The central meaning to be attributed to the sermon in the church and social life of Protestant Christianity since the Reformation [1] is founded in its exclusive theological appraisal as appeal to God updating and applying the word of bible. The liturgical changes in the church service [2] were intended to place the sermon at the centre of religious life and strengthen the effect of the preached word. In the Lutheran churches, the same applied to church art and music as opposed to the Reformed and Calvinistic denominations. The arrangement of Protestant church spaces gave a more obvious expression to the central role of the sermon. In contrast, the Reformists, as a rule, modified them more radically than the Lutherans who retained and adapted much of the pre-Reformation religious culture. The sermon in confessional Lutheranism, dedicated as it was to salvation through word and faith, assumed important functions in the social organisation of life, practical information, the exemplary verification of lived faith as well as the theological explanation and integration of cosmic threats (natural disasters, comets etc.) [3] or hygienic precautions, for example in the case of plague epidemics.

The central social task of the sermon in the Lutheran confessional society of the early modern period corresponded to the "ambiguous" relationship of the clergy to the political rulers in the city and in the territories. [4] On one hand the Lutheran preachers were integrated into the system of the denominational state; they were appointed, examined and inspected by the institutions of the territorial church regime, and had to preach and exercise their office according to the officially proclaimed church ordinances. On the other hand, they had to perform a religiously affirmed role, despite frequent conflicts with the authorities, as authorised interpreter of the divine word also from a position critical of the prevailing social order. The tense social situation of the Lutheran clergy in the confessional society of the early modern period reflects their "eccentric" task, to be interpreters of the divine word within the bounds of their time.

The preparation of Lutheran ministers for the central task of their office, the sermon, already played a role in their theology studies. [5] Probationary sermons under instruction of an experienced minister or a specially authorised theology professor were an integral element of the theological education of Lutheran pastors in the 16th and 17th centuries. On one hand, a rich resource literature on preaching (devotional books, Exempel books, homiletics etc.), closely connected to contemporary rhetoric, developed an increasingly differentiated linguistic expression and rhetorical schematic to meet the problem of the annual return of the same sermon texts (the so-called pericope rule) through variations. On the other hand, this was because the preachers of the later 16th and the 17th centuries had to address a "sermon audience " which, esp. in the cities, was on average more educated, culturally and religiously more demanding than in the first two generations after the Reformation.

The denominationally specific link between Lutheranism and the ancient church sermon texts (gospel and epistle pericopes) also played an important, general role outside the church realm. [6] The pericopes frequently formed the basis for domestic devotional literature; they played an important role in school translation or composition exercises and similarly, just like the church hymn they shaped private and public religion, church, domestic and school culture. The bible knowledge of Lutheran "laymen" in the confessional age would have been centred predominantly on the pericopes, the most important media in Lutheran denominational culture, beside the catechism and the hymnal, with long-term impact reaching to the threshold of the present. [7]

A characteristic aspect of Lutheran denominational culture with respect to the sermon is the latter's frequency and length. Two Sunday sermons and at least one weekday sermon were expected from individual pastors, even in rural areas. This along with the casual sermons meant barely less than an average of 200 sermons per year were given. In the cities, along with the early morning catechism sermons, two Sunday sermons and several weekday sermons were the rule. In cities such as Lübeck, Augsburg, Strasbourg or Rostock, between 35 and 40 regular sermons were held, in the course of a year between 1,500 and 2,000 sermons. High feast and memorial days, including the apostle's and saint's feasts frequently celebrated in 17th century Lutheranism, usually had at least one morning and one afternoon sermon. The authorities dictated the attendance at the Sunday and holiday services. As a rule, the prescribed sermon length, taken from normative sources like church ordinances or sermon mandates, amounted to about an hour. Hour-glasses were intended to guarantee the observance of this norm. Particularly the dogmatic theological conviction that the holy writ was the only truth norm and that its text is inspired [8] led to a sometimes excessive degree of care in the commentary, which also had to include the refutation of other interpretations, without being allowed to neglect the application to the contemporary milieu. Funeral sermons, a particularly Lutheran form in abundant print distribution and since the last third the 16th century a popularised "medium of edification" [9], might have sometimes been of considerably longer duration, lasting up to three hours.

The abundant dissemination of printed sermons reflected to the central theological and religious significance of the sermon in Lutheranism. [10] Along with devotionals, continuous interpretations of the gospel and epistles pericopes in the cycle the ecclesiastical year, used as aids for the preachers, but also as domestic prayer books, - as many as 700 different devotional editions were found in 17th century Lutheran Germany [11], - were typically printed from the sermons held in the pericope-independent weekly sermon cycles on individual biblical books or on certain themes or emblematic developed motifs. Also individual sermons or sermon series held for exceptional events, such as anniversaries, found an abundant dissemination in print, which would be inexplicable without a corresponding public demand. In many of these printed sermons the great number of citations were noted in the margins so as to show their readers ways into the scripture, to follow the thinking of the preacher, but also to be able to examine and if necessary correct and comprehend as part of an overall understanding of the biblical truth cosmos. In addition to the reformers, especially Luther and Melanchthon, the number of church fathers cited extensively in the exegesis was also considerable. The claim of Lutheran theology to represent nothing "new", but solely the ancient doctrine of the gospel, was expressed through the discourse with the fathers in the dogmatics just as in the sermon praxis. [12]

The conditions of the Thirty Years' War saw a decline in the production of long, costly, often multi-volume devotional works. On the contrary, the strongly event-related individual sermon or thematic sermon cycle increased in importance. This print-historical phenomenon says less about the Sunday sermons following the pericopes actually held than about the weekday sermons and sermon cycles, which allowed the preachers their own choice of a certain biblical book or theme, and about the reading needs of the time.

A picture of the Lutheran sermon from the time of the Thirty Years' War, primarily reflecting the sermon cycles independent of the pericopes, is of course incomplete; however, accents can be recognised which are characteristic for the Lutheran theological and religious way of dealing with the war. Commonly the printed sermons distinguish themselves through an intense effort to present the decisive content of the elaborated theological dogmatics in a homiletically appropriate, elementary form. [13] What appears striking is first of all the turn to Old Testament books of the prophets, particularly to the pre-exile prophet-judges, who announced the downfall of Israel and called Israel to repentance. [14] The present Germany is the Israel, doomed to damnation, to which scripture is addressed. In the destiny of the biblical people the fate of the present Germany, a particular territory or a certain city, was to be examined, the perspectives, of still averting immanent danger was to be shown, or a practical preservation strategy demonstrated.

If the ceremonies on the occasion of the centenary of the Reformation in 1617 [15], with their large public resonance, had brought with them a novel realisation of Luther and the sharpened accent on the militant dispute with the papal anti-Christ in his doctrine, and been spread in a journalistic campaign more intensive than any since the early Reformation, so now the apocalyptic diagnosis of the present played an outstanding role in view of the war. "Confessional triumphalism", while not dominating, had been clearly perceptible at the anniversary of the Reformation, now stood less in the foreground, than the call to repentance. Germany, under the threat of the coming demise, should do penance today and return to the obedience due God. Experience of suffering in the present, the distress of war, were God's punishment for an unrepentant life. The prudent tradition of a connection between act and judgement in the Old Testament defined the theological understanding of reality in the face of the war. "If God should put down his road and stick / we must cease to resist Him through sin: If you turn to me, sayeth the Lord Zebaoth / so I will turn to you. God give us repentant hearts", [16], preached the Rostock theology professor and pasto of Saint Mary's, Johannes Quistorp the Elder - in this regard a typical exponent of the Lutheran sermon during the war. [17]

In Lutheran Germany, the Thirty Years' War may well have been associated with intensification of apocalyptic imminence; at the same time, however, there was also an increase in the hope for a chiliastic reign of peace to begin after the destruction of the Roman antichrist. [18] Their own present appeared as a period of transition with terrible, changes suggesting impending doom, which became manifest in stellar constellations or apocalyptically interpreted events or persons. The pulpit call to repentance, which was to drive the flock into the merciful arms of the crucified God, became one of the few religious, social and cultural constants in the Lutheran confessional society of the war.

The intensity of the penitential sermon matched the conviction of Lutheran preachers that most persons of their time had become threatened with eternal damnation either through a blind sense of safety or through the sinfulness which had grown in the course of the war and the daily scorn of the divine word. Johann Matthäus Meyfart, one of the most important preachers and writers during the Thirty Years' War, exclaimed: "O Lord Jesus / what times have you brought us! / Alas, in such times / some knaves of war publicy come forth / saying: he prayed a pater noster many years ago / which still stinks from his mouth. Since then however he has ceased / even were he to be showered with misfortune. Enough of this, I cannot hear it any more." [19] The greater part of the signs of the end predicted by the apocalyptic texts of the bible were seen as fulfilled, so that as Quistorp formulated it "we wait all day and every hour / and should be ready that / this day not suddenly surprise us / and meet us unprepared." [20]

The historical-theological framework in which their own present was interpreted, was influenced by the four monarchy doctrine in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel (Chapter 4). The fourth empire, the Roman, as seen by contemporaries, was nearing its end. "God of heaven / thus Daniel speaks / He will soon crush and destroy / all kingdoms / heap heavens and earth together / and erect in its place a kingdom wherein He alone shall rule / that will never again be destroyed...and shall remain eternal." [21] While the end meant terror for the godless, it extended comfort to the repentant. The impressive descriptions of very manifestations of apocalyptic terror paralleled the pictures of the people of God united with Christ in the heavenly Jerusalem. [22]

The Lutheran penitential sermon from the time of the Thirty Years' War is not a particularly sensitive indicator of the moral and social conditions as such. Rather it reflects the perceptions of contemporary theologians. They knew that they were accountable for the congregations entrusted to them. Therefore public or private penitential discipline [23] up to the point of Pietism [24] was seen by responsible preachers as the essence of the spiritual office. It had been formulated in analogy to the proverb: "soft & mild doctors / make rotten, foul wounds", it was said that "also mild doctors to the soul / make foul wounds to the soul." [25] Not social discipline, but the abolition of obstacles to salvation was the main point of the Lutheran penitential sermon and church discipline, especially in face of the social decomposition processes which accompanied times of the war.

In its basic orientation the Lutheran penitential sermon aims to purify community and church, the people of God, God's elect as addressed by the gospel sermons, and to punish them for descending to "evil worldly deeds" such as "blasphemy / swear / perjury / whoredom". [26] With respect to the concrete approach to the political challenges of the war, the penitential sermon functions as a critical corrective to a Protestant war policy under leadership Gustav Adolph, which has aspired to "fat prebenderies, not...religion", which has brought the innocent "comrades in faith", "women and girls", "country and people to the tip of the sword" and "delivered many thousands of people wretchedly to the slaughter".[27] Among the "anti-war prophets" noticeably forced aside into heterodox milieus [28], such calls to penance, frequently combined with chiliastic views, played an outstanding role.

Lutheran theologians rejected theories justifying "holy wars" in the name of religion as a matter of principle. They taught, that "one should not oppose...even a heretical authority / even when it would strive to impose its heresy on its subjects / with force and weapons".[29] Trusting in God's order of the world, the struggle against the papal anti-Christ should also be led with spiritual weapons alone. The real goal of the politics of the Protestant estates was directed to attain the restitution of the Augsburg Peace of 1555, which had guaranteed "Augsburg Confession relations" their political life within the Empire. The Edict of Restitution of 1629, crowning the emperor's military successes and revealing the "absolute priority" of his " Counter-Reformation Catholicism" [30] certainly brought with it a new military threat to Protestantism, which in turn affected the spiritual and theological understanding of the war question. The 1631 Leipzig convention of numerous Lutheran and reformed imperial estates and imperial cities, whose political goal had consisted in the creation of a third force between the emperor and Sweden and had promoted both the political rapprochement between the confessionally separated imperial estates and imperial cities and denominational theological agreement [31], was accompanied by a politically and militarily offensive theological interpretation atypical of German Lutheranism. [32] This tendency is reflected especially in sermons of Matthias Hoë von Hoënegg, the high court preacher in the service of Electoral-Saxony in Dresden. [33] These were held for the opening and at the conclusion of the convention. Because of their journalistic effect for the assembly, they must be ascribed considerable "official" significance. In his inaugural sermon on the Psalm 83, a lament of the people of Israel in the countenance of a league of enemies [34], Hoë points to the situation of the Protestant estates understood as people of God in analogy to the people of God Israel and relates the Psalm words "let us take the houses of God in possession" (Ps 83:13) to the imperial Edict of Restitution. The enemies of God are the Leaguists sworn allies of the "Roman antichrist" [35], whose league is directed at God himself. The people of God has been visited by affliction, because they have not yet "done the right or enough penance" [36]; if however they do penance "today / today repent", God will turn to them again, will smatter their enemies, he will send "tools", yes a "noble hero", "to rapidly tear down the Papacy" and lead the Lord's war.[38] The great danger Protestantism is in and the flagrant intent of the opposition "to re-erect the Papacy everywhere" [39], demand fighting a war for religion's sake. Already before that, in the Summer of 1631, the military alliance which Electoral-Saxony and Electoral-Brandenburg concluded with Gustavus Adolphus, whose appearance was also greeted by German Lutherans chiefly in euphoric terms and eschatological categories, often interpreted against the background of the Paracelsian promise of a "lion from midnight" [40] widespread since the 1620s, also pushed views in the foreground of sermons which had been fully uncharacteristic of German Lutheranism. The heated situation, dramatically intensified through the fall of Magdeburg [41], appeared to be the beginning of the end of the history, the apocalyptic battle between the children of the light and the forces of the darkness.

The escatological legitimation of warfare in the name of the faith certainly presents one, of course instructive, but nevertheless subordinate aspect of the Lutheran sermons during the war, on the whole may be judging them in their entirety. And even if one believed in the divine mission of Gustavus Adolphus, as the war in Electoral-Saxony and the allied territories continued the goal of definitive destruction of the Roman anti-Christ was reduced to the pragmatic goal of a separate peace treaty with the emperor at Prague in 1635. [42] This was highly controversial due to the abandonment of a combined Protestant coalition. The theological and legal justification of the Prague Peace, elaborated by Lutheran theologians in expert opinions, sermons and pamphlets, legitimated the abandonment of Protestant religious freedom in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Austria executed in the peace agreement with the ius reformandi of the imperial rulers and moved with it thoroughly on that preferred line represented by Lutheran theologians, which conceded the preservation or restitution of the Peace of Augsburg and the imperial constitution an absolute priority. In the view of the most prominent Lutheran theologian of the time, Jena professor Johann Gerhard, the very affirmation of the politically pragmatic Peace of Prague was reason to give thanks to God and -certainly untimely- to hope that "now dying Germany could still lift its emaciated limbs from the rack." [43]

The peace agreement finally concluded in 1648 appeared to be celebrated primarily by the Protestants [44] and praised by Protestant theologians in thanksgiving sermons which were held chiefly on the occasion of the Nuremberg Executive Mandate of 20.6.1650 and were also published. For them the central issue was the continued survival of the worldly order and their own confession. At the same the peace agreement gave rise to hopes for an intensification of religion: "the right religion with cross and book adorned / will be led in at the same time with the peace", appeared in the call of an Augsburg pamphlet. [45]

The Lutheran theologians emphasised one thing above all in their thanksgiving sermons: that the peace was a present of God, which should be greeted with an earnest remorse. A criticism of the peace agreement which pointed out that there had been no destruction of the papacy and that the chiliastic expectation of a fifth kingdom of the saints had not been realised, was sharply opposed by Lutheran theologians like the Esslingen preacher and later Tübingen professor Tobias Wagner. [46] Wagner answered this theological position with the view that the fourth monarchy, the Imperium Romanum, which would exist up to the end of the world, had been given "safety and peace" through the Westphalian treaties. [47] The restitution of the fourth monarchy puts aside "all profane thoughts" [48], which see the peace agreement solely as a work of human intelligence. The church has been conceded a "period of grace" by God in which "the Protestant church again has a chance "; it is a prelude to "eternal glory" [49], but at the same time occasion to remember the necessity to do penance, to make peace with God and to take mind of the coming final judgement. With this attitude, the Lutheran peace preachers contributed decisively to the religious and theological affirmation of a peace order intended to paralyse religious conflict in the empire on a lasting basis.

The view represented by the Strasbourg theologian Johann Conrad Dannhauer, that the Peace of Westphalia was a "an extremly dangerous peace" [50], because it gave a chance to worldly happiness and impenitence and therefore hindered the necessary preparation for the approach of the last judgement, does not appear to have been characteristic of the Lutheranism approach to the peace agreement. The danger conjured up by Dannhauer was that one now thought oneself to be "free from God's statutes" and to have only to "comply with politics and way of the world". [51] Dannhauer's position was found to be in direct conflict with an feeling, which wanted to indulge in earthly happiness after thirty years of deprivation and threat to all worldly hopes.

Among the Lutheran preachers even the jubilation in the wake of the Peace of Westphalia was accompanied by the memory of the rod at the hand of the Lord of the history experienced in the war and the continual admonition to do penance, all emphatic affirmation of this great gift of God notwithstanding. For the Lutheran preachers of peace, the praise that almost fully affirmed the earthly peace settlement was at the same time a repentance to the God of peace: "So we have thereby an exeedingly great cause to exult, ans this with inner humility toward God, honour and praise, to rejoice and say:'it is peace, it has been seized from the throats of the haters of peace and bloody-thirsty evildoers', but not: there is absolutley no danger, rather more reason for us all to yield our safety and to greet the peace coming from heaven with pious zeal, worship, prayer and fervent real gratitude.

FOOTNOTES