The Wettin Tradition of Reform

CHAPTER 4 The Wettin Tradition of Reform Like their fellow noblemen in other parts of the Empire, the Wettin princes extended their church governance in the late Middle Ages. Favorable gener- al conditions, such as the weak position of the bishops in central Germany, allowed the Wettins to establish such a strong influence on the church that Saxony had a leading role in this area on the eve of the Reformation, along with territories such as Bavaria, Württemberg, Jülich-Berg, and the Habsburg lands.1 However, Saxon church politics before the Reformation were not restricted to church governance as an instrument of government, which we shall in- vestigate more closely below. In the course of the fifteenth century, several Wettins deliberately used their influence on the church to posit political ac- cents in the urgent contemporary question of church reform. The beginning of a continuous reform of politics is linked to the name of Duke Wilhelm III (1445–1482). In 1446, in close collaboration with the Estates of the Thuringian section of the territory, which he ruled, he issued a code of law that contained detailed regulations for the reform of ecclesiastical courts, monasteries, secular clergy, and the laity.2 Six years later, moved by the exhortations of John of Capestrano, the Franciscan preacher of repentance, he published a further mandate for the reform of the laity, which was followed in 1454 by the so-called Reformatio Wilhelmi, an edict for the reform of the secular and ecclesiastical court systems.3 Although Wilhelm was not the first Wettin to take action in favor of church reform, his laws elevated commitment to reform to a new height because it was the first time that the various levels—the ecclesiastical court system, regular clergy, lower clergy, and the laity—had been treated together under one code of law so that church reform could be recognized as a unity, a comprehensive reform of the entire church in his own territory. The territorial reference of Wettin church politics became obvious when the pope granted Wilhelm’s request for the introduction of the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to take place within the ducal territory 1 See Bünz/Volkmar, “Kirchenregiment.” 2 See the Thuringian law code of Duke Wilhelm III, Weissensee, January 9, 1446, Müller, Reichstagstheatrum Maximilian, Vol. 2, 86–95. 3 Wilhelm’s church politics have been well researched. See Wintruff, 34–81; ABKG, Vol. 1, XXI– LXVI; Pallas, “Entstehung,” 141–143; Schulze, Fürsten, 46–55, 67–80; on the 1452 mandate about morals, see also Bast, 178–185. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/978900435386�_005 The Wettin Tradition of Reform 71 in 1464, thereby implicitly declaring the territory to be an ecclesiastical entity.4 Wilhelm’s church politics established the close link between commitment to reform and church governance. His heirs, the princely brothers Elector Ernst and Duke Albrecht, continued along the path he had begun. For their succes- sors, Elector Friedrich the Wise and Duke George the Bearded, the successive extension of the Wettin church governance and the territorial sovereign’s commitment to reform were already tried and tested patterns of political action. Initially, of course, the territorial church governance was far from embody- ing unified governmental relationships between the territorial sovereign and the church of the territory. At most, it was a distant goal, since the constitu- tional plurality of the late medieval church stood in its way. An account of the development of Wettin church governance must do justice to this fact and look individually at the various levels of the church with their specific problems, legal structures, and possibilities of exercising influence. 1 The Curia For Saxony, as elsewhere, the wave of church-political privileges for the territorial princes began with the Great Schism.5 It was to his fidelity to the Roman pope that Margrave Wilhelm I owed the exemption of the diocese of Meissen from the metropolitan province of Magdeburg and from the authority of the archbishop of Prague as papal legate in 1399; this enabled the Wettins to prevail in the lengthy struggle against the Luxembourgers for supremacy in the diocese.6 At the same time, the pope granted the Wettin margrave the right to nominate faithful zelatores to the next four canonries in the Meissen chapter that would fall vacant.7 The third favor was important in the long term: in 1401, Boniface IX bestowed a Privilegium de non evocandis subditis, which forbade the summonsing of Wettin subjects before ecclesiastical courts outside the territory, and thereby strengthened the legal jurisdiction of territorial courts. Twenty years later, Friedrich the Quarrelsome earned the curia’s favor through his military campaigns against the Hussites. He received three privileges 4 See Wintruff, 81.—On the problem of territorialization, see also Mikat, 308 f. 5 On what follows, see Zieschang, 26–46; Streich, “Bistümer,” 53–72; id., Hof, 26–49; Rogge, “Bischof und Domkapitel,” 185–199. 6 On the discrepancy between the political instrumentalization of this privilege by the Wettins and its de facto limited substance in canon law, see now Schwarz, “Exemtion” (correcting previous research into regional history). 7 Bull of Pope Boniface IX, Rome, December 12, 1399, CDS, II, Vol. 2, 285 f..

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