INTRODUCTION

The preachers here moved her to this baptism, because she attended their sermons for a good four years, one preached this, another preached something else, one held the Sacrament for a sign, the other held [it] for fl esh and blood, So they preached against one another and confused her so much that she didn’t know what she should believe, and therefore she wanted to listen to the others too . . .1 With these words Agnes Vogel explained how she had observed the religious debates of the 1520s, had been drawn to consider Anabaptism, and eventually had chosen to be baptized. She witnessed the bewilder- ingly controversial sermons of preachers who were active in the city of Augsburg, priests of the old religion and a whole array of reformers of a new Christianity based on the Gospel alone.2 Vogel’s testimony gives us an insight into how ordinary people in the early years of the Refor- mation understood the controversies swirling around them and tried to fi nd a way of settling the issues in their own minds. She listened not to one preacher but to many, tried to make sense of their disagreements on the Eucharist, and in the end was driven by their confusing mes- sages to keep an open mind, open enough to include radical Anabaptist preachers. While not everyone who witnessed the religious debates of the early Reformation found their answers in a new baptism, Vogel’s experience seems to refl ect what must have been a common reaction to the times: a desire to understand, to fi nd one’s own place in the crowd of Christians, to take a stand with which one could live. Like many people in the early sixteenth century, Vogel believed her soul was at stake in her search to fi nd the true preaching of the Gospel, and the route passed through uncharted territory for most lay people. Agnes Vogel lived in one of the Reformation’s most notable cities. Martin Luther’s famous fi rst encounter with Papal Legate Cardinal Cajetan (1518); the fi rst statement of Protestant faith, which became

1 “Zu solhem tauff haben sy bewegt die prediger alhie, dann sy sey wol vier jar an ir predig ganngen, hab ainer das, an ander an annders gepredigt, ainer im Sacrament ain zaichen, der ander fl aisch und plut wellen haben, Also wider ain annder gepredigt, unnd sy ganntz irr gemacht, da sy nit gewißt, was sy glauben solle, und deßhalben begert die anndern auch zuhoren,” StadtAA, Reichsstadt, Urg. 14 May 1528, Agnes Vogel. 2 The term evangelical reform comes from the reformer’s insistence on the preemi- nence of the Gospel or evangelium, from the Greek. 2 introduction known as the Augsburg Confession (1530); the peace treaty that settled the Schmalkaldic War between Protestant princes and the Holy Roman Emperor, known as the Augsburg Interim (1548); and the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which ended religious warfare in the Empire for the next six decades, all took place there. The free imperial city on the Lech and Wertach Rivers in southern Germany was home to thousands of residents, whose lives shaped and were shaped by the extraordinary events of their day. For Augsburgers not only witnessed great events, they, like Christians throughout Europe, participated in history when they made their own choices about how to respond to the challenges presented by the religious Reformation of the sixteenth century. Between 1517 and 1555 the citizens of Augsburg witnessed tremendous changes, reacted with passion and restraint, and ultimately adapted to a new way of life. Studying the experiences of ordinary people in the early years of the Reformation era provides a valuable perspective for understanding the impact that theological divisions had on the way people identifi ed their religious beliefs and interacted with each other. In the fi rst few decades of the sixteenth century the scale of internal religious confl ict was new to Christians in Europe. Neither spiritual nor secular authori- ties could bring much order, and people, such as Agnes Vogel, had to cope with the mixed signals they received from their superiors. Before the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 established structures for preserving religious diversity (though not freedom) in Germany, a different set of circumstances more ambiguous, tenuous, and unfamiliar prevailed. Those circumstances can also make the search for material evidence of religious feelings and commitments more diffi cult to fi nd, recognize, and understand. Looking at this earlier period in Augsburg, however, allows us to see how people responded to religious innovations and upheavals in the absence of institutions designed to enforce conformity. Agnes Vogel and hundreds of others: women, men, adults, youths, the wealthy, the poor, the educated, the simple, the pious, the blasphemous, and the indifferent provide insights into what it was like to live through this time of great change. They are historically unimportant people; their words have been immortalized only because a scribe wrote down their responses during questioning by the city council of Augsburg in the course of judicial investigations. Some were defendants, detained by the council on various sorts of criminal charges, but many were merely witnesses, some friendly and some hostile. Some defendants cooperated willingly, and some only reluctantly, some put up a brave fi ght then