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The Biblical Verse of Hans Sachs: The Popularization of Scripture in the Lutheran Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Philip Broadhead
Philip Broadhead*
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths’, University of London
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Extract

The Protestant Reformation was a movement based on Scripture and its leaders believed that it was important for all clergy and laity to know and understand the word of God. In 1522 Luther published his translation of the New Testament into German and, although it was not the first translation available, it made an enormous impact, selling in large numbers despite being a relatively expensive book for ordinary readers. In recent years the impression of laypeople readily accepting the Reformation as a result of individual reading of the Bible and evangelical preaching has been challenged, but there is evidence that gradually ordinary people did become aware of Protestant beliefs and the biblical basis for those teachings. Familiarity with the Bible has been shown to have been spread in a variety of ways, including attendance at regular worship, the production of children’s Bibles and the publication of extracts from Scripture, including the Psalms and Gospels. Another medium was the mastersingers, guilds of artisans found in several south German cities, who wrote and performed their own verses (Meisterlieder) that followed strict musical and poetic rules. This paper will consider how they used their literary traditions to popularize evangelical teaching and to spread knowledge and awareness of the Bible in ways that were readily comprehensible to ordinary people. The focus is on the work of the Nuremberg shoemaker and poet Hans Sachs, who achieved national fame, both for his works of the early 1520s in support of religious reform and for his creativity as a playwright and mastersinger. It will show too how changing perceptions of the role of the individual in Christian society in the Reformation period were embedded within the messages found in Sachs’s poems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 48: The Church and Literature , 2012 , pp. 124 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2012

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References

1 Edwards, Mark U. Jr, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley, CA, 1994), 123 Google Scholar.

2 Strauss, Gerald, Luther’s House of Learning: In doctrination of the Young in Reformation Germany (Baltimore, MD, 1978 Google Scholar); idem, ‘The Reformation and Its Public in an Age of Orthodoxy’, in R. Po-Chia Hsia, ed., The German People and the Reformation (Ithaca, NY, 1988), 194–214. There is evidence that popular religious beliefs and practices did change in Protestant areas over the course of the sixteenth century; see, e.g., Philip Broadhead, ‘Public Worship, Liturgy and the Introduction of the Lutheran Reformation into the Territorial Lands of Nuremberg’, EHR 120 (2005), 277–302.

3 Bottigheimer, Ruth B., ‘Bible Reading, “Bibles” and the Bible for Children in Early Modern Germany’, P&P, no. 139 (1993), 66–89 Google Scholar, at 67–8.

4 Könneker, Barbara, Hans Sachs (Stuttgart, 1971), 31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Ibid. 17.

6 E.g. the collection: Hans Sachs, Schõne Geistliche I inn der schrifft gegrundte lieder / für die Layen zu singen (n.pl., 1550).

7 Hahn, Gerhard, Evangelium als literarische Anweisung: Zu Luthers Stellung in der Geschichte des deutschen kirchlichen Lieder (Munich, 1981), 246–7 Google Scholar.

8 Arnold, Martin, Handwerker als theologische Schriftsteller: Studien zu Flugschriften der frühen Reformation 1523–1525 (Göttingen, 1990), 57 Google Scholar.

9 Keller, Adelbert von and Goetze, Edmund, eds, Hans Sachs, Werke, 26 vols (Tubingen, 1870–1908) [hereafter: KG], 21: 340 Google Scholar.

10 Ibid.: ‘AuG den ich alien vil gedicht | In meistergsang hab zugericht | Mit kurtzer glos und ir au Blegung | AuB guter christlicher bewegung, | Einfeltig nach meinem verstand, | Mit gottes hiilff nun weit erkandt | In teutschem land, bey jung und alten, | Darmit vil singschul werdn gehalten’.

11 Hamm, Berndt, Bürgertum und Glaube: Konturen der stãdtischen Reformation (Göttingen, 1996), 187–8 Google Scholar.

12 Otten, Franz, ‘Mit hilffgottes zw tichten …got zw lob vnd zw auspreittung seines heiisamen wort’: Untersuchungen zur Reformationsdichtung des Hans Sachs (Göppingen, 1993), 2 Google Scholar.

13 Seufert, Gerald, ed., Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall: Spruchgedicht, vier Reformations dialoge und das Meisterlied ‘Das Walt got’ (Stuttgart, 1974), 16 Google Scholar.

14 Ibid. 15.

15 KG, 22: 6–84: ‘Disputation zwischen einem chorherren und schuchmacher, darinn das wort gottes unnd ein recht Christlich wesen verfochten wirt’, 6–33; ‘Eyn gesprech von den scheinwercken der gaysdichen und iren gelübdten, damit sy zu verlesterung des bluts Christi vermaynen selig zu werden’, 34–50; ‘Ein dialogus des inhalt ein argument der Rõmischen wider das chrisdich heüflein, den geytz, auch ander offenlich laster u.s.w. betreffend’, 51–68; ‘Eyn gesprech eynes evangelischen Christen mit einem Lutherischen, darin der ergerlich wandel edicher, die sich lutherisch nennen, angezaigt und brüderlich gestrafft wirt’, 69–84.

16 Matt. 25: 31–46.

17 Broadhead, Philip, ‘The Contribution of Hans Sachs to the Debate on the Reformation in Nuremberg: A Study of the Religious Dialogues of 1524’, in Aylett, R. and Skrine, P., eds, Hans Sachs and Folk Theatre in the Late Middle Ages (Lewiston, ME, 1995), 43–62 Google Scholar, at 52–3.

18 Hamm, Bürgertum una Glaube, 227–8.

19 Vogler, Günther, Nüsrnberg 1524/25: Studien zur Geschichte der reformatorischen und sozialen Bewegung in der Reichsstadt (Berlin, 1982), 25 Google Scholar.

20 Hamm, Bürgertum und Glaube, 211, 220–30.

21 2 Chr. 14: 1–15; KG, 1: 234–6.

22 Ibid. 236.

23 Luke 18: 10–14; KG, 15: 355–8.

24 ‘Von dem reichen mann und armen Lazaro’: Luke 16: 19–31; KG, 1: 269–72; ‘Der Samaritter mit dem wunden’: Luke 10: 25–37; ibid. 273–6.

25 Ibid. 270: ‘Darbey wir sollen klar verstan, | Der armen uns zu nemen an, | Der wir in dieser thewren zeyt | Haben sehr vil im lande weyt’.

26 Ibid. 271–2.

27 Ibid. 273–6.

28 Ibid. 275–6.

29 KG, 15: 402–4.

30 ‘Das ieder mensch das seinig sucht, | In eigner lieb steckt gar verrucht, | Und lebet unter gottes zorn | Verflucht, verdammet und verlorn’: ibid. 403.

31 ‘Sonder sollen sein allesander | Freundlich und hertzlich mit einander, | Gantz briiderlich und chrisdich leben | Und einer dem andren vergeben’: Eph. 4: 18–32; KG, 15: 409–12.

32 ‘Ir lieben, last uns allesander | Briiderlich lieben an einander, | Wann die liebe ist von gott worn, | Wer lieb hat, ist von gott geborn | Und erkennet gott in dem liecht; | Wer nicht lieb hat, der kennt gott nicht’: 1 Jn 4: 1–21; KG, 15: 424–7.

33 KG, 15: 351–4.

34 For more detailed accounts of the Reformation in Nuremberg, see Vogler, , Niimberg 1524/25; Hamm, Bürgertum und Glaube; Grimm, Harold J., Lazarus Spengler: A Lay Leader of the Reformation (Columbus, OH, 1978)Google Scholar.