The Radical Reformation The Radical Reformation CH508 LESSON 08 of 24 Waldshut: Hubmaier and Politics Abraham Friesen, PhD Experience: Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Santa Barbara This is lecture 8. The topic is Waldshut and Hubmaier. Balthasar Hubmaier, a student of Dr. John Eck at the University of Ingolstadt, Luther’s most famous Catholic opponent, received a doctorate of theology at the University of Ingolstadt. An effective administrator and preacher, he became pro-rector of the University of Ingolstadt in 1515, and then pastor and chaplain at the Regensburg Cathedral. In 1521 he became priest in the town of Waldshut, which, though close to the Swiss border, was in Austrian-Habsburg territory. This factor will become very important later on. By 1522 Hubmaier began to study Luther’s writings. He sought out friends of the Reformation and began a study of the Pauline Epistles. Then he received a call to return to the Regensburg Cathedral. He did so, staying only one year, however; because his religious convictions were undergoing changes, and so he returned to Waldshut. Now he came increasingly under Zwingli’s influence. He entered into correspondence with him, in particular discussing New Testament passages dealing with baptism. It is quite likely, as we shall see later, that these passages centered on Matthew 28:19 and 20. In other words, they centered on the Great Commission, for he later cites this passage in connection with Erasmus and in virtually every other writing on baptism. Zwingli, who had himself been heavily influenced by Erasmian Christian humanism after 1515, and who undoubtedly knew of Erasmus’s annotations on the baptismal passages, according to Hubmaier, agreed that “children should not be baptized before they are instructed in the faith.” Hubmaier attended the second Zurich disputation in October 26–28, 1523, where the Catholic Mass and the images were discussed. At the close of that disputation, Zwingli had turned the implementation of the reforms over to my lords of the city council. Simon Stumpf, however, objected, saying that the Holy Spirit had already decided the issue and that it had now to be Transcript - CH508 The Radical Reformation 1 of 8 © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved. Lesson 08 of 24 Waldshut: Hubmaier and Politics acted upon. Upon his return to Waldshut from Zurich in the fall of 1523, Hubmaier began to implement his reforms. The populace was already on his side, if not, in fact, all the clergy. He delivered his “18 Articles Concerning the Christian Faith,” abolished the laws on fasting and celibacy, and married—all with the tacit approval of the town council. But Waldshut was not autonomous, like the free imperial cities of the empire, which owed allegiance only to the emperor Charles V, who was absent from Germany in Spain between 1521 and 1530. Waldshut’s political overlord was Charles’s brother Ferdinand, the archduke of Austria and a very staunch Catholic indeed. Sometime between Hubmaier’s return from Zurich in early November of 1523 and December 11, 1523, the government—that is, the Catholic government at Innsbruck—must have written to the Waldshut authorities demanding that Hubmaier reverse his reforms and that he should do so on the basis of the Nuremberg Imperial Edict of March 6, 1523. This edict—and we shall have to enter into a fairly substantial discussion of it here—has been ignored in its impact on the Reformation. I have completed all of the research on it and have commenced writing a book about it. It is an edict that depends largely on the political context for its interpretation, and it is the result of Frederick the Wise’s own attempt to find a solution for the problem of Luther in his territory. We cannot go into the background of the edict here, but it was formulated by a counselor to Frederick the Wise. It was formulated in the imperial governing council, the executive branch of the imperial government of Germany, in the summer of 1523 Frederick’s representative on the council was aided by one of Germany’s best legal minds at the time, a man by the name of Hans von Schwarzenberg, who was all but Lutheran by this time. Reflecting Frederick’s desire to allow Luther to continue preaching the gospel but worried about imperial intervention if changes were to be made in the church services, his representatives drew up the law, which reads in part as follows. And this is the critical passage that we want to keep in mind: “That every elector, prince, prelate, count, and other estate in the realm shall, with all due diligence, so order and decree that all preachers in his territory are justly and equitably advised to avoid everything that might lead to disobedience, dissension, and revolt in the Holy Empire, or that might cause Christians to be led astray in their faith. Instead, Transcript - CH508 The Radical Reformation 2 of 8 © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved. Lesson 08 of 24 Waldshut: Hubmaier and Politics they are to preach and teach only the Holy Gospel and that in accordance with the interpretation of the Scriptures as approved by the Holy Christian Church.” There are clearly two separate aspects to this edict. On the one hand, there are to be no innovations made in the church’s liturgy, in the church’s services, or any other changes in it. Clearly, this was what Frederick had feared most when Karlstadt had held his evangelical Mass on Christmas Day, 1521, because it would have given the imperial government an excuse to intervene in what he considered his internal political affairs. The second aspect had to do with preaching only the gospel. One would nearly call this a Lutheran tenet and the aspect that Frederick wanted protected the most, but the edict added the clause “according to the interpretation approved by the Holy Christian Church.” In the original draft had been written in specific names of such teachers approved by the Christian church. The names listed were those of Augustine, of Saint Jerome, Saint Ambrose, Saint Cyprian, and other of the great church fathers. But Catholics on the council had objected. The best teachers of the Christian church, they insisted, were the latest ones—teachers like Thomas Aquinas, William of Auken, Duns Scotus, Gabriel Biel, et cetera— in other words, the scholastic theologians of the High Middle Ages. Clearly, the argument reflected differences of opinion between Reformers and Catholics as to who the best teachers of the Christian church were. In this case, Luther and Melanchthon had adopted the Christian humanist position that one should go back to the Bible, the purest source of Christianity, and to those interpreters who stood in closest in time to the Bible. But in the council the two sides reached a stalemate, and so it was decided to delete the specific names and simply to say “as approved by the Christian church.” This compromise did not resolve the issue. It merely allowed both sides to interpret this part of the edict in diametrically opposing ways, and it transferred the quarrel from the smaller confines of the imperial governing council to the broader confines of the empire at large. Had we the time, one could show in detail how Catholics interpreted the edict in one way and Protestants interpreted it in quite another. The political context in which this confrontation took place was absolutely critical to the outcome. So sometime between November 1, 1523, and December 11 of the same year, the Catholic Austrian government wrote to the Waldshut mayor and council arguing that Hubmaier was preaching a heretical Transcript - CH508 The Radical Reformation 3 of 8 © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved. Lesson 08 of 24 Waldshut: Hubmaier and Politics version of the gospel and was introducing innovations clearly condemned by this particular edict. On December 11, 1523, the mayor and town council of Waldshut wrote to the Austrian authorities at Innsbruck defending Hubmaier against these accusations. The specific accusations were the following. First, that Hubmaier had “interpreted the holy gospel differently than it actually was.” And this, the Austrians said, had angered the people of Waldshut and their neighbors. The second accusation was that he had introduced unheard-of innovations into the church services. To these charges, the mayor and town council answered as follows. First, they said that they had always published all imperial mandates, and this last one (the one of March 6, 1523) had been read from the pulpits of their churches by two secular priests from Constance. Second, they said, Hubmaier had not preached anything contrary to the gospel, nor would they have tolerated him preaching against the imperial edict. Rather, they were seeking to enforce it. Third, as far as they could tell, Hubmaier was interpreting the gospel from the pulpit as it actually was. His intention was, as he stated openly from the pulpit, to preach “the pure and clear gospel from here on out, which he has done according to our understanding. We even invited the dean and priests to see if he preached anything but the clear and pure Word of God.” If the Austrian authorities wished, the mayor and town council continued, they could act in compliance with the edict and send several theologians from the Bishop of Constance to check Hubmaier out themselves. If these authorities could prove Hubmaier’s interpretation of the Gospels to be wrong, the latter would surely back down; but this was difficult to do, as Catholics had learned by this time, and so nothing was done.