Ordnungen für die Kirche—Wirkungen auf die Welt. Evangelische Kirchenordnungen des. 16. Jahrhunderts ed. by Sabine Arend and Gerald Dörner (review)

Ideas change institutions, and institutions shape ideas. Luther’s fresh reading of Scripture grew out of both his engagement with the sacred page of Scripture and the pastoral and pious practices of the church in which he grew up. His thought made a wide-ranging impact on the institutional form and life of the church and on various aspects of society. That caused some of his colleagues and disciples across the German-speaking lands and beyond to experiment with transforming or adapting ecclesiastical and social practices of all kinds and their organized forms.

Fifteen essays in this volume explore a number of aspects of the development of Evangelical “order” in the sixteenth century. Christoph Strohm confirms distinctions between Reformed and Lutheran Kirchenordnungen (church ordinances) with examples from the Palatinate, Nassau-Dillenberg, and Saxe-Coburg (composed by Johann Gerhard). Sabine Arend’s comparison of the placement of clergy in parishes in Württemberg in the late Middle Ages and in the Evangelical church reveals the impact of the ducal government’s assumption of the place of the bishop while much of the form for the choice of a new pastor remained; parallels and differences in the calling, examination, and ordination and/or installation of candidates for the ministry in other Lutheran lands reflected only small variations in practice. Gerald Dörner assesses liturgical changes in early southern German Kirchenordnungen. Andrea Hofmann’s survey of the role of hymns set in place by the new Evangelical orders prefaces a recounting of the advance of psalm-singing and particularly the use of Lobwasser’s settings in Lutheran churches. Meike Melchinger analyzes the use of the Old Testament in Bugenhagen’s Kirchenordnung for Braunschweig (1528) and finds it offers a model for examining the role of exegesis in the construction of the new Wittenberg plan for congregation life. Volker Leppin explores the visual impact of changes in the furnishing of churches, particularly altar pieces and other works of graphic art, as Lutherans strove to make use of as much of the medieval artistic tradition as supported the proclamation of the gospel while Reformed tended to ban all such graphic representations from the sanctuary. Bridget Heal also examines precisely how Lutherans combatted the idolatry perceived in some medieval art while preserving, incorporating, and adapting other elements—even when clergy sometimes lost a battle, as the pastors in Zwickau did in a conflict with the town council over eliminating an altar crafted by Michel Wolgemut treasured by the populace. Under the sovereignty of the Habsburgs, Joachimsthal in Bohemia did not have its own published Kirchenordnung, but Christine Mundhenk sketches the descriptions of the form and order of church life in various sources authored by its pastor, Johannes Mathesius. Other essays analyze individual Kirchenordnungen; evaluate the reworked rules for marriage, welfare for the poor, and usury; and assess parallel developments in seventeenth-century England and sixteenth-century Denmark/Norway.

These essays originate from a conference sponsored by the research center in Heidelberg charged with the completion of the edition of the “Sehling” Evangelische Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts that has produced model volumes produced at the highest standards of scholarly editing. The provision of such source materials is of inestimable value, and this volume exhibits some of the ways in which the sources may be used to give a clearer picture of precisely how the Wittenberg message reshaped—or re-formed—congregational life and the structures of the territorial churches. Therefore, the individual essays and the effort as a whole make significant contributions to a fuller appreciation of what the Wittenberg Reformation meant to common people, clergy, and responsible officials of the civil communities.