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  • Protestants and the Cult of the Saints in German-Speaking Europe, 1517-1531
  • Beth Kreitzer
Carol Piper Heming . Protestants and the Cult of the Saints in German-Speaking Europe, 1517–1531. Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies 65. Kirskville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2003. xiv + 170 pp. index. append. illus. tbls. bibl. $36.95. ISBN: 1–931112–24-X.

Historians of Renaissance and early modern culture have paid a great deal more attention to the cult of the saints than more traditional historians of the Reformation era. Devotion to the saints has frequently been assumed to be one of those aspects of Catholicism that reformers and their followers quickly recognized as both superstitious and superfluous, and just as quickly rejected for a more Christ-centered, faith-based religious outlook. The main reformers themselves fostered this dismissive perspective by downplaying the cult of the saints as unnecessary, childish, and insignificant. As some contemporary historians of theology have pointed out, in the vast corpus of Luther's writings, attention to the saints and Mary is relatively minimal. However, as Carol Piper Heming argues in her new book Protestants and the Cult of the Saints in German-Speaking Europe, 1517–1531, it would be a mistake to take these statements at face value. In fact, she argues that a variety of evidence, including sermons, treatises, catechisms, visitation reports, even the records of diets and other meetings, indicates that not only was there a "more persistent veneration of the saints" than has commonly been thought, but that the reformers themselves were frequently far more concerned about the issue than they wanted to admit (3).

Part of the reason for the enduring influence of the cult of the saints was that such devotion was integrated into the complex system of piety in the early sixteenth century: pilgrimages, liturgical celebrations, and devotion to images and relics were only some of the more obvious aspects of piety surrounding the saints. The cult of the saints also touched upon many central aspects of the reformers' attack upon the old religion: the authority of Scripture and who could interpret it, faith versus meritorious works, even their opposition to religious vows. Heming points out that the reformers frequently expressed concern over the devotion of monks, nuns, and priests to the saints, as well as their dependence upon and misuse of funds collected through dealings with saints' cults. The association of religious with what was increasingly seen as an inappropriate focus upon the dead — termed by contemporaries Totenfresserei, "feeding upon the dead" — came in for particular criticism.

Heming also mentions some of the popular response to the reforming message through iconoclasm, focusing particularly on the troubles in Erfurt between 1521–25. The complicated situation in Erfurt was brought to a head over the issue of [End Page 268] saints' cults in the city, fed by an anti-clericalism largely based on socioeconomic complaints. This situation, not unlike the future peasant uprisings in its origins or its rhetoric, reveals another important component of the enduring problem of the cult of the saints in the Reformation: its perceived connection with social disorder and disruption. Saints' cults involved and occasionally inflamed the emotions of the "simple folk" and had to be handled delicately in these early decades of the reform. But the disorderly aspect was also readily apparent to rulers and magistrates who wanted to institute a social reformation as well as a theological one: devotion to the saints was often connected with disorderly processions, frequent work disruptions, even a party-like atmosphere that encouraged such vices as excessive drinking, gambling, and possibly worse. As Heming argues, the cult of the saints was clearly a problem for both civic and religious leaders in the early Reformation era.

Heming provides in her book an important glimpse into this contested arena of historical scholarship. She also briefly addresses the attempts of religious reforms to positively recast the role of the saints in the new churches. She provides several useful appendices: the first lists the various meetings and diets of the period and their significance for this issue; the second and third deal with writings of the reformers that are critical of saints' cults and stress...

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