1 Gibbs Janis 1996 PHD.Pdf

Catholicism and Civic Identity in Cologne, 1475-1570 Janis Marie Gibbs Charlottesville, Virginia B.A. with Highest Honors, The College of William and Mary, 1981 J.D., The University of Chicago, 1984 M.A., The University of Virginia, 1991 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Virginia August, 1996 1 © Copyright by Janis Marie Gibbs All rights reserved August, 1996 ii Abstract The city of Cologne was known as the bulwark of Catholicism in northwestern Germany during the age of the Reformation. The city remained resolutely Catholic during the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century. Cologne's Catholicism was an integral part of its urban culture. The city's history, traditions, image, constitution, laws, and institutional structure became elements in the construction of a self-conscious civic identity by the residents of Cologne. The increasingly dominant characteristic of Cologne's identity was a strong sense of sacred community within the Catholic tradition. Cologne's residents demonstrated their sense of Catholic community by enforcing rules concerning belief and action and by participating in rituals, including baptism, communion, funerals, processions, and masses. Many rituals had combined civic and religious significance. The construction of the rituals demonstrated the increasing strength of the links between Catholicism and a distinctive Cologne identity as the sixteenth century progressed. Cologne's Catholic civic identity, which developed beyond traditional common legal and economic interests which linked urban dwellers, permeated the political, social and cultural life of the city. Using published city council records, as well as unpl,lblished city council records, city proclamations, and criminal investigation records, I have examined the ways in which the Cologne government defined membership in the civic community, and the penalties it imposed on dissidents. The city's use of banishment as a punishment in religious cases provided a graphic iii demonstration of the separation from the community produced by religious dissent. The city's responses to the challenges of the sixteenth century-- Protestantism, including Lutheranism, Anabaptism, and Calvinism, the Archbishop of Cologne's attempt to exercise control over the city, and the threat presented by immigrants who did not share the city's sense of identity-- developed throughout the sixteenth century. The complex intermingling of religious and civic identity helps to explain why Cologne, the largest of Germany's imperial cities, did not follow the path of many German cities and adopt the Protestant Reformation. iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iv Acknowledgments Vl Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Collective Identity and the Study of Early Modem 4 Europe Community and the Study of the Reformation 11 Cologne in the Age of the Reformation 21 Chapter 2: Community and Gvic Identity in Cologne on the 37 Eve of the Reformation Holy Cologne 51 Membership in the Civic Community 61 Ritual and the Civic Community 72 Chapter 3: The Challenge of the Reformation, 1520-1529 83 Cologne in the 1520s 86 Ritual and Civic Identity 90 The Cologne Uprising of 1525 102 Direct Religious Challenge in Cologne 112 Law, Community and Religion 120 Chapter 4: Threats and Responses, 1530-1545: Anabaptists, 151 Outsiders, and the Archbishop Cologne's Response to Outside Threats 152 Religious Dissenters as Outsiders . 154 Public Ritual and Public Religious Observance 174 The Gty and the Archbishop 178 Funerals and Community Memberhip 190 V Chapter 5: City and Sacrament, 1543-1570 203 Cologne and the Empire 203 The City and the Roman Catholic Church 212 The Sacraments and Collective Identity 214 Chapter 6: Conclusion 247 Bibliography 254 vi Acknowledgments I am grateful to the University of Virginia, the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, the German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C.), and the Society of Fellows for providing financial support during the earliest and latest stages of my research and writing. I was fortunate to have the support of a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad during 1991-92,-and of a Charlotte W. Newcomb Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship during 1994-95. The luxury of time provided by the generous support of these two programs was essential to my completion of this dissertation. I am also grateful for the hospitality and the assistance of the fine professional staff at the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Koln, under the direction of Dr. Joachim Deeters. He and all of his colleagues were gracious and very helpful to a novice researcher. The staff of the Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Koln, under the direction of Dr. Toni Diedrich, was also very helpful. I am especially grateful for the assistance of Dr. Josef van Elten, who guided me to valuable materials in the early stages of my research. For patient and rigorous guidance, I would like to thank Professors H.C. Erik Midelfort, Duane J. Osheim, and Carlos M.N. Eire~ of the University of Virginia. Professor Julia A. Clancy-Smith provided both encouragement and insightful criticism. Professors J. Christopher Crocker and William McDonald were generous with their time and their advice to a stray historian who needed help with anthropology and German. My colleagues Edward Kilsdonk, Joanne Freeman, and Kelly Mulroney read portions of chapters at vii early stages and gave me good suggestions, along with equally good pep talks. Edna J. Johnston, Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer and Dion C. Smythe provided a rare blend of professional encouragement and friendship. Nan M. Astone was generous with her faith and her friendship. Last but not least, my parents, Charles and Sheila Gibbs, were unflagging in their support of my work. I am grateful to all the people who have helped me, inspired me, and given me good advice. While I could not have done this work without them, I am responsible for it, and the errors which undoubtedly remain are my own. 1 Chapter 1: Introduction Why was Cologne Catholic? In 1975, Robert W. Scribner published an essay entitled, "Why was there no Reformation in Cologne?"l The title carried a wealth of assumptions. The Reformation was an urban event. The people of cities had a particular affinity for the teachings of the Protestant Reformers. Catholicism no longer served the needs of the people of the growing cities of the Holy Roman Empire, and they were looking for spiritual fulfillment which Catholic practice no longer provided. Cologne should have become Protestant, as did so many of the free and imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire: Scribner's question, "why was there no Reformation in Cologne?" fitted into a growing body of scholarship which concentrated on explaining the spread of the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth-century Germany. Before Scribner wrote his essay, most of the scholars who had written about the Reformation in the cities had concentrated on Protestant cities. Protestant cities were easier to find, they underwent revolutionary and sometimes violent change during the age of the Reformation, and they provided a clear agenda for historians. Something happened. Historians can explain it. The case of Cologne was more difficult. Although it was the largest of the imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire, it did not follow the pattern of lRobert W. Scribner, "Why Was There No Reformation in Cologne?," in Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany, ed. Robert W. Scribner (London:The Hambleton Press, 1987), 217-241. 2 the urban Reformation. It remained Catholic throughout the age of the Reformation. This provided a greater challenge to historians. The absence of a transformational event is more difficult to explain than is the event itself. Scribner accepted the challenge and suggested, in his essay, that Cologne, like other cities, acted as it did in the age of the Reformation in order to preserve order. In Cologne, a strong, theologically-conservative university faculty helped to keep the message of the Reformers out of Cologne. The city council embraced Catholicism in order to protect its status as an imperial city. The emperor's protection was important to the city because it enabled the city to fend off the encroachments of the Archbishop of Cologne, who was the temporal ruler of the area around Cologne, as well as the spiritual leader of the archdiocese. The city council also acted to protect its own power, and resisted the Reformation because it threatened to bring disorder and change, and it might have cost the councilors· their privileged economic and political positions. Scribner argued that "the failure of the Reformation was as much a product of the urban environment as its success elsewhere. "2 Scribner's analysis emphasizes the effectiveness of the social control imposed by the clergy and the city council of Cologne. He argues that the failure of the Reformation in Cologne was the result of strong institutional religious conservatism and effective social control, which did not allow "the social space for a Reformation movement to appear."3 There is a continuing 2Ibid., 241. 3Ibid., 241 and passim. For Scribner's views on the importance of social control, see Robert W. Scribner, "Social Control and the Possibility of an Urban Reformation," in Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany, (London:Hambleton Press, 1987), 175-183. 3 implication in his analysis that there might have been a Reformation in Cologne, but for the social control exerted by the people in power. Scribner raised good points about the circumstances surrounding the absence of a Reformation in Cologne, but his essay is less successful at explaining the mechanisms by which Cologne maintained its Catholicism, or at explaining why the social controls he identified were so successful. There is a marked lack of discussion of religious practices or beliefs in his essay.

Load more