modern
Protestant culture.

Valparaiso University Ronald K. Rittgers

51
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.,
1989), especially 21518.
52
Lyndal Roper, Martin Luthers Body: The Stout Doctor and His Biographers,
American Historical Review, cxv (2010), 381.

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