Die Konzilsfrage in den Flug- und Streitschriften des deutschen Sprachraumes, 1518–1563 (review)

Die Konzilsfrage in den Flug- und Streitschriften des deutschen Sprachraumes, 1518-1563. By Thomas Brockmann. [Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol. 57.] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1998. Pp. 762. DM 164.00 paperback)

During the past two decades, the value of German Reformation pamphlets as sources has been rediscovered, ¹ and these publications have been the subject of a number of thorough, usually author-based studies. ² Thomas Brockmann's dissertation, this time a topic-based study of German pamphlets dealing with conciliarism, represents a further important contribution to Flugschriften scholarship. Brockmann's endeavor is extraordinarily ambitious, as he seeks to analyze all pamphlets (i.e., Latin as well as German pamphlets) that deal with the conciliar issue and were printed or distributed in German-speaking territories from the beginning of the Reformation (1518) until the end of the Council of Trent (1563). Not surprisingly, he comes up with 562 relevant pamphlets for this forty-five-year period. Although this is an enormous, indeed almost unwieldy body of sources, Brockmann does an excellent job of conducting a number of careful analyses of these printed pamphlets and arrives at convincing conclusions about them. The relationship between conciliarism and Reformation during the above period was anything other than predictable, as Brockmann shows. While contemporary observers believed they were seeing in Luther's revolt against the papacy a rerun of fifteenth-century conciliaristic antipapalism (an important part of Luther's strategy was, after all, the appeal to a council), this changed suddenly after the Leipzig dispute of 1519, during which the Saxon monk unexpectedly declared councils as well as the Pope to be fallible. Protestant pamphlets reflected this change by assuming an increasingly spiritualistic view of the church as an invisible entity defying identification with any one fallible human institution, reconfirming their early proclamation of Scripture as the sole authority in faith issues. Correspondingly, Catholic pamphleteers shifted their emphasis away from anticonciliarism toward the vigorous defense of the visible Catholic Church--including its councils!--as institutions endowed with Christ-given authority. Indeed, the defenders of the old faith exercised extreme restraint in the proclamation of anything that the Protestants could interpret as exaggerated papalism. What had begun as a conciliaristic dispute turned thus into an essentially ecclesiological debate.

A new shift of paradigms came in 1533, when Protestants were forced to justify their refusal to participate in the council initiative put forth by Pope Clement VII, which also had the support of Emperor Charles V and of the Catholic estates. Not wanting to appear as solely responsible for the failure to come to an agreement, Protestant propaganda now took a curious pro-conciliar turn: it appealed to a future, "truly Christian" council, preferably a national all-German council free of papal influence, and rejected the Pope's conciliabulum for formal juridical reasons. Catholic pamphleteers, on the other hand, accused Protestants of fundamental anticonciliarism, of espousing heresies condemned by earlier councils, including the Council of Constance, and of essentially sabotaging all efforts to convene a legitimate council.

A third turning-point in the pamphlet debate came in 1546 when the Council of Trent began its sessions and Charles V intensified his military pressure on the Protestant estates. For the first time, Protestantism had to confront the reality of a council actually taking place and at the same time experience painful military vulnerability. Protestant authors of pamphlets assumed once again a pronounced anticonciliar tone, renewing earlier appeals to the sole authority of Scripture and expressing fundamental theological objections to the ecclesiological validity of the assembly in Trent. This religious opposition was compounded by the parallel political antagonism between a pro-conciliar Emperor seeking to unify the Empire under his command and anti-conciliar territorial Princes intent on conserving the power gained through the Reformation. However, it was the legalization of Lutheranism at...