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LEONARD STÖCKEL: DOCTA PIETAS IN THE SERVICE OF LUTHERAN REFORM __________________________________________________ A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School University of Missouri ______________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ____________________________________________ by BENNETT K. WITT Dr. Charles G. Nauert, Dissertation Supervisor DECEMBER 2008 © Copyright by Bennett K. Witt 2008 All Rights Reserved The undersigned, appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled LEONARD STÖCKEL: DOCTA PIETAS IN THE SERVICE OF LUTHERAN REFORM Presented by Bennett K. Witt A candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy And hereby certify that in their opinion it is worthy of acceptance. _________________________________ Professor Charles G. Nauert _________________________________ Professor John Frymire _________________________________ Professor Lois L. Huneycutt _________________________________ Professor Lawrence Okamura _________________________________ Professor Russell Zguta _________________________________ Professor Kathleen Warner Slane To Rita and Alexandra. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. David P. Daniel at the Faculty for Evangelical Theology, Comenius University, Bratislava for his kind advice. Dr. Ivona Kollárová, Director of the Lyceálna Knižnica in Bratislava, was very helpful in allowing me access to the archive and granting me the opportunity to copy Stöckel’s Postilla. My most important aid in Slovakia, however, would have to be Dr. Branislav Vargic. Without his constant aid and encouragement this study may never have been brought to completion. Similarly, Dr. Charles Nauert’s encouragement and advice in Columbia was invaluable in bringing this project to completion. For that I will be forever grateful. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements............................................................................... ii Introduction........................................................................................... 1 Chapter One Erasmus and Melanchthon as Sources ............................................ 15 Pedagogical Reform and Erasmus of Rotterdam ................................ 15 Pedagogical Reform and Philipp Melanchthon .................................. 48 Chapter Two Leonard Stöckel and Leonard Cox: Developing Learned Piety ............................................................... 87 Chapter Three Stöckel and Educational Reform ................................................... 130 Chapter Four Stöckel and Religious Reform....................................................... 189 Conclusion Stöckel’s Heritage and the Rise of Slovak Identity ..................... 303 Appendix A....................................................................................... 313 Appendix B....................................................................................... 315 Appendix C....................................................................................... 316 Appendix D....................................................................................... 319 Primary Sources .............................................................................. 321 Secondary Sources............................................................................ 325 Vita.................................................................................................... 339 iii Introduction Introduction Lutherans in Slovakia The number of Slovaks who are Lutheran today, who are followers of the Slovak Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, is relatively small. At one point during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, however, virtually the whole population living on the territory of the modern Slovak Republic were followers of the Lutheran faith.1 While even as recently as 1930, there were almost 150,000 people who claimed Lutheran affiliation, today only a few thousand remain, a number which constitutes only 6% of the country’s current population.2 After years of indeterminate legal status and sporadic persecution by Habsburg and Catholic officials, the Lutherans won something approaching legal recognition in the early seventeenth century and soon thereafter began to officially organize. They achieved this recognition in the Peace of Vienna of 1606 and at the Hungarian Diet of 1608, and they then developed a loose church organization at two Lutheran Church Synods, in 1610 and 1614. Just a few years later, however, in 1618, with the onset of the first phase of the Thirty Years’ War, the Catholic-Reformation arrived in full force. “After 1617 and the accession of Ferdinand II to the throne of Hungary, the twin forces of Catholic Counter Reformation and Habsburg absolutism weakened the Lutherans… until they became merely a remnant.”3 There 1 David P. Daniel, “Bardejov During the Era of the Reformation,” Kalendar 98 (1990): 33. 2 Štefan Očovsky, “Zur Religionsgeographie der Slowakei,” Österreichische Osthefte 36 (1/1994), 77. 3 David P. Daniel, “The Lutheran Reformation in Slovakia, 1517-1618” (Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1972), 308. 1 Introduction continued to be followers of Luther in the region during and after the Catholic Reformation, particularly in the northern reaches of the kingdom known as Upper Hungary, but the vast majority of the people returned to the Catholic faith. Of the few who persisted in their Lutheran beliefs, the majority were of German background. Historical events of the twentieth century, especially those relating to the Germans living in Slovakia during and after the Second World War, resulted in the deportation of most ethnic Germans. The deportations, in combination with the new atheism of the soviet- style communists who came to power in the late 1940s, make it somewhat surprising that there is anyone left in the country who adheres to Lutheran beliefs. During the sixteenth century, when the Lutheran movement found its way into this area, the region had long been a constituent part of the Kingdom of Hungary, part of a kingdom that had been one of the wealthiest and most powerful in all of Europe.4 Commonly called Upper Hungary, the region had been incorporated into the greater medieval Hungarian kingdom at least by the thirteenth century, if not much earlier. Even if only sparsely populated during the period when it was incorporated into Hungary, the region, like other parts of this Hungarian empire, had a separate ethnic composition, one that was predominantly Slav in character, particularly those Slavs who, in later centuries, came to identify themselves as Slovaks. As in the remainder of the kingdom, however, the region was of a mixed ethnic composition, one which included, in addition to the Slovaks, small numbers of other Slavs, such as Poles, Moravians, Czechs and 4 David P. Daniel, The Historiography of the Reformation in Slovakia (St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1977). 2 Introduction Ruthenians, as well as some Serbs and Croats. In addition to the Slavs, however, Upper Hungary also included Magyars, Germans, and Vlašsi, or Wallachian shepherds. As with much of the rest of central Europe, Hungary was truly a multi-ethnic empire. Upper Hungary The northern reaches of Hungary were a constituent part of the kingdom, but not an officially distinct region in the country, as were, for instance,Transylvania, Slavonia or the Kingdom of Croatia. It nevertheless always had a distinctive ethnic and geographic flavor about it that lends credence to a region deserving of its own name, the regional designation of Upper Hungary.5 The Slavs who would come to identity themselves as Slovaks were likely always the greater part of the population, although this point would be disputed in some quarters. Even though we can only expect that Upper Hungary’s ethnic diversity gave rise, at times, to tensions and outright conflicts between the different language groups, and the social classes with which they were most often associated, this diversity of language and ethnic outlook also played a crucial role in the flood of foreign influences constantly sweeping through the region. On a larger historic level, central Europe, including Upper Hungary, has often been associated with greater national forces. This region has often been viewed as the area where the world of the Slavs meets the world of the Germans. Since the advent of modern nationalism in the early nineteenth century, this image has become part of the historical lexicon. Central Europe has often been viewed as the region where the Slavs 5 In the Magyar language the region had long been called Felső-Magyarország, which literally translates into English as "Upper Hungary;" the Slovak equivalent is Horné Uhorsko and the German is Oberungarn. 3 Introduction have for centuries been forced to defend themselves against Germanic encroachment.6 On a grander scale, there is the image of the smaller Slavic nations, particularly Poles and Czechs, being squeezed from two sides, between the power and might of the Germans, on the one hand, and the strong cultural and military influence of the Russians, on the other. The Magyars, a conquering nation, but neither Slav nor German, were often somewhere in between. On the one hand, they viewed Germans as conquerors, an opinion which earned the Germans a certain level of respect among the Magyars. On the other hand, as with the Slavs in whose midst the Magyars now ruled, they also felt the threat of German

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