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“There Should Be No Beggars Among Christians”: Karlstadt, Luther, and the Origins of Protestant Poor Relief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Carter Lindberg
Carter Lindberg
Affiliation:
Professor of church history in the School of Theology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.
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Extract

Thesis forty-three of the Ninety-five Theses reads, “Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better deed than he who buys indulgences.” Following the historical convention of dating the Reformation from the Ninety-five Theses of 1517, we may argue that from its inception theology and social ethics were inseparable. One particular aspect of the Reformation impact on social change which has attracted attention and controversy from the sixteenth century to the present is welfare reform. While it would be overbold to claim that reform of poor relief was motivated by theology alone, radical theological change was certainly a major factor. Since righteousness coram Deo was thought to be by grace alone, it became difficult to rationalize the plight of the poor as a peculiar form of blessedness. Thus Luther excoriated the indulgence sellers who robbed the people of needed resources. What was implicit in the Ninety-five Theses became increasingly explicit in the months and years leading up to the publication on January 24, 1522 of the Wittenberg Order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 1977 , pp. 313 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1977

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References

1. Ninety-five Theses (1517), in Luther's Works, Pelikan, Jaroslav and Lehmann, Helmut, eds. (Philadelphia and St. Louis, 1955 ff.) 31:29Google Scholar (hereafter cited as LW).

2. Explanations of the Ninety-five Theses (1518), in LW 31:204 (on thesis forty-seven).

3. “For no one can deny or conceal this fact, when the experience of all and complaints of everyone witness that through the decrees of the pope and the doctrines of men the consciences of the faithful have been miserably entangled, tortured and torn to pieces. Also, property and possessions, especially in this illustrious nation of Germany, have been devoured to this time without letup and by unworthy means.” Luther at the Diet of Worms (1521), in LW 32:110.

4. See Davis, Natalie Zemon, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy: The Case of Lyon,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (1968): 217.Google Scholar

5. Ratzinger, 's Geschichte der kirchlichen Armenpflege (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1868–1884)Google Scholar won the Munich Theology Faculty prize for a history of Christian poor relief. Ehrle, F., S.J., Beiträge zur Geschichte und Reform der Armenpflege (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1881).Google Scholar See also Wolf, G., Quellenkunde der deutschen Reformationsgeschichte (Gotha, 1916), vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 245 ff.Google Scholar

6. “Die Armenordnung von Nürnberg (1522), Kitzingen (1523), Regensburg (1523), und Ypern (1525),” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 10 (1913): 242 ff.;Google Scholar 11 (1914): 1 ff.

7. “Luther's Contributions to Sixteenth-Century Organization of Poor Relief,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 61 (1970): 222.Google Scholar

8. Barge, Hermann, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1905, reprinted ed. 1968)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Barge, Karlstadt). Vol. 2 is subtitled “Karlstadt als Vorkämpfer des laienchristlichen Puritanismus.” Recent Karlstadt scholarship continues to point to relationships to Reformed theology. See Bubenheimer, Ulrich, “Scandalum et ius divinum. Theologische und rechtstheologische Probleme der ersten reformatorischen Innovationen in Wittenberg 1521/22,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 59 (1973): 324;Google Scholar and Rupp, Gordon, Patterns of Reformation (Philadelphia, 1969), p. 139.Google Scholar

9. Tawney, R. H., Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Penguin Books, 1964), pp. 262–264.Google Scholar For a Marxist interpretation which posits a coincidence of Karlstadt's religious perspectives and early capitalist middle-class views see Fuchs, Gerhard, “Karlstadts radikal reformatorisches Wirken und seine Stellung zwischen Müntzer und Luther.” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg 3 (1953–1954): 531.Google Scholar

10. Davis, pp. 229, 240; see also Walter, E. V., “Pauperism and Illth: An Archaeology of Social Policy,” Sociological Analysis 34 (1973): 244, 252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Printed some time before December 24, 1519. LW 35:46–73.

12. See the historical note by Benrath, Karl in his edition of Luther's An den christlichen Adel (Halle, 1884), p. 106, n. 80.Google Scholar Benrath mentions only twenty brotherhoods in Wittenberg, but Beyer speaks of twenty-one. “Beyer to Einseidel,” Jan 25, 1522, in Müller, Nikolaus, Die Wittenberger Bewegung. 1521,1522 (Leipzig, 1911), no.75 p. 175.Google Scholar See also Barge, , Karlstadt, 1:380.Google Scholar Bernd Moeller labels late fifteenth-century Germany “one of the most churchly-minded and devout periods of the Middle Ages.” Moeller points out that most of the ninety-nine brotherhoods in Hamburg arose after 1450. See “Piety in Germany around 1500,” tr. by Joyce Irwin, in Steven Ozment, ed., The Reformation in Medieval Perspective (Chicago, 1971), pp. 63, 53.Google Scholar

13. LW 35:68.

14. LW 44:193.

15. LW 44:189–190. In his “Long Sermon on Usury” (1520) he said of indulgence sellers: “…these beggars gather like flies in summer and all preach the same song, ‘Give. …’” LW 45: 285.

16. Von Abtuhung der Bilder und das keyn Bedtler unther den Christen seyn sollen (1522), ed. by Hans Lietzmann in Kleine Texte für theologische undphilologische Vorlesungen and Übungen 74 (Bonn, 1911), p. 23 lines 19 f.Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Abtuhung). Roughly three-fourths of the tract is concerned with the abolition of images; the last fourth deals with poor relief.

17. Abtuhung, p. 28, 11.26 f.

18. See “Ordinance of a Common Chest,” LW 45: 161.Google Scholar

19. See Maurer, Wilhelm, “Die christliche Diakonie im Mittelalter,” in Krimm, Herbert, ed., Das diakonische Amt der Kirche (Stuttgart, 1953), pp. 133–166;Google ScholarLittle, Lester K., “Pride Goes Before Avarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom,” American Historical Review 76 (1971): 16–49;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGraus, F., “The Late Medieval Poor in Town and Countryside,” in Thrupp, Sylvia, ed., Change in Medieval Society (New York, 1964), pp. 314–324.Google Scholar

20. Bezold, Friedrich von, “Die ‘armen Leute’ und die deutsche Literature des späteren Mittelalters,” in his Aus Mittelalter und Renaissance. Kulturgeschictliche Studien (Munich and Berlin, 1918), p. 53.Google Scholar

21. De nobilitate, ch. 1, quoted by Bezold, p. 64. See also Uhrig, Kurt, “Der Bauer in der Publizistik der Reformation bis zum Ausgang des Bauernkrieges,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 33 (1936): 70–125, 165–225.Google Scholar

22. Bezold, pp. 73–74.

23. Bezold, p. 78. Uhrig, pp. 85 ff., 91–95, suggests that the sources for this glorification of the peasant are the Renaissance elevation and praise of nature and German mysticism. In both there is the theme that the peasant is closer to God than priests and theologians. See also Franz, Günther, Geschichte des deutschen Bauernstandes von frühen Mittelalter his zum 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 123–28, 269.Google Scholar

24. This is not meant to exclude from consideration other sources appropriated by Luther such as the “lists of grievance prepared for imperial diets, friends at the Saxon court, jurists, city councillors, or humanists …” Grimm, p. 225.

25. Barge, , Karlstadt, 1:1 f.Google Scholar

26. Barge, , Karlstadt, 2:4;Google Scholar see also Appendix 16, p. 567: “Stephen Roths Nachschrift des Karlstadtschen Kollegs über Sacharja.” G. Fuchs, pp. 533, 536, links Karlstadt to Hussite perspectives.

27. Sider, Ronald J., Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (Leiden, 1974), p. 83;Google Scholar see also pp. 136 f., 177 f., 288. “Verba Dei” was written in 1519 and published in early 1520.

28. “Verba Dei,” CiiiV-Civ, quoted by Sider, p. 82.

29. Erasmus' famous idea that the farmer reflect on Scripture while plowing, the weaver while weaving, the traveller while walking. See Sider, p. 85, and Barge, , Karlstadt, 1:175–176.Google Scholar

30. Anzeig etlicher Hauptartickeln Christlicher leere. … (Rothenburg, 1525),Google Scholar reprinted in Hertzsch, Erich, ed., Karlstadts Schriften am den Jahren 1523–1525, 2 vols. (Halle [Saale], 1956–1957), 2: 95, 21–28.Google Scholar I am indebted to Professor Sider for this reference from his unpublished paper “The Early Reformation and Social Concern: Karlstadt and the Poor” (presented at the American Academy of Religion meeting, Nov. 11, 1973).

31. Rupp, p. 153: “He was not a buffoon or scoundrel. But there was in him a dreadful element of what the Bible means by 'folly.”

32. See Cone, James, Black Theology and Black Power (Seabury, New York, 1969), pp. 151–152:Google Scholar “To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are.” “Where is your identity? Where is your being? Does it lie with the oppressed blacks or with the white oppressors?”

33. Barge, , Karlstadt, 2:352.Google Scholar

34. Lietzmann, Hans, Die Wittenberger und Leisniger Kastenordnung, Kleine Texte 21 (Berlin, 1935).Google Scholar See also Sehling, Emil, ed., Die evangelische Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1902 ff.), 1:696 ff.Google Scholar

35. Bubenheimer, p. 263; Sider, pp. 148 f.; Lindberg, C., “Theory and Practice: Reformation Models of Ministry as Resource for the Present,” Lutheran Quarterly 27 (1975): 27–35.Google Scholar

36. Preus, James S., Karlstadt's “Ordinaciones” and Luther's Liberty: A Stud' of the Wittenberg Movement 1521–22 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1974), pp. 5–8;Google ScholarEschenhagen, Edith, “Wittenberger Studien. Beiträge zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Stadt Wittenberg in der Reformationszeit,” Luther-Jahrbuch 9 (1927): 42–51.Google Scholar See also Barge, , Frühprotestantisches Gemeindechristentum in Wittenberg und Orlamünde (Leipzig, 1909), p. 48;Google ScholarMoeller, B., Imperial Cities and the Reformation, tr. by Midelfort, H. C. Erik and Edwards, Mark (Philadelphia, 1972) pp. 41–115.Google Scholar

37. Sider, p. 166; Barge, Karlstadt, 1:378.Google Scholar

38. Abtuhung, p.3, 11.11–13.

39. Abtuhung, p. 23, 11. 3–7.

40. Abtuhung, p. 24, 11.29 f. Under the title Karlstadt wrote “In the Christian city of Wittenberg.”

41. Abtuhung, p. 25, 11. 8–12.

42. Luther was concerned that government appropriation of monastic property provide for the inmates whether or not they chose to leave, and that needy heirs of the founders receive “at least a large portion of it.” See LW 45: 171 ff.

43. See Bubenheimer, pp. 276–277, 333–334.

44. Abtuhung, p. 25, 11.18 ff.; p. 26, 11.5–12.

45. Abtuhung, p. 28, 11. 19–23.

46. Abtuhung, p. 29, 11.20–22.

47. Luther's opinion in the Invocavit sermons was that Karlstadt had displaced the freedom of the gospel by the coercion of the law. See “Eight Sermons at Wittenberg” (1522), LW 51:67–100. To Luther's charge that he was pushing through reform too fast Karlstadt responded that to go slowly in reform was to be sinfully disobedient: “Oh man gemach faren und des ergernussen der schwachen verschonen soll printed in Hertzsch, 1:73–97. Luther's full scale attack with his famous caricature of Karlstadt is in his “Against the Heavenly Prophets” (1525), LW 40:73–223. For a contemporary “echo” of Luther see Rupp. Sider and Preus give more sympathetic accounts of Karlstadt.

48. This document is published in Barge, , Karlstadt, 2,Google Scholar Appendix 13; Lietzmann, , Kleine Texte 74;Google Scholar and in English translation in Durnbaugh, Donald, Every Need Supplied: Mutual Aid and Christian Community in the Free Churches, 1525–1675 (Philadelphia, 1974), pp. 215–218.Google Scholar

49. Müller, Karl, Luther und Karlstadt: Stücke aus ihrem gegenseitigen Verhältnis (Tübingen, 1907).Google Scholar Barge responded with the following: “Die älteste evangelische Armenordnung,” Historiches Vierteljahrsschrift 11 (1908): 193–225;Google Scholar Frühprotestantisches Gemeindechristentum; “Der Streit über die Grundlagen der religiosen Erneuerung in der Kontroverse zwischen Luther und Karlstadt,” Studium Lipsiense (1909): 192–213;Google ScholarAktenstücke zur Wittenberger Bewegung Anfang 1522 (Leipzig, 1912);Google Scholar“Die Enstehungszeit der Wittenberger Beutelordnung,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 86 (1913): 461–465.Google Scholar

50. Luther und Karlstadt, p. ix.

51. Frühprotestantisches Gemeindechristentum, p. 83.

52. Karlstadt,1:381.

53. Ibid., p. 382; Excursus 7, pp. 498–500,.

54. “Videas fiscum consilio d. Martini per magistratum erectum opibus in dies augeri, de quibus pauperes iuvari solent.” Quoted by N. Müller, p. 72, no. 31.

55. Pallas, K., ed., “Die Wittenberger Beuterordnung von Jahre 1521 und ihr Verhältnis zu der Einrichtung des Gemeinen Kastens im Januar 1522. Aus dem Nachlasse des Professors D Dr.Nic. Müller—Berlin,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Kirchengeschichte in der Provinz Sachsen 12 (1915): 1–45, 100–137;Google Scholar see also pp. 7–10, 101, 104. I am indebted to Professor Sider for alerting me to this article. A recent example of American oversight is in the work by Durnbaugh, pp. 215 f., which describes the “Beuterordnung” as a supplement to the Wittenberg Order and attributes it to Karlstadt.

56. As Robert M. Kingdon has pointed out, the two essential principles characterizing sixteenth century poor relief are laicization and rationalization. See his “Social Welfare in Calvin's Geneva,” American Historical Review 76 (1971): 50–69.Google Scholar These principles are already present in the “Beutelordnung” but I believe secularization is too strong a descriptive term. Therefore I have termed it “de-ecclesiasticizing.”

57. LW 35:69.

58. LW 35:69–71.

59. LW 45:286.

60. LW 45:287.

61. LW 45:287. Luther first attacked this in his “Explanations of the Ninety-five Theses,” LW 31:203.

62. Abtuhung, p. 23, 11.7–10.

63. LW 45:289.

64. Abtuhung, pp. 27–28.

65. LW 44:190–191.

66. Abtuhung, p. 25, 1.6.

67. LW 44:191.

68. “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church” (1520), LW 36:36.

69. “The Misuse of the Mass” (1521), LW 36:134.

70. LW 44:190–191.

71. See LW 45: 159 ff., and “Luther on the Finances of a Parish,” Excursus I of Krodel, Gottfried, “State and Church in Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, 1524–1526,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (1968): 137–213.Google Scholar

72. Krodel, p.198.

73. Schwiebert, E. G., Luther and His Times (St Louis, 1950), p. 560.Google Scholar

74. For that matter neither did Thomas Müntzer; see Lindberg, C., “Theology and Politics: Luther the Radical and Müntzer the Reactionary,” Encounter 37 (1976): 356–371.;Google Scholar and G. Fuchs, who places Karlstadt between Luther and Müntzer. See also Uhrig, pp. 95–106.

75. See LW 52:13, 25; LW 21:295 ff., 312 ff. For an introduction to research comparing Luther and Karstadt see the report of the Luther and Karstadt seminar held at the Fourth International Congress for Luther Research in Oberman, Heiko, ed., Luther and the Dawn of the Modern Era (Leiden, 1974), pp. 215–219.Google Scholar

76. Niebuhr, Reinhold, Faith and History (New York, 1951), p. 200.Google Scholar See also Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols. (New York, 1960), 2:506 ff., 562 ff.Google Scholar

77. See, for example, Marius, Richard, Luther: A Biography (Philadelphia and New York, 1974);Google Scholar and Kahler, Erich, The Germans, ed. by Robert, and Kimber, Rita (Princeton, New Jersey, 1974).Google Scholar

78. Bernd, Moeller, Imperial Cities and the Reformation, pp. 3–16.Google Scholar

79. For example, Augsburg, Nürnberg, Altenburg, Kitzingen, Strassburg, Bresiau, Regensburg, Leisnig, et al. See Krodel, Grimm, Winckelmann, Moeller, et al.

80. Cole, Richard, “The Dynamics of Printing in the Sixteenth Century,” in Lawrence Buck and Jonathan Zophy, eds., The Social History of the Reformation (Columbus, Ohio, 1972), pp. 93–105.Google Scholar

81. See Stupperich, , “Bruderdienst und Nächstenhilfe in der deutschen Reformation,” pp. 167–196, in Krimm (2nd ed., 1965).Google Scholar

82. Werke, D. Martin Luthers (Weimar, 1883 ff.,), Briefwechsel, 3:427, 11.3 ff.Google Scholar (hereafter cited WA).

83. WA 26:634–654: 639, 11.14 f.

84. See Sider, R. J., “Karlstadt's Orlamünde Theology: A Theology of Regeneration,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 45 (1971): 191–218, 352–376;Google ScholarHillerbrand, Hans, “Andreas Bodenstein of Carlstadt,” Church History, 35 (1966): 379–398:CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Bubenheimer.

85. “Letter to the Council of the City of Stettin” (01 11, 1523),LW 49:27.Google Scholar

86. “Fraternal Agreement on the Common Chest … at Leisnig” (1523), LW 45:192.Google Scholar

87. Sermon on St. Stephen's Day, Dec. 26, 1523. WA 12:693.