Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Catholic Germany before Trent 12 On the Eve of the Reformation 13 The Reform Movement 16 Religious Practice 20 The Impact of the Reformation 22 The Catholic Response to the Reformation 25 Catholicism at Mid-century 35 Chapter 2: The Counter-Reformation Episode: 1570s–1620s 38 The Counter-Reformation as Anti-Protestantism 39 The Jesuits 49 Tridentine Reform, Catholic Reform 54 The Reform of Popular Religion, Confessionalization, and the Creation of Catholic Identity 73 Chapter 3: The Thirty Years’ War 85 The Edict of Restitution, 1629 87 The Conversion of Protestant Populations 90 The War, Tridentine Reform, and the Rise of Baroque Catholicism 94 vii 21 September, 2007 MAC/ERG Page-vii 9780230_123456_01_prex viii CONTENTS Chapter 4: The German Church after 1650 104 The Reichskirche 105 Confessionalization after 1650 108 The Parish Clergy 117 The Monasteries and the Orders 128 Chapter 5: Baroque Catholicism 144 Structures of Baroque Religiosity 146 A Religious Revival 162 The Role of the Laity 173 Regional variety in Baroque Catholicism 177 Chapter 6: German Catholicism in the late Eighteenth Century 184 Continuities 185 New Developments 187 Joseph II and Josephinism 189 Secularization and the End of the Imperial Church 194 Conclusion 199 Notes 202 Bibliography 246 Index 250 21 September, 2007 MAC/ERG Page-viii 9780230_123456_01_prex Chapter 1: Catholic Germany before Trent The Protestant Reformation was obviously the most important develop- ment in the religious history of Germany in the sixteenth century. Historians of all sympathies have, in retrospect, recognized the centrality of Martin Luther’s movement; secular rulers, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, even town and village leaders, knew it at the time. For a time, especially in the tumultuous decade after Luther posted his 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg, it looked as if the evangelical movement would sweep all before it. Ultimately, however, Catholicism in Germany survived the Protestant onslaught and remained an important force in German culture and history. The story of German Catholicism in the first half of the sixteenth century is, then, primarily a story of crisis. At times, in fact, it appeared that Catholicism as a set of practices and beliefs sanctioned and supported by the institutions and personnel of the Roman Catholic Church would not endure in Germany. Some leaders of Catholic institutions, including bishops, abbots, and abbesses and many individual monks, nuns, and parish priests, sympathized with or converted to the Protestant cause. The defection of large portions of the clergy left the Catholic leaders with little ability to resist either the theological challenges of Protestantism or the steady conversion of German princes and nobles to the new religion. By mid-century, Protestantism was well established in about two-thirds of the German-speaking lands, and even in nominally Catholic territories, an understaffed Catholic Church coexisted with both Protestant sympathizing believers and religiously indifferent Catholics. Yet this story of crisis was also a story of survival. For sixteenth-century German Catholicism had many underestimated strengths, including the way its institutions were imbedded in the structure of the Holy Roman Empire, its links to powerful ruling families such as the Habsburgs and the 12 21 September, 2007 MAC/ERG Page-12 9780230_123456_03_cha01 CATHOLIC GERMANY BEFORE TRENT 13 Wittelsbachs, and the deep traditions of popular piety in many (mostly rural) communities. An analysis of these strengths means evaluating the character of pre-Reformation Christianity in Germany, searching for the origins of Catholic resilience, as well as looking for the difficulties that led to the rise of Protestantism. Although it is the contention of this book that German Catholicism had many particular characteristics that require that it be understood on its own, it should not be forgotten that German Catholics were part of the wider world of Roman Catholicism. Germans had a healthy skepticism about the Papacy, and one of the early appeals of Protestantism was its strong anti-Roman and anti-Italian tone with its call to Germans to throw of the financial and juridical tyranny of the papacy.1 In the long run, however, institutional and cultural ties with other Catholics, and espe- cially with Rome, were also a source of strength for German Catholicism. The resources and personnel of the Church, most dramatically in the persons of the Jesuits, played an important role in the survival and even- tual revival of Catholicism in sixteenth-century Germany. A final strength of German Catholicism was its diversity. Far from monolithic, medieval Christianity in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, had developed in many different ways.2 This diversity was part of the ‘‘imbeddedness’’ of Catholicism, especially in the long-settled regions of western and southern Germany. Here centuries of Christian evolution could be read in the landscape itself, in the churches, shrines, pilgrimage routes, and holy sites frequented by believers.3 The diversity of the late medieval religious experience, as evidenced for example by the wide range of liturgical practices, also meant that Protestant attacks were not equally effective everywhere in Germany. What could be persuasively identified in one place as a liturgical abuse might not exist in another place, or might in a third place be considered a time-honored and popular local practice. Although this religious diversity helped Catholicism survive, it would also come to distress Catholic reformers as much as it did Protestants and pre-Reformation Church reformers. On the Eve of the Reformation Distinctive institutions, an ongoing movement for church reform, and an intense and diverse popular religious life all characterized German Catholicism on the eve of the Reformation.4 Each of these aspects remained important in post-Reformation and post-Tridentine Catholicism. 21 September, 2007 MAC/ERG Page-13 9780230_123456_03_cha01 14 CATHOLIC GERMANY FROM REFORMATION TO ENLIGHTENMENT The most significant institutional characteristic of German Catholicism was the secular role played by all bishops and many monastic institutions. Germany was the home of a number of distinctive Catholic institutions. The Hochstift, or prince-bishopric, was found across Germany and set the tone for the whole Imperial Church (Reichskirche). The Hochstifte varied in size and importance, but all were governed by aristocratic bishops elected by equally aristocratic cathedral chapters.5 It is perhaps a cliche´ to say that almost every sixteenth-century bishop paid more attention to his duty as a secular prince than his position as spiritual leader of a diocese. Yet by all measures, the cliche´ is true. Few bishops were consecrated as priests, they tended to maintain appropriately princely or aristocratic courts, many lived with women and fathered children, and, when necessary, some resigned to marry and carry on the family name. Bishops could be effi- cient and dedicated princes, but they generally left the ecclesiastical administration of their dioceses to middle-class suffragan bishops and other officials. The whole range of monastic institutions – great Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys for men and women, mendicant houses, collegiate chapters – could be found in Germany, along with other, more peculiar institutions, such as the commanderies of the military orders of Teutonic Knights and Knights of St John.6 Many monastic institutions possessed secular lordships and extensive ecclesiastical privileges, most gained over the course of the Middle Ages from weak and financially strapped Emperors. Together with the prince-bishoprics, these institutions constituted the Imperial Church, and, like the bishops, their leaders feared secularization at the hands of the princes. Church leaders under- stood that these institutions could only survive in the particular incubator of the Empire. Loyalty to the Empire meant support for the imperial reform movement of the 1490s, close ties with the imperial knights and other smaller imperial estates, and growing ties to the Habsburgs. These traditions would remain important until the end of the Old Empire in 1806. A shared loyalty to the Empire did not mean unity. Conflicts between bishops and other Church institutions, particularly the monasteries, were endemic. Long legal and political battles raged over monastic privileges, episcopal legal jurisdiction, patronage of rural parishes, and, of course, financial issues. On the surface, the German Church looked liked a ubiquitous and very powerful institution. In practice, however, it was fragmented and divided, incapable of any unified action at the national level and usually quite divided at the local level as well. 21 September, 2007 MAC/ERG Page-14 9780230_123456_03_cha01 CATHOLIC GERMANY BEFORE TRENT 15 Princes, town councils, and village communities were as intensely involved in religious life as were the institutions of the Catholic Church. Princes saw it as their sacred duty to ensure the salvation of their subjects; they and their officials also sought to reduce ecclesiastical jurisdiction, gain control of church property, and control appointments to clerical positions.7 The Dukes of Bavaria, despite a reputation for loyalty to the Church and the Pope, began in the fifteenth century a determined campaign to create just such a state church in their lands.8 Similar devel- opments can be found across Germany,