Abstract
Auricular confession1 was instituted officially by the Fourth Lateran Council. Canon 21 compelled all Christians to make a full confession of all sins once a year; only after hearing the full extent of a parishioner’s sins could a confessor assign penance and grant absolution. How strictly these instructions were followed in the south German imperial city of Lindau is unknown; however, it appears that by the late fourteenth century the local clergy considered the administration of auricular confession one of the defining powers of their office. In 1395 it was the last of the parish priest’s powers to be shared with the recently arrived Franciscans.2
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Notes and References
The mechanics of auricular confession are covered in H. C. Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church (Philadelphia and London, 1896) 3 vols;
more recently H.-P. Arendt, Bußsakrament und Einzelbeichte: Die tridentinischen Lehraussagen über das Sündenbekenntnis und ihre Verbindlichkeit für die Reform des Bußsacramentes (Freiburg/Basel/Vienna, 1981) esp. chapters 3 and 8. Interesting interpretative perspectives in
J. Bossy, ‘The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, ser. 5, vol. 25 (1975) pp. 21–38, and
J. Delumeau, L’aveu et le pardon: Les difficultés de la confession XIII e -XVII e siècle (Paris, 1990).
For critical responses to Bossy’s thesis — that the change from the public confession to a private act in a confessional signifies a shift from public piety to private devotion — see L. Duggan, ‘Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 75 (1984) pp. 153–75, and
W. de Boer, “Ad audiendi non vivendi commoditatem”. Note sull’ introduzione del confessionale soprattutto in Italia’, Quaderni Storici, n.s. 77 (1991) pp. 543–72.
K. Wolfart, Die Geschichte der Stadt Lindau in Bodensee (Lindau, 1909) vol. I.i, p. 118.
In Lindau, as in other parts of south Germany, the danger of receiving the sacrament in a state of ‘unworthiness’ was established with reference to St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (I Cor. XI: 26–9). According to L. Rothkrug, this insistence on the worthy reception of the eucharist distinguished south German from north German churches. L. Rothkrug, ‘Popular Religion and Holy Shrines: Their Influence on the Origins of the German Reformation and their Role in German Cultural Development’, in: J. Obelkevich (ed.), Religion and the People, 800–1700 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979) pp. 20–86;
D. W. Sabean, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984) p. 44;
E. Sehling (ed.), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Teil Bayern: Schwaben (Tübingen, 1963) vol. XII.ii, p. 207.
Here I accept the thesis of K. Aland. One of the major pillars of his argument is Melanchthon’s ‘Unterricht der Visitatoren an die Pfarrherrn im Kurfürstentum zu Sachsen’ (1528), which is also one of the few tracts cited by Lindauers in 1626. Kurt Aland, ‘Die Privatbeichte im Luthertum von ihren Anfängen bis zu ihrer Auflösung’, in Kurt Aland, Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe: Alte Kirche, Reformation und Luthertum, Pietismus und Erweckungsbewegung (Gütersloh, 1960) pp. 452–519.
Aland, ‘Privatbeichte’, p. 453; Die Augsburgische Confession oder Bekenntnis des Glaubens etlicher Fürsten und Städte, überantwortet Kais. Majestät zu Augsburg. Anno 1530, Tübinger Nottexte (Tübingen, 1948) p. 10. The Tetrapolitan Confession, by contrast, emphasised the voluntary nature of the entire practice of confession. R. Stupperich (ed.), Martin Bucers deutsche Schriften III. Confessio Tetrapolitana und die Schriften des Jahres 1531 (Gütersloh, 1969) pp. 143–5.
E. Roth, Die Privatbeichte und Schlüsselgewalt in der Theologie der Reformatoren (Gütersloh, 1952) pp. 15, 114.
Ibid., p. 13; C. Klein, Die Beichte in der evangelisch-sächsischen Kirche Siebenbürgens (Göttingen, 1980) p. 18.
For a discussion of this concept see H. Schilling (ed.), Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland — das Problem der ‘Zweiten Reformation’ (Gütersloh, 1986); for an English survey of recent work on ‘social discipline’ and ‘confessionalisation’,
see R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (London, 1989).
A very interesting indictment of the legal profession is provided in an unsigned, updated narrative and analysis of Lindau politics in 1626 (probably the work of a Bürgermeister), StAL Ra 65, 6/C. For an overview of early modern German anti-clericalism, see P. Dykema and H. Oberman (eds), Anticlericalism in late medieval and early modern Europe (Leiden and New York, 1992).
Both contemporary and modern observers have overemphasised the reforms’ importance. Charles V hoped to undermine the guilds, thereby denying evangelical movements what he perceived to be their ideological and numerical base in the cities. See L. Fürstenwerth, ‘Die Verfassungsänderung in den oberdeutschen Reichsstädten zur Zeit Karl V. (dissertation, Göttingen, 1893) and E. Naujoks (ed.) Kaiser Karl V. und die Zunftverfassung: ausgewählte Aktenstücke zu den Verfassungsänderungen in den oberdeutschen Reichsstädten 1547–1556 (Stuttgart, 1985).
For Lindau, P. Eitel has represented these reforms as a cataclysmic end to a whole epoch: P. Eitel, Die oberschwäbischen Reichsstädte im Zeitalter der Zunftherrschaft: Untersuchungen zu ihrer politischen und sozialen Struktur unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Städte Lindau, Memmingen, Ravensburg und Überlingen (Stuttgart, 1970).
The choice of terms is of some importance. I follow Schilling in favouring ‘republicanism’ over P. Blickle’s ‘communalism’, especially in the context of the free cities. P. Blickle, ‘Kommunalismus und Republikanismus in Oberdeutschland’ and H. Schilling, ‘Gab es im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit in Deutschland einen städtischen “Republikanismus”?’ in H. G. Koenigsberger (ed.), Republiken und Republikanismus in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1989) pp. 57–75 and 101–43.
The published literature on the uprising is slim. H. Löwe, Der Prediger Alexius Neukomm und der Lindauer Kirchenhandel des Jahres 1626. Forschungen zur Geschichte Bayerns (Munich, 1906/1907) gives a good overview, as does Löwe’s chapter in K. Wolfart, Stadtgeschichte, vol. I.ii, pp. 28–44. A shorter account, but one which is rather more sympathetic to Neukomm’s position, is found in H.Jordan, ‘Der Neukomm-Handel’, in: Bodensee Heimatschau, vol. 11, issue 24 (December 1931).
Christopher Friedrichs has recently re-examined seventeenth-century German urban revolts, concluding that the political culture, rather than social and economic factors, determined the occurrence and character of these revolts. C. Friedrichs, ‘Urban Politics and Urban Social Structure in Seventeenth-Century Germany’, European History Quarterly, 22 (1992) pp. 187–216.
Presumably, old people cost more because, in the many years that Lindau had been without private confession, they had amassed considerably more sins than the young. In fact, confession fees were a vexation in other churches which reintroduced private confession. For example, in 1587 the Weikersheim Superintendent, Johannes Assum, had confronted ministers who persisted in taking the confession penny. In 1588 the issue remained unresolved and Count Wolfgang of Hohenlohe ordered Assum to redouble his efforts to eradicate the practice. E. Sehling (G. Franz), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhundert, Teil Württemberg: Hohenlohe (Tübingen, 1977) vol. XV, pp. 533, 549.
J. D. Marte, Die ausswärtige Politik Lindaus, 1530–1532 (Heidelberg, 1904).
StAL Ra 65, 3, ‘Copia Bedenckhenß Herrn Dr Georg Zeamannß’, 1 August 1626. Zwingli had indeed pronounced: ‘Non enim tuo verbo ipsum potes magis certum reddere, quam muscam elephantum facere, cum dixeris: Elephas es’. Egli, G. Finsler and W. Köhler (eds), Huldreich Zwingiis sämtliche Werke, III (Leipzig, 1914) p. 821.
Mack Walker, German Hometowns: Community, State and General Estate, 1648–1871 (Ithaca, NY, 1971) remains an outstanding study.
For a critical appraisal of Walker’s work see Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, Cal., 1990).
For an interesting discussion of some of the ways in which various forms of piety might generate different connections between the living and the dead, see L. Rothkrug, ‘Popular Religion and Holy Shrines: Their Influence on the Origins of the German Reformation and their Role in German Cultural Development’, in J. Obelkevich (ed.), Religion and the People, 800–1700 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979) pp. 20–86.
Surprisingly little work has been directed at the concept of Obrigkeit itself. Two good discussions can be found in E. Maschke, ‘“Obrigkeit” im spätmittelalterlichen Speyer und in anderen Städten’, in E. Maschke, Städte und Menschen: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt, der Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1959–1977 (Wiesbaden, 1980)
and E. Naujoks, Obrigkeitsgedanke, Zunftverfassung und Reformation (Stuttgart, 1958). In sixteenth-century Lindau it was argued — with specific reference to the jurisdictional claims of an aristocratic ladies’ convent — that Obrigkeit existed in the performance of obrigkeitliche acts, such as the appointment of officials, the issuing of orders, etc. If you could not or did not behave as an Obrigkeit, then your Obrigkeit was lost or lapsed. StAL Ra 6, 110, ‘Suplication uff den tag zu Franckfurt zu ubergeben des viscalischen furnemens halber 1536. Betreffend die Abstellung der Papistischen meß Im Closter hie’.
H. Schilling, ‘Gab es im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit in Deutschland einen städtischen “Republikanismus”’?’, in: H. G. Koenigsberger (ed.), Republiken und Republikanismus in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1989); also English translation in:
H. Schilling, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in German and Dutch History (Leiden, 1992).
F. Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 22nd edn (Berlin, 1989): ‘heimlich: zum Haus gehörig … von Anfang an auch zur Bezeichnung des damit verbundenen Aspekts: wer sich in das Heim zurüchzieht, verbirgt sich vor anderen, vor Fremden, öffentlich: … im Sinn von vor Augen liegend, erst spät im politischen Sinn … Hierzu öffentlichkeit seit dem 18. Jh. als Ersatzwort für Publizität’.
R. F. E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982) pp. 32–5. It has been observed that for early modern south German rural society, while the threshold was significant, the interior front room was not an emphatically private space; private bedrooms, for example, appear to have developed in a later period, in tandem with an upper storey. H. Heidrich, ‘Grenzübergänge: Das Haus und die Volkskultur’, in:
R. van Dülmen, Kultur der einfachen Leute (Munich, 1983) pp. 17–41.
StAL Ra 65, 3/B, Zaeman to Lindau ministry, 15 November 1626. Zaeman and others who pursued this line were aided considerably by Neukomm’s death, presumably from natural causes, on 26 February 1627. H. Löwe, Der Prediger Alexius Neukomm und der Lindauer Kirchenhandel des Jahres 1626, Forschungen zur Geschichte Bayerns (Munich, 1907) p. 65.
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© 1996 J. C. Wolfart
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Wolfart, J.C. (1996). Why was Private Confession so Contentious in Early Seventeenth-Century Lindau?. In: Scribner, B., Johnson, T. (eds) Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400–1800. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24836-0_8
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