Religion, Society and Culture Reorientating The Reformation

Religion, Society and Culture: Reorientating the Reformation
Author(s): Bob Scribner

Source: History Workshop , Autumn, 1982, No. 14 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 2-22
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288428
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ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Religion, Society and Culture:

Reorientating the Reformation
by Bob Scribner
The socialist historiographical tradition has always regarded the Reformation as a

revolutionary event with a dual significance. First, it contained a number of historical
landmarks which were held, particularly in the nineteenth century, to be crucial to an
understanding of revolutionary political practice: the German Peasants' War, the
Anabaptist insurrection in Munster in 1534, the 'religious wars' in France and the
Netherlands in the second half of the sixteenth century, and the English Puritan
Revolution. Second, it marked unmistakably the dawn of bourgeois civilisation,
exemplifying for Marx and Engels in particular the characteristics of bourgeois politics
and culture which so aroused their anger and contempt, and which provoked so many
of their critical and polemical writings.
Engels wrote about the Reformation in a way which might be called exemplary for
modern social historical writing: he sought to combine analysis of the closely-woven
detail of political practice with a comparative historical framework which saw the
Reformation as a European phenomenon and related it to long-term economic and
cultural processes. His breadth of historical vision in dealing with what he presented as
the first modern revolution has not been matched by any substantial body of socialist
scholarship in our own time. On the continent there has been only modest interest in
the Reformation, largely in work from Eastern Europe and from the German Demo-
cratic Republic in particular. Popular knowledge of the German Reformation depends
largely on republication of the works of Engels or Zimmermann, in their own time bril-
liant, if flawed in many respects, and now outmoded. '
In Britain there has been a long tradition of interest in the broader themes of the
Reformation, from Tawney through to Christopher Hill. However it has ignored
much of the German Reformation and its repercussions on the continent, pursuing
only certain of its intellectual aspects, and setting its discussion in too English a context
out of concern with Puritanism and the English Civil War. It has shared the weakness
of so many of the church histories written on the Reformation, taking Luther and

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Reorienting the Reformation 3
Peasant work-tools and weapons, used during the German Peasants' War. The similarity
between work-tool and weapon is striking. From left to right: flail, a club, a war-sickle, 2
morning-star pikes, scythe, a war-sickle, a spiked club, a morning-star flail, a fish-spear, a
halberd.
Calvin as a yardstick against which to measure other developments, while paying less
attention to actual social and political detail of Reformation movements. In the light
of recent work on the continental Reformation, many older assumptions about the
nature of the 'Lutheran' or 'Calvinist' Reformations and their social profiles are less
valid than they may once have seemed in discussions about religion and the rise of
capitalism or the middle classes.
In the meantime the study of the Reformation has not been left just to church
historians. During the last decade a new generation of secular historians has appeared,
approaching the continental Reformation under the influence of social history (and so
perhaps indirectly influenced by the tradition which runs back to Engels). Its work
concentrates on the dynamics and development of the Reformation as a social pheno-
menon, and it is changing radically the accepted understanding of what the Refor-
mation was. In the last two or three years there have also appeared a number of import-
ant books which raise even broader questions about the relation of the Reformation as
a cultural and political event to more long-term changes in early modern Europe.
These works suggest equally radical departures for the understanding of the role of
religion in social and cultural processes.
This article will attempt to do two things. First, it will describe some features of this
recent work which might be of interest to non-specialist historians of the Reformation.
Second, it will point to some of its implications and some of its weaknesses, comment-
ing on it from the basis of my own studies in the field. I have divided the discussion into
three parts, corresponding to what I see as three major emphases in recent Reforma-
tion scholarship.
1. RELIGION AND SOCIAL CONTEXT
The liveliest discussions of recent years have focussed on two main issues
profile of support for the Reformation, and the nature of the Reformatio
movement. One of the leading German historians in the field claimed rec

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4 History Workshop Journal
there is now a kind of provisional consensus abo

tion. This 'consensus' could be summed up as follows:
The Reformation was a popular movement, created by a widespread demand for a
revivified Christianity with a simplified form of religious practice, for a reformed
clergy and for greater lay participation in the church. There was also a desire for a new
form of Christian ethics, applying Scriptural principles to the ordering of secular life,
especially in the fields of social policy and economic behaviour. This movement began
in the cities of Germany, especially in the imperial cities*, whose medieval traditions of
lay independence and collective responsibility for the good of their citizens encouraged
townsfolk to take charge of their own salvation. When reformers such as Luther and
Zwingli began to propound coherent, theologically-based concepts of reform, ideas
which were spread widely and rapidly through popular printed literature, they found a
willing and overwhelming response.
Emanating from the cultural centres of the towns, the movement quickly extended
into the countryside, directing its appeal to the 'common man'**. It inspired the
appeal for social justice which provoked the German Peasants' War, by providing a
popular biblicism which upheld the rightness of the peasants' social and economic
demands. After the defeat of the peasants, this stream of 'radical Christianity' passed
into the dissenting tradition of the Anabaptists, while the mainstream Reformation
became more socially conservative. As the cities declined in influence, the territorial
state church became the 'normal' form of Protestant church polity, although urban
influences continued in the person of humanist intellectuals who took service as
princely advisers and bureaucrats. The new church provided a better-educated clergy,
an extension of popular education through the desire to train better, well-informed
Christians, and a new lay piety with emphasis on hearing the Word of God preached,
on active faith, and on community hymn-singing as a form of participational worship.
In short, it was at all points a movement arising from the masses, aimed at the masses,
and offering them something for which they had long been searching and to which they
gave an enthusiastic response.3
This kind of outline of the German Reformation would probably command
sufficient agreement among Reformation scholars in Western Europe and North
America (at least) for us to say that it does represent a working consensus of scholarly
opinion. It has a particular appeal for one important reason: it seems to affirm the
essentially religious origins of the Reformation, while taking account of current inter-
ests in social history. Yet it does not veer towards a marxist interpretation: The Refor-
mation was popular, but it was not class specific, for it directed its appeal at the masses
and found a response in all social groups. This seems to me to be misleading, however,
because of the undifferentiated way in which the notions of 'popular' and 'the masses'
are employed. It is misleading in particular in three ways. First, it fails to pursue the
implications of the fact that the main centres of Reformation activity were the towns.
Second, it ignores the question of whether the Reformation drew its adherents dispro-
portionately from any social group or groups. Third, it does not examine what varia-
tions in appeal it had to different social groups.
In the cities the response to the Reformation was always disproportionately strong,
* imperial cities were those subject to no other overlord than the Emperor; since this allowed
virtual self-government, they were the closest Germany came to the Italian city-republics.
** the 'common man' (gemeiner Mann) was a stock expression in sixteenth century Germany
for the mass of those people who were subjected to the rule of others. For closer description, see
the work by Peter Blickle cited later in the article.

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while it was always very weak among non-urban gro

Reformation ideas in the German Peasants' War, t
sion in the countryside, as Gerald Strauss has plaus
visitation records.4 His findings are echoed by the ignorance and indifference of the
rural clergy around Ulm when confronted with Reformation doctrines in 1531, despite
the fact that they had been preached in Ulm for nearly a decade. Few showed any
knowledge or interest in Reformation theology, or indeed in any theology. Yet the
Ulm Council realised that there was little hope of winning over the peasantry to the
new faith unless one could rely on the clergy who were to instruct them.5
The nobility appear to have been cautious towards the Reformation, and despite
the firm allegiance of some minor princes or of more well-known figures such as Franz
von Sickingen, did not commit themselves wholeheartedly to its cause. This is unsur-
prising, given the extensive involvement of the German nobility in the higher levels of
the pre-Reformation church, which has been aptly characterised as an Adelskirche
(nobles' church). Whatever their private preferences, they were often influenced by
family interest or politics. Conflicts between rulers and territorial estates often led to
territorial nobilities opting for the religious direction contrary to that of their rulers.6
For such reasons, it can justly be claimed that 'the Reformation was an urban
event', and we can indeed point to several structural features of German towns that
made them the natural locus of the Reformation movement. As centres of communi-
cation, and as cultural centres with a higher than average concentration of educated
people, they were natural melting pots for new ideas. As centres of wealth and tech-
nology, they were the natural home of the printing press, the means by which Refor-
mation ideas were spread so quickly and effectively. As ecclesiastical centres, they
contained the more able clergy and preachers, who were to spread the new faith from
town pulpits. And as concentrated socio-political spaces, they provided an ideal unit in
which an institutional reform of religion could be implemented.7
Moreover, the urban religious mentality was fertile ground already prepared for
the seed of the Reformation. Townsfolk saw religion almost as a municipal service to
be guaranteed by civic government, a concept which encompassed not only provision
of the means of salvation in preaching and the Sacraments, but also education and
poor relief. Deeply imbued with the social anti-clericalism of the later middle ages,
they wished to see the clergy deprived of their social and economic privileges and
bearing the same civic burdens of taxation, excise and watch duty as other citizens.
This inclined them to anti-sacerdotalism,* in which the clergy were seen as folk who
merely did a job in the service of the community, and who should be appointed or
dismissed according to their performance. Thus, salvation was something both civic
and collective, a view particularly strong in the imperial city, which saw itself as a
'sacred community', virtually as Christendom in miniature. For this reason, it has
been argued, the imperial cities adopted the Reformation more readily and extensively
than any other part of German society. Once convinced of the rightness of Reforma-
tion doctrine, the entire city had to embrace the new faith, for all of its citizens were
saved or damned collectively.8
For these reasons, the Reformation in Germany during the first decade of its devel-
opment has become virtually synonymous with 'the urban Reformation', and much of
the recent research on its progress has been devoted to the unfolding of the Reforma-
tion movement in one town or another. So far, however, little thought has been given
* sacerdotalism was the view that the ordained priesthood was supreme in the Church.

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to the implications of such a concept for either

tion or its status as a 'popular' phenomenon. We can deal with the latter point first,
and return later to-the former.
If the Reformation was an urban phenomenon, then it was a minority phenome-
non, for the towns would have accounted for barely more than ten per cent of the
German population. But this may also overstate the case. It seems undeniable that it
was the imperial cities which most readily adopted the Reformation, but there were
only 65 imperial cities, and well over two thousand German towns in all. Moreover, the
towns that share the structural features we sketched above were the large towns with
populations of several thousand or more. There were only around two dozen towns of
this size in sixteenth-century Germany, and the rest had populations somewhere
between 500 and 2000. '0 They were farm towns, rather than cities, and we know very
little about the nature of the Reformation in such towns, for the large towns or the
imperial cities have attracted the major share of attention. " In sum, the 'urban Refor-
mation' to which recent research has devoted so much of its energies was something
which occurred in a tiny segment of the German population - in perhaps no more than
100 towns out of 2000, a mere five per cent of the total. And that total itself encom-
passed no more than ten per cent of the entire population.
This reflects on the class specific nature of the Reformation. If the appeal of the
Reformation, as it has been set out above, is largely an appeal to urban social groups,
then it was indeed a 'bourgeois' phenomenon, something of and for citizens of
towns.'2 However, the picture is more complicated than that, for the response of
urban social groups to the Reformation was, in fact, very varied. Even where an entire
city adopted the Reformation, it is a mistake to assume that all inhabitants did so with
the same enthusiasm or motives. Although there was often popular pressure on town
magistrates to adopt Reformation belief, urban elites such as merchant aristocrats or
urban patricians often had half an eye on their own socio-economic interests, and
Reformation was often delayed out of fear of bringing economic harm to the town. 13
When it was adopted, it could be arranged so that the interests of the urban patrici-
ate in the local church were unaffected. A recent study by Brady has effectively shown
how this process operated. Brady analysed the existence in Strasbourg of a semi-
feudal, semi-urban oligarchic elite, whose control of city politics amounted to a
'regime'. He went on to show the ways in which the socio-economic interests of this
regime tempered their response to the Reformation - to when, how and to what extent
it should be introduced. The notion of the city as a 'sacred community' was, Brady
argued, more an ideal than a social reality. In particular, it was the ideal of the artisan
middle stratum of urban society, which responded therefore to the more communitar-
ian religion found in Zwinglianism and advocated in Strasbourg by Martin Bucer. 14
Brady characterised the Strasbourg ruling elite as a 'ruling class' of mixed feudal
and urban elements. The 'less feudal elements' he saw as attracted to this Bucerian
style of religion, while the more noble and aristocratic elements were equally at home
with the old religion, with Lutheranism or with a highly private spiritualism. Thus, he
argued that different kinds of religious response to the Reformation were socially
specific, and it seems undeniable (whatever the suspicions of church historians that
this 'sociologises' the religious aspects of the Reformation) 15 that it was regarded
somewhat differently by different urban social groups. This emerges clearly if we
distinguish between the leaders, lay and clerical, and the followers of the new ideas in
the towns. Whatever the religious fervour of city magistrates, they certainly did not
allow religious feeling alone to shape their decisions for or against the Reformation.

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They wished to prevent any economic harm to their town from outside powers who
might resent or oppose a decision to turn Protestant, they wished to maintain their
own position as social elites, to avoid social disturbance, and not least to prevent any
radical social implications being drawn from Reformation doctrines.16
Clerical leaders might be thought to have a more disinterested view of the religious
issues, but they seem to have been drawn from a narrow social base. Study of a sample
group of leading Reformation preachers shows that three-quarters of them were
university educated, and over half had a higher degree. They were almost exclusively
from urban backgrounds, had been members of the old pre-Reformation clergy, and a
disproportionately high number came from the urban upper classes. The trend among
Reformation-minded urban magistrates was to tolerate only those preachers who con-
formed to the ruling elite's views of church government and social policy. Given the
social background of the leading Reformation preachers, it is unsurprising that they
usually went along with this. 17
We are rarely in the position of having more than an impressionistic view of Refor-
mation supporters in the towns. Occasionally we can assemble a list of those who drew
attention to themselves through their efforts to have the Reformation adopted, but
analysis of such people shows only who were activists or 'zealots' for the Reformation.
This has some limited usefulness: for example, analysis of activists in Leipzig in the
1 520s and 1 530s shows that those on the lower end of the social scale were more willing
to take radical action in support of their beliefs than those in the elite. 18 This should
not surprise us, but may also indicate some class specific response to the Reformation.
Yet where we have fuller lists of Reformation supporters with which we could pursue
the matter further, we must be aware that they may be misleading in various ways.
Where they were compiled by the authorities, it is likely that less visible social groups,
such as the poor and powerless, will be under-represented, so that the Reformation
will appear to have disproportionate support among the rich. The referendums occa-
sionally taken in German towns on the introduction of the Reformation are also poor
indicators, even where they list by name the voters for or against. Apart from having to
take account of what question was put to the voters, how it was put, and what kind of
real choice it represented (often it was no more than a legitimising mechanism for a
decision already taken by fCi magistrates), it tells us little about those who went along
out of ignorance, indifference or fear. At most it identifies the determined opponents
of the Reformation. '9
If we bear in mind that it is only an impressionistic judgment, we can state that the
numerical bulk of the Reformation's adherents in the towns came from the artisan
classes. Of course, these made up the bulk of any urban population - around 60per cent
or more - and artisans do not appear to have been over-represented among Reforma-
tion supporters. On the other hand, urban patricians were usually under-represented,
and well-to-do merchants over-represented.20 This kind of stratification within the
Reformation movements may well account for a good deal of their social and political
features.
First, the 'centre of gravity' was located in the artisan classes. Here the idea of the
sacred community had its strongest appeal, for the artisan middle stratum of the towns
were the creators of the communitarian ethos of the late-medieval city. It seems unden-
iable that they were attracted to communitarian forms of religions such as Zwinglianism
or, in slightly different form, Anabaptism.2' Among the urban elites there was a trend
towards oligarchy, which undermined the communitarian view of civic community.
There was a marked tendency to see themselves as rulers wielding sovereign authority,

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and to see their citizens as subjects, a reflection of

towns, in which a 'feudal' nobility still maintaine
mony.22 There is no doubt that hierarchical and pa
to these men, so that they took naturally to Lut
hierarchical authority and had no sympathy for th
to an erastian* form of Zwinglianism, whereby t
church from above, most notably through their p
ers and through their control of the consistory.24
It is not surprising that the response to the Refo
stratum should have become bound up with thei
urban elites. There was a stream of radical social c
which seemed to legitimate their demands, while
movement which represented the 'common man' a
encouraged them to take positive action to achiev
determined to squash such religious radical ideas as
artisan protest. Although they tried to keep the reli
issues, that was not always possible, as was shown
1520s.26 That the Reformation had two social face
ion -led to the emergence of two different kind
Reformation' and a 'popular Reformation' (even a
The latter would, perhaps, be better labelled as a
by no means a mass phenomenon, despite the inter
tial numbers of urban inhabitants. It is in its populi
the peasantry, presenting the 'common man' in its
of the Gospel. This was simultaneously a shrewd at
and a claim that the Reformation movement alr
'common man', according to Peter Blickle, serve
country, because it referred to the subject and un
and urban. In Blickle's view, this propagandist app
Reformation into a popular revolution. The ideas of
God in the Bible as an infallible standard of Christ
of the existing order, because they challenged the
which sixteenth century German society was buil
common man to defend the Gospel, such propag
order. All this Blickle saw as embodied in the T
programme of the German Peasants' War, whose w
Germany provided one of the few possibilities of s
rebellion of 1524-25.28
If Blickle is correct, then the German Peasant
movements from something affecting only a smal
genuine mass movement. This, however, is the wea
certainly, that radical conclusions about state and
Reformation message, but not that this found any g
The Twelve Articles were the work of an urban in
articles from the Peasants' War which contain id
radical biblicism may have been written in by leader
not necessarily disprove Blickle's argument; it mer
* erastianism was the belief that the State should contro

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carefully how Reformation ideas were disseminat

a topic on which very little detailed work has been
the lack of enthusiasm among the peasantry for R
War shows either that they took only shallow roo
on a highly social interpretation of the Reformati
disillusionment after the major Reformation leade
justice.
The general tenor of these remarks is that we need to use much more discrimination
when we speak of the Reformation as 'popular' or as a mass phenomenon. Of course,
this does not mean that it is not to be regarded as a major religious and social move-
ment. Even a few hundred highly active and fervent adherents would be sufficient to
create considerable upheaval in a small German town; a few thousand would create a
movement of considerable magnitude in such a small-scale society. In France, where
we are better able to count heads of Protestant supporters in the second half of the
sixteenth century, it seems unlikely that the Protestants ever amounted to more than
ten per cent of the population, but such numbers were sufficient to plunge the country
into prolonged civil war. Where they were heavily concentrated in a single town, as in
Rouen where their membership in 1565 attained 16,500, they could take on the local
appearance of a mass movement. 30
This points, however, to the need for a more complex grid of questions about the
social dimensions of the Reformation. First, we need to attempt much more counting
of heads, both nationally and locally, to appreciate the full dimensions of the Refor-
mation movement. We need to count, analyse and characterise different communities
which accepted the Reformation, relating them to socio-economic and geo-political
features. We need to explore the proportionate response of different social groups to
the Reformation message, above all how social situation influenced perception of that
message. Then we must examine how different social groups behaved in acting on it,
how their social and political location limited their freedom of action or constrained
their beliefs. Such questions provide parameters for a more sociologically complex
analysis of the Reformation than has hitherto been applied.31
At the risk of ignoring my own injunction to do more basic research on the Refor-
mation before generalising, I want nonetheless to offer some comments on the impli-
cations of the present 'consensus', and my glosses on it, for a socialist interpretation of
the German Reformation, often seen as an 'early bourgeois revolution'. Let me
discuss first the 'bourgeois' character of the Reformation, for this has given rise to so
much discussion about Protestantism and capitalism. In the light of our present know
ledge, much of this discussion seems to have been mistaken because of a too undiscri-
minating identification of the 'middle classes' with the bearers of the Reformation.
Class identifications are rather more complicated in the sixteenth century, and urban
social groups, in Germany at least, cannot be identified as a 'middle class'. They were
far too divided among themselves and had a far too underdeveloped consciousness to
appear as a unified class. Brady follows Poulantzas in using the term 'class fractions'
to describe them. As he has shown in Strasbourg, many of the urban elite were busy
trying to emulate the feudal nobility, turning themselves into urban nobles with a semi-
feudal pattern of landownership. Others constituted a merchant oligarchy which fitted
in easily with these patrician elites, not least in imposing on their citizens a 'feudal-
ised' form of rule, in which the rulers saw themselves as sovereign authority and
those beneath them as their 'subjects'. The bulk of citizens, the broad ranks of arti-
sans, can more aptly be classified as an incipient 'petty bourgeoisie'. Indeed, the

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'sacral corporatism' they espoused as an urban idea

ideology. 32
It was this incipient petty bourgeoisie which respond
radical doctrines of the Reformation, constituting wh
Reformation'. These doctrines grew out of a radical in
or were formulated by the radical wing of Lutheranis
Sch warmer- fanatics), or arose from popular Zwinglia
tendency that set the norms of what became the 'Prot
was the Reformation imposed by the elites, the 'magis
was a Reformation more than half 'feudal' in its emphase
erastian, territorial Reformations to be imposed by Lu
It is also common to call the Reformation and Peasan
tion'. But it was 'revolutionary' only because of the Ge
the peasant rebellions of 1524-26 displayed genuinely
'revolution of 1525' was, however, more an embryon
grew to full term, and it found little response in the tow
sans and low-status disprivileged groups. Certainly, T
forge in Thuringia a revolutionary alliance between town
chiliastic revolutionary ideology, but there were few p
where his model was followed or even entertained.
Only Michael Gaismair's radically egalitarian 'Tyr
matched Muntzer's programme, and this was drafted af
peasants. On the whole, the German Peasant War was
participation and more from its ideology. This emanate
lian circles in the towns. If it was a bourgeois revoluti
bourgeois revolution. Of course, it would be just as mis
into the sixteenth century as it is to use the term 'bou
groups referred to by the label 'petty bourgeois' are e
artisans.
There is a further point to emphasise, that religion in the Reformation should not
be seen merely as a 'cloak' for material interests that can find no other means of
expression. The history of protest and revolt before, during and after the Reformation
shows that both townsfolk and countryfolk were perfectly capable of expressing
material discontents and grievances in their own terms, even if religion was often
invoked to legitimise such protest. Religion provided standards of judgment about
matters of social justice, standards most frequently drawn from that most subversive
of books, the Bible. The most important example of this during the Reformation was
the doctrine of Christian liberty, a doctrine with revolutionary implications when
applied to the social conditions of the sixteenth century. Significantly, this doctrine
was allowed to fall into obscurity after the Peasants' War. It was claimed by the main-
stream Reformation that the doctrine had been 'misunderstood' by the peasants,
taken in a 'fleshly' not in a 'spiritual' sense. Wilhelm Zimmermann made the approp-
riate retort to this, that the peasants had not misunderstood Luther, merely under-
stood him differently.33
As a legitimising force, religion might either uphold or subvert an existing political
and social system. The outline of the German Reformation given above suggests a two-
stage process to have occurred. First, the opening up of religious debate in the early
1520s, against the background of general social discontent, released a good deal of the
subversive potential of religious ideas. This potential might have been realised by

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social groups lower down the social scale - the peasa

in the towns - who responded to those ideas which
social and economic, as well as their religious, needs
was checked, religious innovation being controlled more by social elites, certain
doctrines being emphasised more than others, and the more conservative legitimating
power of religion being called into play. By the middle of the sixteenth century, shrewd
observers had drawn the lesson. Michele Suriano, Venetian Ambassador to France in
1562, spelled out what had become a conventional wisdom. One should not tamper
with religion because 'it wrecks law and order and good government, because it gives
rise to changes in customs and living habits, and causes scorn for laws and the author-
ity of judges, and finally even of kings'.34
2. RELIGION AND POPULAR CULTURE
The discussion so far has taken a fairly uncomplicated view of religion, s

the broadly sociological question of how social groups matched religious allegiance.
'Religion' has been assumed to be unproblematical. Thus, the shift of religious alleg-
iance in the Reformation is presumed to be a shift from one form of Christianity to
another, from one theology to another, from one well-understood and well-defined set
of beliefs to another. I now want to discuss some recent work which does not assume
that 'religion' is unproblematical, but which sees it as something to be both defined
and described within the historical framework in which it appeared. This work draws
inspiration more from anthropological than from sociological traditions. Two books
published in 1971 stand out as having set a recent trend in the field: Jean Delumeau,
Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, and more impressively Keith Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic.35
Both authors saw the Reformation as an attempt to draw a sharp distinction
between 'religion' and 'magic'. For both, pre-Reformation religion was a system of
belief where this distinction was blurred. Some magical practices were undoubtedly
prohibited to Christians (although many lay people followed them nonetheless), but
there was a very broad penumbra of popular magical belief which was passively
accepted by the clergy, and sometimes even built into ecclesiastical ritual life. The best
example was the Catholic sacramental system, and the various forms of blessing and
exorcism associated with it. These formed an elaborate ritual structure spread
throughout the year.
Delumeau argued that these and other popular religious practices were barely
Christian at all. They were rather pre-Christian practices and customs overlaid with a
thin veneer of Christianity. Delumeau labelled this as 'folklorised Christianity', a
belief steeped in animism and polytheism, best exemplified in medieval saint and relic
cults. Indeed, animism formed the basis of much of the magical belief embedded in
pre-Reformation religion .36 This really amounted to a modern scholar conceding that
the Protestant Reformers had been correct in their criticisms of medieval Catholicism
- in their attacks on image and miracle cults, on popular superstitions attached to the
Sacraments and in particular to the Eucharist. Delumeau saw the Reformation as a
genuine attempt, made by Catholic and Protestant alike, to 'Christianise' this form of
folklorised religion. The Catholic Reformation was but a continuation of criticism of
folklorised Christianity which began during the fifteenth century. But the Protestant
Reformation mounted a more full-blooded attack on 'magical' and 'paganised'

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religious belief because it denied any kind of auto

practice, even wth the Sacraments. This denied
belief.
These attempts, both Catholic and Protestant, t
elements developed into an attack on witchcraft. And it was boosted by another
feature of the time common to both Catholic and Protestant, a neo-manichean * inten-
sification of belief in the Devil and in his power to operate in the world. Popular magic
was associated both with 'false religion' and with the intervention of the Devil in its
working. This kind of association was aided by a redieval tradition of associating
heresy with allegiance to the Devil, a view given fresh currency by the polemical war-
fare waged on each other by both Catholic and Protestant. The association of popular
magic with witchcraft was further fostered by the fact that the Reformation was
unable to eradicate folk magic. It simply became 'extra-ecclesial', being exercised now
by village sorcerers and cunning folk, rather than being shared as previously between
them and the village priest. These developments were rather similar in both England
and France, although there were some differences in their view of witchcraft.37
This line of argument has been developed further in recent works by the French
historian Robert Muchembled.38 First, he argues that the rural popular religion of pre-
Reformation Europe, in which animist and magical elements far outweighed those
derived from Christianity, was an integral part of medieval popular culture. The form
and content of this popular religion were closely related to the dangers and insecurities
of daily life in a society struggling to cope with famines, plagues, natural disaster and
other vagaries of nature. The animist and vitalist world-view of the age saw nature
permeated by various sacred and powerful forces, which had to be placated, propitia-
ted and, if at all possible, controlled. Popular magic offered a suitable means of
control; it was a form of crisis management indispensible to human survival.
According to Muchembled this form of popular religious culture reached its peak
during the period 1450-1550, but in the following century or so there was a decisive
attempt to repress it. A campaign led by both Catholic and Protestant sought to
discredit popular magic by associating it with witchcraft. The same campaign set out to
abolish popular festivities as occasions for license, and to 'reform' popular beha-
viour, especially sexual behaviour. It was a process of 'acculturation', an erosion of
rural popular culture by the cultural norms of a learned elite. This process goes on in
France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is rather similar to what
Peter Burke called the 'Reformation of popular culture'.39 It proceeds, Muchembled
maintains, through a triple submission of popular culture to new forms of power and
authority. First, new forms of restraint are imposed on the human body: through
sexual repression, through imposition of patriarchal authority and repression of child-
ren, and through the use of corporal punishment, which is applied increasingly to
control criminality and deviance. Second, there occurs a 'submission of souls', repre-
sented by Counter-Reformation attempts to wipe out 'superstition', to distinguish
clearly between the 'sacred' and the 'profane', and to subject the lives of Christians to
more careful pastoral supervision. This may have produced 'better' and 'more pious'
Christians, in the sense of adherence to doctrines and of observance of officially
* manichean is derived from the heresy of the third to fifth centuries, which believed that the
world was divided between the equal forces of absolute good and absolute evil; in its resurgent
form, as used by Delumeau, it refers to the idea that the power of Satan in the world was as great
as that of God.

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approved religious practices, but it also produced a more individualist religion based
on fear, obedience and control from above.0
Obedience was especially important, he argues, in establishing notions of hier-
archy, authority and discipline, the foundation of the third form of submission, polit-
ical submission. This involved setting up mechanisms of absolute rule through intensi-
fication of paternal authority, which found its focus in the image of the King as Father
of his people, himself in turn an image of God the Father. This idea of patriarchy was
accompanied by a corresponding devaluation of women, especially in their role as the
chief transmitters of popular culture. But it was not so much a 'paternalisation' of the
notion of rule, as a reshaping of the father-image into a form of absolute power.
Muchembled sees it as running parallel to another process central to the establishment
of absolute monarchy, a political centralisation which eroded the local independence
of popular culture in an attack on all forms of particularism, whether political, social
or cultural.4'
Muchembled's evidence is drawn largely from the north-east corner of France, but
he offers his analysis as description of a general process taking place throughout the
whole country. If the argument has general validity, it offers a radically different
reading of the impact of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in France.
Theological differences between Catholic and Protestant are of little significance
compared to the rupture in popular culture caused by cultural repression from learned
elites in the name of 'good religion'. There is also a final stage in this transformation of
popular culture, in which it is reshaped into 'mass culture'. This occurs through the
spread of popular literacy, and the popular reception of the cheap, entertaining liter-
ature of the Bibliotheque bleue, the popular chapbook. Originating in an urban bour-
geois milieu, this presents a view of the world which is no more than a vulgarisation of
learned culture. It is no more than a tranquillising mediation to the rural masses of
middle class tastes and aspirations, a final stage in the conditioning process of 'accul-
turation' 42
Much of the latter part of this argument cannot be commented on here, and should
be left to someone better acquainted with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France.
At a superficial glance it seems to overestimate the effectiveness of French absolutism,
and to ignore the fact that a good deal of the content of the Bibliotheque bleue consists
of stories which formed part of the broader cultural heritage of the middle ages. More
pertinently, there are serious doubts about the usefulness of the term 'acculturation' as
an explanatory concept. The concept was first used by American sociologists and
anthropologists in the late nineteenth century, and is now no longer taken seriously by
them as a useful heuristic term.43 It resurfaced in France during the 1960s, describing
the impact of imperialist cultures on the colonised, and there are overtones of this
usage in Muchembled's application of it.44 That popular and elite culture were so
separate from each other to resemble colonised and colonisers seems a highly dubious
assumption, and needs to be established with more rigour than Muchembled employs.
It ignores the well attested 'two-way flow' between learned and unlearned that Peter
Burke sees as characterising early modern popular culture.45
Yet the historical phenomenon Muchembled points to is undeniable. There does
appear to have been a prolonged attempt to repress or 'reform' certain features of
popular belief and popular culture throughout the period 1400-1800, of which the
Reformation and Counter-Reformation form one phase. This is clear if we examine
parallel developments in Germany. We can discern there clear attempts to 'reform
popular culture' as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century. These attempts are

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directed at 'superstitious' forms of religious practice, as well as against 'excesses' in

popular festive life, such as Carnival or the Feast of Fools. The most vigorous protag-
onist of these reforms in the mid fifteenth century was Nicolas of Cusa, who instigated
a concerted campaign to purify and reform religious practice in several German
dioceses.46 The attack on witchcraft began to gather momentum around the same
time, accompanied by an increasingly aggressive misogyny. There was also a swelling
chorus of moral criticism about sexual behaviour, and an even broader demand for
stricter social discipline.47
The call for social discipline had several dimensions. There was a desire, especially
in towns, to encompass as many people as possible within some corporate social body,
such as a guild, quarter or parish. These both provided a sense of social belonging and
acted as forms of social control. Those who stood beyond their boundaries, whether
by choice or involuntarily, were dealt with by the growing number of vagrancy laws.
Such persons - beggars, vagabonds, pilgrims, wandering scholars or musicians, and
migratory seasonal labour -were soon stigmatised as deviants. Alongside these
demands were set calls for more disciplined standards of individual behaviour. This
was seen in terms of living an orderly rather than a disorderly life, in both spiritual and
bodily terms. The first is exemplified in growing interest in disciplined ascetic piety, the
second in denunciations of bodily excess through eating, drinking, brawling or
gambling, the last held to lead to violence.48
The German Reformation saw an intensification both of attacks on popular
religion and of demands for social discipline. The impulse came from an educated
clerical elite, who wished to 'purify' religion on the basis of a stricter doctrinal under-
standing of Christianity. As we have seen above, the efforts of the religious Reformers
were underpinned by political authorities, who welcomed a religiously-sanctioned
social discipline which strongly emphasised obedience and conformity. As Gerald
Strauss has shown, these qualities were inculcated by Lutheran educational theory and
practice.49 There was also a closer supervision of sexual behaviour, reflected in
attempts to close down urban brothels, to reform marriage practices, and in altered
attitudes to midwives. 50
There are, therefore, a number of correspondences in Germany with what
Muchembled finds for France; but there are also a number of important difference
First, we can point to a continual struggle to 'christianise' the countryside in Germany
extending back well before the fifteenth century.51 This struggle involved a high degr
of two-way flow between rural religion and 'orthodox' Christianity, resulting in a
deeper absorption of Christian elements than Muchembled admits for France. These
are just as central to rural religion as those Muchembled enumerates: popular recep-
tion of the Bible and biblical imagery, popular Christology and Mariology, pilgrim-
ages, the appeal of 'holy folk' and popular prophets, millennialism, chiliasm and
belief in the Antichrist.52 Part of this two-way flow resulted in an 'acculturation' of
Christianity by popular rural religion. This can be seen in the way the medieval relic
cult grew out of the pagan cult of the dead, or in the way the late-medieval notion of
'sacramentals'* developed from the accretion of popular magical practices around the
Church's liturgy.53 In the latter case, we can observe the process influencing even the
learned elite of the Church, as they were forced to 'theologise' such practices in order
* sacramentals were blessed, and therefore 'holy' objects (water, candles, palms) which could
aid the salvation of the believer; but unlike the Sacraments, whose saving power was automatic,
they depended on the dispositions of those using them.

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to legitimise them. This produced a syncretic Christianit

to 'reform' because so much of its form and content w
The Reformation, as a movement of religious and so
best attempt to shatter this synthesis, both because it
and because it found a social group, the urban classes, w
tion' of religion. More importantly, Reformation theo
system which could break the nexus between pre-Ch
abolishing any link between religion and magic, a link
blurring the notion of efficacy involved.55 Given all t
that the Reformation proved so unsuccessful in this t
acquiesced in or absorbed the new doctrines, but at a 'f
old religion survived intact. This is, admittedly, an imp
the small amount of research we have so far, but we c
wind from the post-Reformation period up to the end
Luther myths and Reformation folktales which are m
and miracle stories; the popularity of allegedly biblica
Protestant pilgrimage and miracle shrines; and the wi
tions' in peasant belief uncovered by Protestant dioces
nineteenth century. 56 This seems to indicate that, al
'acculturation' of popular culture, it was in many respe
There may be structural reasons for this sharp cont
France as it is sketched by Muchembled. He describes,
underpinning the development of absolute monarchy
rather different political pattern enabled political fra
erosion of local rights and to limit centralisation of p
recent work by Lionel Rothkrug, there was always a p
between French and German religion. In France, he ar
been a centre of sacral power, in the middle ages even de
In Germany patterns of devotion were more regionalis
ing aspects of religion' were separated from public an
French religion was also more markedly a popular crusa
enous martyr-saints. It displayed a more centralised devo
surrounded by the cults of warrior saints. German religi
more privatised, with more 'feminine' forms of piety
more civic and corporate. This meant that, by contrast with France, 'people in
Germany never identified God's will with national purpose'. Religious forms
remained more intensely local and sanctity was never transferred to society or its
leaders. 57
Rothkrug's argument will be more fully commented on elsewhere, for it is highly
controversial and has more complications than can be dealt with in the space of this
article.58 But it is worth indicating the contrast between Rothkrug and Muchembled,
for each deals with a range of material that is missing from the other. Muchembled
ignores forms of popular piety and devotion, Rothkrug ignores the way in which
religion penetrated daily life, especially in the form of folk magic. We cannot properly
assess popular religious culture until we have studies which encompass all of these
aspects. Both do indicate some important connections between social and political
forms and forms of religious life, and these will provide valuable points of departure
for more careful analyses of religion and popular culture. I now want to look at some
particular features of the religious mentalities presupposed in the discussion so far.

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3. RELIGION AND MENTALITIES
Muchembled's analysis of popular culture rests on a number of assum

psychological processes involved in religious mentalities. These are
shared with a number of other historians working within the French
tradition.59 For these historians, the very nature of daily life is c
insecurity, anxiety and fear. Insecurity is made up of physical insecurit
sickness) and mental insecurity (uncontrollable forces and powers,
prodigies, violence and brutality, and fear of a vengeful deity). The 's
tricably bound up with this insecurity, but in ambivalent ways.
dangerous and to be feared because of its power, but it also provided a
ing fear and insecurity by dealing with such uncontrollable forces. M
to the cathartic, safety-valve effect of ritual life and of popular festivi
tension and banishing fear through laughter. The family and local
cushioned this tension by providing personal security. 10
In the acculturation of popular religion and popular culture, a go
release process was directed outside the community, onto scapegoat
onto deviants such as vagrants or beggars, and onto women in the fo
Violence and its control became centralised in the hands of the state
with state punishment filling the cathartic role of popular festivals. Th
anxiety was not always a matter of state initiative, Muchembled adm
accusations, for example, often followed the 'English pattern' outl
and Macfarlane, in which village tensions and breakdowns in neighbo
charges of malevolent magic against those to whom charity or neigh
been denied. Witch accusations were a psychological guilt release m
were fostered by the willingness of authorities to entertain them and to
their own learned notions about satanism.6'
There is an interesting parallel to Muchembled's view in some recen
German Reformation, especially in the arguments advanced by Ste
Ozment regards late-medieval religion rather differently. Through i
structure of observances, it induced guilt because it created only a sen
to fulfil religious obligations. The Reformation doctrines of justificat
religious liberty offered a profound release from this system of anxi
that God saved through faith irrespective of individual inadequacies.
terised this insight as an enormous psychological release, a liberation
the religious demands on people's lives, although he conceded that th
may have been blunted by subsequent institutionalisation and routi
Reformation movement. Ozment's argument forms a neat contrast t
for where the latter sees medieval popular religion as a means of al
anxiety, Ozment sees it as inducing it. The contradiction may be mor
real. Ozment seems to be describing the psychological progress of som
elite - indeed, a telling criticism of his argument is that he has taken Lu
religious experience to be generally applicable to all.63 Although on
excellent evidence to support Ozment's view,64 it seems most appl
religious mentalities; indeed, the description of the appeal of Refor
urban folk given earlier in this article is only a sociological, non-psych
of the same thing.
It is questionable whether Ozment's view of popular religious psych
able to the peasantry, but the same may be said of Muchembled's. T

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number of means of dealing with insecurity in a society with limited resources and
barely adequate levels of subsistence. One was acceptance of the notion of 'limited
good', which Alessandro Falassi sees being transmitted through folktales. Another
was a fatalistic outlook, anchored in the cyclical rhythm of life, which held that sooner
or later all bad fortune would turn to good, the theme of that very common late-
medieval motif, the Wheel of Fortune. Astrology, in as far as it offered hope of being
able to predict one's fate, but without holding out hope of changing it, was conducive
to resignation. The same was true of various forms of compensatory justice, which
were built into the hierarchical conception of society, for example, the idea that those
who suffered in this life would experience happiness in the next. This was vividly
expressed in the parable of poor Lazarus and the rich man Dives, a popular parable of
the later middle ages. Indeed, this resignation to the fragility of the human condition
has led Philippe Aries to speak of 'the tame death'. All these induced a sense of resig-
nation without anxiety, because they assured the believer of future joy. Even the rather
more worldly vision of the land of Cockaigne, the world of ease, plenty, and absence
of suffering had that effect, especially when it was celebrated in Carnival and other
feasts of plenty which momentarily created an inner-worldly paradise. These displayed
the celebratory, even hedonistic aspects of popular life, from which anxiety-inducing
notions of thrift (whether material or spiritual) or deferred gratification were absent.65
We encounter yet another set of psychological reactions if we explore the notion
that affliction was a divine chastisement for moral failure, whether because of sin or
other moral laxity, individual or collective.66 The concept of an angry God, who meted
out deserved punishment, would have certainly been anxiety-inducing -but this
concept was balanced by that of the Virgin as intercessor, who stood for a non-
retributory form of mercy which overcame justice. The image of God as stern father
was counter-balanced by that of the caring mother. Most importantly for the psycho-
logical aspects of popular belief, she was a mother whose requests to God for mercy
could not be refused.67 The cult of the Virgin-intercessor, the compassionate Virgin
was the most widely diffused cult in late-medieval religion. It was augmented in the
course of the fifteenth century by another cult of motherhood, that of the mother of
the Virgin, St. Anne. Both epitomised a notion of selfless charity, expressed icono-
graphically in the image of the Virgin offering her breast to the sinner.68
Mary's role in such cults was essentially to grant people what they wanted but did
not have, something which vastly complicates our understanding both of the religious
psychology and of the concept of woman involved. It was a counter-image to that of
the fifteenth-century misogynist, who saw women as feckless, morally weak and prone
to lead men astray, for in its more extreme version it elevated the Virgin to the role of Co-
redeemer with Christ. But it was a decidedly passive image of woman, for Mary's
intercessory power arose from the resignation with which she accepted her assigned
role in the divine plan. One of the rapidly growing forms of devotion immediately
before the Reformation, which gradually replaced devotions to other saints in the
course of the sixteenth century as the most popular saint cult, was to the suffering
Virgin, who appeared alongside the suffering Christ. The final assimilation of this cult
to a cult of female resignation occurs with the appearance of the image of the Virgin
pierced with a sword, directly parallel to that of Christ as the Man of Sorrows.69
There is much to investigate in such a form of devotion, its relation to its social
context, as well as its political implications, but it certainly reveals that Muchembled's
picture is far from complete. Richard Trexler's recent study of ritual life in Florence
suggests that such cults grew less out of human inability to cope psychologically with

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the world, and more out of a resourceful ability to

able pattern of symbolic life. They were part of a
life, operated in the certainty that ritual techniq
ever wide the gulf between urban and rural relig
rural religion had at least as strong a belief in the
If we search for evidence of fear and anxiety, we
induced by moral reformers who emphasised sin,
fallen mankind. It would be useful here to trace t
called a neo-manichaean world-view, with its beli
Satan in the world. This was intensified during t
part in the phenomenon of witchcraft.7' It is noteworthy that popular attitudes
towards the sacred often did not share this view of a world radically divided by a
struggle between the forces of absolute good and evil. Spirits might be angry or
amiable according to time, place or occasion, including how they were approached by
humans, a belief which underpinned the 'animist' outlook of the period.72 How far
such 'animism' itself was a major defining feature of popular belief remains an open
question. Much popular religion involved belief in persons who wielded or possessed
inherently sacred power - Christ, the Virgin, the saints - or objects associated with
them. Even images were attributed personality, rather than just an animist divinity,
and relations between the image and its devotees were personal relationships,
modelled on those within the ordinary community.73
There are, therefore, more questions to investigate in the area of popular religious
mentalities than recent works have hinted at. Nonetheless, they do single out some
important mental transformations which occurred around the time of the Reforma-
tion, and for which the Reformation was a pivotal event. These are of great signifi-
cance because of their political and social consequences, and Rothkrug has called
attention to some of these broader mental reorientations. He points out that in
communities where supernatural powers regulated the interpersonal relationships
between their members, collective redemption and collective responsibility were insep-
arable. If this was broadly characteristic of pre-Reformation religion, the Lutheran
Reformation radically separated the two, making salvation a more personal matter
unaffected by the quality of communal life. Divine justice thus became detached from
earthly justice (except where the ruler had to give a private accounting to God!),
leading ultimately to a secularisation of civil society. By contrast, the merging of
sacrality and rule took place in the person of the French king, leading ultimately to a
religiously legitimated absolutism. A third variant Rothkrug discerns in the sacral
corporatism of the south German imperial city, a variant that finds its fullest expres-
sion in Calvinism. In its Calvinist version, sacral corporatism saw salvation as the
culmination of the historical process, so that the ethical norms of the community
formed part of the process of achieving salvation. This was the essence of the 'puritan'
mentality, although Rothkrug does not explicitly draw this conclusion.74 All three
variants were in their differenl ways at odds with pre-Reformation popular culture,
and all three attempted to 'reform' it. A comparative study of the three attempts, and
of the stages and processes involved, would vastly expand our understanding of
popular mentalities and their historical development.
The recent work surveyed in this article points us in quite a different direction from
that plotted on our traditional maps of the Reformation. Some of it resembles,
perhaps, a trial balloon sent up to spy out the terrain ahead, and our understanding of
the landscape may well change considerably with a closer view at ground level.

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However it is clear that the Reformation can no longer be studied in isolation from a
number of important social and cultural transformations taking place in the early
modern period. It must be explored through a total history, linking religion, society
and culture. That has always been a perception of socialist historiography, and it was a
basic principle guiding Engels when he drew his first rough charts of the historical
movements of the early modern period. With the reorientation of Reformation
studies, it looks as though it has become a guiding principle of non-socialist historio-
graphy as well.
1 I have already discussed the nineteenth century contribution in 'Revolutionary Herit-

age: The German Peasant War of 1525', in R. Samuel, ed., People's History and Socialist
Theory (London, 1981), pp.242-255; for assessment of recent work, see note 12 below.
2 Of necessity, treatment here of recent work on the Reformation is selective rather than
comprehensive, and a good deal of it will be overlooked, or mentioned only in passing. I have
attempted a rather different assessment of recent scholarship on religion in a review article
'Interpreting Religion in Early Modern Europe', forthcoming in European Studies Review.
3 The idea of an emergent consensus was raised by Bernd Moeller, 'Stadt und Buch.
Bemerkungen zur Struktur der reformatorischen Bewegung in Deutschland', in Wolfgang J.
Mommsen, Peter Alter and Robert W. Scribner, eds., The Urban Classes, the Nobility and the
Reformatiorn. Studies on the Social History of the Reformation in England and Germany
(Stuttgart, 1979), pp.25-27. The composite picture sketched here is based on A.G. Dickens, The
German Nation and Martin Luther (London, 1974); B. Moeller, Deutschland im Zeitalter der
Reformation (Gottingen, 1977); B. Moeller, The Imperial Cities and the Reformation, trans. by
H.C.E. Midelfort and M.U. Edwards (Philadelphia, 1972); Steven E. Ozment, The Age of
Reform 1250-1550 (New Haven and London, 1980); Steven E. Ozment, The Reformation in the
Cities. The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New
Haven and London, 1975); Volker Press, 'Adel, Reich und Reformation', in Mommsen et. al.,
eds., The Urban Classes, the Nobility and the Reformation, pp.330-383; Volker Press, 'Stadt
und territoriale Konfessionsbildung', in F. Petri, ed., Kirche und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in
deutschen und niederlandischen Stadten der werdenden Neuzeit (Cologne and Vienna, 1980),
pp.251 -96.
4 Gerald Strauss, Luther's House of Learning. Indoctrination of the Young in the
German Reformation (Baltimore and London, 1978), ch. 12.
5 F. Keidel, 'Ulmische Reformationsakten von 1531 und 1532', Wurttembergische Vier-
teljahrsheftefur Landesgeschichte, Neue Folge 4 (1895), pp.260-269. Of more than a hundred
rural clergy questioned, only a handful revealed any knowledge of the theological issues of the
Reformation; almost half simply concurred in the new belief because the Town Council suppor-
ted it. See also Susan Karant-Nunn, Luther's Pastors. The Reformation in the Ernestine
Countryside. Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., vol. 68, part 8 (Philadelphia, 1979).
6 Moeller, Deutschland im Zeitalter der Reformation, p.81; and see also the articles by
Volker Press cited in note 3.
7 See Dickens, The German Nation and Martin Luther, chs. 5-9; the quotation on p.182.
8 On these points see Moeller, The Imperial Cities and the Reformation; Ozment, The
Reformation in the Cities chs. 2-3.
9 See the excellent survey of the literature by Hans-Christoph Rublack, 'Forschungs-
bericht Stadt und Reformation', in Bernd Moeller, ed., Stadt und Kirche im 16. Jahrhundert
(Gutersloh, 1978), pp. 9-25. A discussion of the notion of the 'urban Reformation' can be found
in Thomas A Brady, 'Social History', in Steven E. Ozment, ed., Reformation Europe. A Guide
to Research (St. Louis, Miss., 1982).
10 On the size of German towns, see Dickens, German Nation and Martin Luther,
pp.177-9, citing the findings of Hektor Ammann. The urban population of ten per cent is a
crude, but generally accepted estimate; it is, of course, misleading in taking no account of differ-
ing density of urban population throughout Germany, especially in the south-west, where
possibly as many as twenty to twenty-five per cent may have lived in towns.
11 Recently, however, there has been more research on North German towns, see, for
example, the studies in Petri, ed., Kirche und gesellschaftlicher Wandel, especially the work of
Winfried Ehbrecht and Heinz Schilling.

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12 On the Reformation and German Peasants' War as an 'early bourgeois revolution' see
Bob Scribner, 'Is there a social history of the Reformation?', Social History, no. 4 (1977),
pp.484-7, and further discussion in Bob Scribner, 'The German Peasants' War', in Steven E.
Ozment, Reformation Europe. A Guide to Research (St Louis, Miss. 1982); and R. Wohlfeil,
Einfuhrung in die Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (Munich 1982), pp. 169-199.
13 These themes are pursued in articles by R.W. Scribner, 'Civic Unity and the Reforma-
tion in Erfurt', Past & Present 66 (1975), pp.29-60; 'Why was there no Reformation in
Cologne?', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 49 (1976), pp.217-41; 'The Reform
tion as a Social Movement', in Mommsen et. al., The Urban Classes, the Nobility and the Refor-
mation, pp.49-79.
14 Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg 1520-1555
(Leiden, 1978).
15 On 'sociologising the Reformation', see Moeller, 'Stadt und Buch' (as note 3), p.29.
16 On these themes see Scribner, 'The Reformation as a Social Movement', and 'Memor-
andum on the Appointment of a Preacher in Speyer 1538', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical
Research 48 (1975), pp.248-55.
17 See R.W. Scribner, 'Practice and Principle in the German Towns: Preachers and
People', in P.N. Brooks, ed., Reformation Principle and Practice. Essays in Honour of A.G.
Dickens (London, 1980), pp.95-117.
18 Scribner, 'The Reformation as a Social Movement', pp.69-75.
19 For example, there were votes of the guilds or general assemblies of citizens in Constance
in 1528, Biberach in 1529, and in Memmingen, Ulm, Weissenburg, Heilbronn and Esslingen in
1529-31, see Dickens, German Nation and Martin Luther, pp. 187-8. But these were rarely direct
votes on the Reformation, usually only to accept or reject the Imperial Recess of 1529 or 1530.
20 For the example of Leipzig, see Scribner, 'The Reformation as a Social Movement',
pp.64-73. For similar estimates of French Protestantism, see Philip Benedict, Rouen during the
Wars of Religion (Cambridge 1981), pp.71-94, the most sophisticated analysis we have so far of
Protestant stratification; Joan Davies, 'Persecution and Protestantism: Toulouse, 1562-1575'
Historical Journal 22 (1979), pp.34-41; J.H.M. Salmon, Society in Crisis. France in the
Sixteenth Century (London, 1975), p.137 (on Montpellier).
21 See Philip J. Broadhead, Internal Politics and Civic Society in Augsburg 1518-37
(unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Kent, 1981), p.231;
22 See E. Maschke, "'Obrigkeit" im spatmittelalterlichen Speyer und in anderen Stadten',
Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 57 (1966), pp.7-23; Christopher R. Friedrichs, 'Citizens or
Subjects? Urban Conflict in Early Modern Germany', in M.U. Chrisman and 0. Grundler, eds.,
Social Groups and Religious Ideas in the Sixteenth Century (Kalamazoo, 1978), pp.56-58.
23 See the savage and sarcastic remarks Luther made on the Erfurt Articles of 1525, D.
Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883-1956), vol. 18, pp.534-6.
24 See, for example, the case of Ulm in 153 1, where the Town Council imposed its control
on the new disciplinary body, the Bannherren, by giving itself a majority control and making
itself the ultimate arbiter of church discipline - all this in rejection of the proposals of the city's
Reformers, who sought greater independence and initiative for the clergy in its workings, J.
Endriss, Das Ulmer Reformationsjahr 1531 in seinen entscheidenden Vorgangen (Ulm, 1931),
pp.53-61.
25 See Peter Blickle, 'The Peasant War as the Revolution of the Common Man', in Bob
Scribner and Gerhard Benecke, eds., The German Peasant War 1525. New Viewpoints (London,
1979), pp. 19-22; and his The Revolution of 1525. The German Peasants' War from a New
Perspective, trans. Thomas A. Brady Jr. and H.C. Erik Midelfort (Baltimore, 1981).
26 See W. Ehbrecht, 'Koln-Osnabruck-Stralsund. Rat und Burgerschaft hansischer Stadte
zwischen religioser Erneuerung und Bauernkrieg', in Petri, Kirche und gesellschaftlicher
Wandel, pp.23-63; 0. Rammstedt, 'Stadtunruhen 1525', in H.-U. Wehler, ed., Der deutsche
Bauernkrieg 1524-26 (GOttingen, 1975), pp.239-76.
27 The terms are those of Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, p.131, although his inter-
pretation disagrees with that advanced here.
28 Blickle, The Revolution of 1525, pp.25-67.
29 See Tom Scott, 'The Peasants' War: a Historiographical Review', Historical Journal 22
(1979), 693-720, 953-74 (the most thorough survey of recent literature), p.714.
30 Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion, p.53; R. Mandrou, Introduction to
Modern France 1500-1640 (London, 1975), p. 126 cites a figure of around ten per cent from the
end of the sixteenth century; figures were certainly much higher in 1562.

14.139.238.54 on Tue, 30 Jan 2024 04:32:24 +00:00
31 Benedict's study of Rouen is an excellent example of the kind of study required in this
field.
32 On these themes, see Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg,
pp.15-16, 34-5, 44-6, 237-9 and more extensively analysed on pp.53-196; see also the reference in
note 22.
33 W. Zimmermann, Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen Bauernkrieges, vol. 2 (Stuttgart,
1842), p.51 and echoed by Brady and Midelfort, in Blickle, The Revolution of 1525, p.xxiii.
34 Cited in J.C. Davis, ed., Pursuit of Power. Venetian Ambassadors' Reports on Spain,
Turkey, and France in the Age of Philip II 1560-1600 (New York, 1970), p.208.
35 J. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A new view of the Counter-
Reformation (London, 1977); K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971). In
what follows I have drawn on Delumeau more than Thomas.
36 Delumeau, pp.161-3.
37 On neo-manichaeism, ibid., p.170, and see C. Larner, Enemies of God. The Witch-hunt
in Scotland (London, 1981), pp.158, 172. On the struggle of priest and magician, Delumeau,
p.171.
38 R. Muchembled, Culture populaire et culture des lites dans la France moderne (XVe-
XVIIIe siecles) (Paris, 1978); 'Sorcieres du Cambresis. L'acculturation du monde rural aux
XVIe et XVIIIe siecles', in M.S. Dupont-Bouchat, W. Frijhoff, Robert Muchembled, Prophetes
et sorcieres dans les pays-bas XVIe-XVI!Ie siecle (Paris, 1978), with English version in J.
Obelkevich, ed., Religion and the People 800-1700 (Chapel Hill, 1979), pp.221-76.
39 P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978), ch. 8.
40 Muchembled, Culture populaire, pp.229-58.
41 Ibid., pp.269-85.
42 Ibid., pp.341-64.
43 See P. Burke, Sociology and History (London, 1980), p.101.
44 I rely here on a recent paper by Jean Wirth, 'Contre la these de l'acculturation', to be
published in a volume of conference proceedings of the German Historical Institute, London:
Kaspar von Greyerz, ed., Religion and Society 1500-1800, forthcoming in 1983. For a more
positive, if critical view, see P. Burke, 'A Question of Acculturation?', in Scienze, Credenze,
Occulte, Livelli di Cultura, ed. L.S. Olschki (Florence, 1982), pp.197-204.
45 Burke, Popular Culture, p.58ff.
46 See A.J. Binterim, Pragmatische Geschichte der deutschen National-, Provinzial- und
vorzu'glichen Diocesanconcilien, vol. 7 (Mainz, 1848), pp.258-62.
47 For the literature of witchcraft, see H.C.E. Midelfort, 'Witchcraft, Magic and the
Occult', in Ozment, ed., Reformation Europe. A Guide to Research (forthcoming). For the
classic statement linking misogyny and witchcraft, see the Malleus Maleficarum, the work by the
Dominican Inquisitors Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Institoris, which became the standard
handbook of witch-hunters, trans. Montague Summers (Arrow Books, London, 1971),
pp.1 12-21. On criticism of sexual behaviour, especially directed against women as the guilty
party, Gabriele Becker et. al., Aus der Zeit der Verzweiflung. Zur Genese und Aktualitat des
Hexenbildes (Frankfurt, 1977), p.29. See also Larner, Enemies of God, pp.92-102 on witch-
hunting as women-hunting, and on Aristotelian views of women.
48 Burke, Popular Culture, p.213 identifies this trend as part of a 'petty-bourgeois ethic',
but in dating its rise from 1500 does not look back far enough. Its economic features are
discussed in C. Lis and H. Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in pre-industrial Europe (Hassocks,
1979), esp. ch. 3. I shall discuss it further in a forthcoming paper on 'Sub-cultures in sixteenth-
century Germany'.
49 Strauss, Luther's House of Learning (as note 4), esp. ch. 11.
50 On midwives, see Heinz Schilling, 'Religion und Gesellschaft in der calvinistischen
Republik der Vereinigten Niederlande', in Petri, ed., Kirche und gesellschaftlicher Wandel (as
note 3), pp.222-41; on the closure of urban brothels, I am indebted to Lyndal Roper, University
of London King's College for information on attempts to close the town brothel in Augsburg in
the wake of the Reformation.
51 As early as 743 St. Boniface put together a list of 31 superstitions unacceptable to Christ-
ians, see A.J. Binterim, Die vorzu'glichsten Denkwurdigkeiten der Christ-Katholischen Kirche,
vol. 2/ii, 2nd edition, (Mainz, 1938), pp.537-40; it is interesting how many persist in conciliar
condemnations throughout the middle ages.
52 On these features of medieval popular belief, see W. Andreas, Deutschland vor der
Reformation, 6th edition (Stuttgart, 1959), pp.l33-94; R.K. Emmerson, Antichrist in the

14.139.238.54 on Tue, 30 Jan 2024 04:32:24 +00:00
Middle Ages (Manchester, 1981); W.A. Christian, Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century
Spain (Princeton, 1981); W.E. Peuckert, Die grosse Wende. Das apokalyptische Saeculum und
Luther (Darmstadt, 1976).
53 Patrick J. Geary, 'The Ninth-Century Relic Trade. A Response to Popular Piety?', in J.
Obelkevich, Religion and the People 800-1700 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina,1979), pp.8-19; and
L. Rothkrug, Religious Practices and Collective Perceptions: Hidden Homologies in the Renais-
sance and Reformation (Waterloo, Ontario, 1980), pp.3-14. On 'sacramentals', see A. Franz,
Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter, 2 vols. (Freiburg/Breisgau, 1909), and Bob
Scribner, 'Ritual and Popular Belief in Catholic Germany in the Age of the Reformation',
forthcoming in Journal of Ecclesiastical History.
54 Franz, Kirchliche Benediktionen, vol. 1, pp.8-42.
55 Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, p.172.
56 On Luther myths and Reformation folktales, see W. Bruckner, ed., Volkserzahlung und
Reformation (Berlin, 1974), pp.295-324, catalogued by Heidemarie Gruppe; on conjurations,
see F. Losch, 'Deutsche Segen-, Heil- und Bannspruche', Wurttembergische Vierteljahrshefte
fur Landesgeschichte 13 (1890), pp. 157-258; on Lutheran miracle shrines Bruckner, ed., Volks-
erzahlung und Reformation, pp.306-9, nos. 96, 115-8 and H. Stephan, Luther in den Wand-
lungen seiner Kirche (Giessen, 1907), p.24; on nineteenth-century superstition, see Max Rumpf,
Das Gemeine Volk. Religiose Volkskunde (Stuttgart, 1933), pp. 16-35, referring to P. Drews,
ed., Evangelische Kirchenkunde. Das kirchliche Leben der deutschen evangelischen Landes-
kirche, 7 vols. (1902-1919).
57 Rothkrug, Religious Practices and Collective Perceptions, pp.37-59, the quotation on
p.57.
58 See Scribner, 'Interpreting Religion in Early Modern Europe', forthcoming in
European Studies Review.
59 For a critique of these assumptions, I am indebted to Stewart Clark, in an unpublished
paper, 'Language, Meaning and Mentalite'.
60 Muchembled, Culture populaire, pp.21-53.
61 Ibid., pp.289-328; this notion also in Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and
Voltaire, p.170.
62 Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, esp. ch. 3.
63 See Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, p.9.
64 See, for example, Justus Jonas' account of his first encounters with Lutheran theology
at Wittenberg in 1521, G. Kawerau, Der Briefwechsel des Justus Jonas, vol. I (Halle, 1884),
pp.67-8.
65 On these notions, see G.M. Foster, 'Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good',
American Anthropologist 67 (1965); A. Falassi, Folklore by the Fireside. Text and Context of
the Tuscan Veglia, pp.8, 219, 252; R.W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk. Popular Propa-
ganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), pp.1 17-126 (wheel of fortune and
astrology); T.S.R. Boase, Death in the Middle Ages (London, 1972), pp.28-35 (Lazarus and
Dives); P. Aries, The Hour of Our Death (London, 1981), part 1; P. Burke, Popular Culture,
p.190 and C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (London, 1981), p .116 (both on Cockaigne).
66 Christian, Local Religion, p.97.
67 R. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980), p.66.
68 1 am indebted to Carol Schuler, Columbia University, who is working on the iconog-
raphy of the compassionate Virgin, for information on this subject; see also Rothkrug, Religious
Practices and Collective Perceptions, p.97; and M.E. Perry, Crime and Society in Early Modern
Seville (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1980), pp.221-226 on the images of the Virgin and the
Whore, with a third interesting image, the Converted Whore, Mary Magdalen.
69 On elevation of the Virgin to virtually a 'fourth person of the Trinity', Rothkrug, p.100;
on the suffering Virgin, Carol Schuler is preparing a catalogue of late-medieval representations
of theVirgin pierced with a sword.
70Trexler, Public Life, part 1.
71Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, p. 172.
72On arme Seelen see Rumpf, Das gemeine Volk, pp. 179-234.
73Trexler, Public Life, pp.61-72.
74 Rothkrug, Religious Practices and Collective Perceptions, pp.53, 153, 183. This has
been discussed in a wider context by Michael Mullett, Radical Religious Movements in Early
Modern Europe (London, 1980).

14.139.238.54 on Tue, 30 Jan 2024 04:32:24 +00:00

Religion, Society and Culture Reorientating The Reformation

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