C. Scott Dixon, “Popular Astrology and Lutheran Propaganda in Reformation Germany,” History 84, no. 275 (July 1999).
Response
In his “Popular Astrology and Lutheran Propaganda” C. Scott Dixon corroborates this Lutheran shift of considering, in addition to the gospels, that “the whole order and disorder of the heavens” also “spoke of God’s will . . ..” He sets this shift against the backdrop of not so theological Lutheran aspirations to hasten their conversion and salvation of the German people. Despite Luther’s belief that mere exposure to the word of God unobscured by elitist Latin would be the sole necessary and sufficient cause for salvation, Lutheran evangelism was progressing slowly in the eyes of its theologians: humanity was as sinfully indulgent as it had been; the doom portended by comets should do the trick (hence the titular “Propaganda”). Dixon complicates this sèmantik turn by qualifying that, for Lutherans, though God could intervene to alter the course of nature, this was not the same as the medieval Catholic conception of sacrality. For sixteenth-century Lutherans, in Dixon’s view, the material world was not a “repository of the sacred” but the relationship between God and nature was not completely severed, but instead became “rather a ‘weaker and more ill-defined form of sacrality’.” Curiously, reading Vermij, one is left with the impression that, if anything, the relationship between God and the natural world was strengthened, maximized, even.
Notes
- 403 – “In the face of this perceived failure [winning the hearts and minds to their new faith], and inspired by the urgency of their moral crusade, the clergy turned to other media in order to preach the faith. One such forum was popular astrology. Lutheran clergymen and almanac writers used almanacs and prognostications to relate the essentials of Luther’s moral message. This ‘preaching of the stars’ projected an image of the natural world ordered and affected by human conduct, and it detailed in signs and wonders a divine anger which could only be overcome through a turn to improved moral conduct and intense faith. The logic of Lutheran theology was writ in the stars. Far from the desacralized universe of popular perception, the Protestant world was infused with its own forms of sacrality.”
- In what ways were the universe considered desacralized in popular perception?
- “It was a widely held belief in sixteenth-century Europe that 1588 would be a year of wonder. Soe thinkers, religious men in particular, even thought it might mark the end of man’s time on earth.”
- 404 – It [eschatological excitement about the Wonder Year 1588] was all too much for the Catholic critic Johann Nas, who saw the scare as a Lutheran delusion, ‘proving from the constellations that Luther’s doctrine is right and steady, and will last until the end of the world, which they say will come in 1588’.”
- This positions Luther as a kind prophet, sent to prepare humanity for the coming apocalypse, a kind of John the Baptist for the end times instead of Jesus
- 405 – “In the German empire the prognostications of the fifteenth-century court astrologer Johannes Lichtenberger were issued and reissued in the 1520s and 1530s, Luther himself providing a preface for the 1527 edition.”
- 406 – “The sixteenth century was an anxious age. Knowledge creates anxiety, as does uncertainty or a sense of dissociation, and the century of Reformation gave rise to its share of novel and divisive ideas. Yet whereas medieval cosmology offered the anxious thinker ‘a fully articulated system of boundaries’ for understanding the world, the onset of the early modern age saw the disintegration of this order. What replaced it, in the first instance, was not an alternate cosmology, but an anxious scramble to reassociate the culture’s disparate parts.”
- 406-7 – Protestant and Catholic rulers alike endeavoured to discipline the subject population, to control the nature of behaviour and belief at the parish level. For some rulers, increased supervision was the only answer; others, like Martin Luther, knew but one cure: ‘who does not see’, he wrote, ‘that God is compelled, as it were, to punish, yes, even to destroy Germany’.”
- That’s not a cure
- 407-8 – “But the Reformation had in fact heightened this sense of expectancy, not just among the opponents of the new faith, but among the reformers themselves. Luther’s own sense of expectancy was intense; he was, as Heiko Oberman portrays him, a man caught between God and the Devil, waiting for the final hour.”
- 408 – “This sense of expectancy was even greater among Luther’s followers. Robin Bruce Barnes has claimed that ‘Lutheranism was the only major confessional group of the Reformation era to give a clear, virtually doctrinal sanction to a powerful sense of eschatological expectancy.’ Throughout the sixteenth century, Lutheran authors came up with more and more ingenious methods of calculating and broadcasting the arrival of the end of the world.”
- “This inclination to sift through the odd and unusual in search of God’s plan was, as Rudolf Schenda observed, a thoroughly Protestant phenomenon. And, of course, there was always astrology, probably the most effective way to broadcast the message.”
- “From about mid-century onwards, popular prognostications assumed a much more bleak and desperate tone. By the 1580s, the last days were certainly reckoned to be at hand. This feeling of expectancy, this sense of approaching doom, informs Lutheranism throughout the age of orthodoxy. It was central to its character.”
- “Given the pronounced apocalyptical turn to Lutheran theology, it should come as no surprise that many of the doomsayers and stargazers were themselves clergymen. This was not such an odd pairing, for astrology had always been central to the Christian faith, especially in the middle ages.”
- 408-9 – “Luther granted that certain heavenly signs might herald the judgments of God, but he gave the practice of astrology short shrift. In his eyes, it was not a predictable science; moreover, he rejected it on theological grounds: it placed limitations on the powers of God. Yet Luther never came out and condemned astrology, perhaps because respected fellow thinkers such as Philip Melancthon and Georg Spalatin set such store by it. As a result, astrological speculation increased after Luther’s death, not least among the Lutheran clergy.”
- 411 – “Stiber raised an important issue. Why were the pastors so hard at work writing almanacs? How did it serve the interests of the faith? For all of teh Lutheran almanac-makers of a pronounced religious conscience, the stars were simply a window on God’s mind. Although Luther himself balked at the notion that astrology amounted to a science, he was willing enough to concede that certain astral signs might portend divine intelligence. ‘For it is incredible’, he said, ‘that they [the planets] be observed to move without inquiring whether there isn’t somebody who moves them.’ Later Lutherans took this logic to its ultimate conclusion. The stars implied more than just a formal cause; they were beacons of the divine mind at work.”
- “Stars, indeed the whole order and disorder of the heavens, spoke of God’s will as clearly as the gospels.”
- 412 – “Of this last point, the authors were in no doubt. The sky was alight with a sermon on the need for penance and moral reform.”
- “Few almanac writers could recall an age so deep in sin. . . . As testimony to this depravity, Lutheran authors pointed to the many recent wonders in the sky.”
- “Man can know God’s heart, Georg Busch counselled, ‘first through his solitary Word, and with that his appointed servants, through whom, in words and in text, moves the Holy Spirit. But the world has ignored these admonishments, and neither preaching, writing, songs, nor words will help, and mankind from day to day returns to its godless, unrepentant life.’ As a consequence of this turn to evil, the heavens were alight with warnings.”
- 413 – “And there was good cause for wrath. The Lutheran Reformation was as much a campaign to reform society as it was an episode of intense theological insight. The evangelical movement was, after all, a mass exercise in propaganda, and there is only one measure of the success or failure of propaganda: the reaction of the audience.”
- “Granted, social reform was never the primary concern of men like Martin Luther. For many reformers, spiritual redemption was the only goal of human endeavour. But the perspective of the most thoughtful minds of the century should not be taken as the outlook of the age. For all of their theological hair-splitting, the Lutheran reformers recognized that the true test of the faith’s achievement was its presence or non-presence in the parish mind. And in many Lutheran eyes, when surveying the moral landscape of the empire, the moral message of the Reformation movement had yet to take hold in the parishes.”
- “As the almanac writers insisted, God was active in the heavens above because there was no religion below.”
- 414 – “This is what lay at the root of the Lutheran almanacs of the 1580s — this sense of frustration and failure, the conviction that the preaching of the gospel was not enough to indoctrinate the teachings of the church or the fear of God. Pastors thus made a deliberate attempt to cast their sermons in a different medium. Hence the rise of the ‘preaching of the stars’, almanac writing as sermonizing, a type of literature for the masses which could reach the widest possible audience and still trumpet the call to reform.”
- 415 – “Few almanac writers, even those of the Aristotelian bent, had any doubt that the signs and prayers of the faithful could avert impending natural disaster.”
- “Implicit in this understanding of the world was the conviction that God could intervene at any time and alter the course of nature. It was not the same as the late medieval Catholic notion of sacrality, for Lutheran theology rejected the idea that the material world was a repository of the sacred or that man’s earthly vessel could be tapped for preternatural power. But Protestantism did not completely sever the relationship between God and the natural world; it became rather a ‘weaker and more ill-defined form of sacrality’.”
- 415-6 – “Robert Scribner has described this as a subtle shift ‘from sacramental world to moralised universe’. Central to this conception was the belief that human action could provoke supernatural intervention.”
- 416 – “Human conduct now determined whether God would intervene — the less moral the conduct the greater the chance of intervention. God’s displeasure was manifest in the natural world. There was a clear connection between moral disorder and natural phenomena such as earthquakes, floods, fires, hailstorms, comets and unusual heavenly events. And just as later Lutheran theology (as projected from the pulpit) was transformed by the pressing concerns of daily life in the parishes, so too did the Lutheran mind imagine the natural world touched by the urgency of its moral crusade.”
- “Thus, the Lutheran reformation did not desacralize or disenchant the natural world . . .. On the contrary, at least with reference to the works of popular astrology, leading Lutheran clergymen saw God’s will writ all about them. They used this type of literature as propaganda for the faith. As the century came to a close, the almanac-makers were describing a universe which seemed little more than a Lutheran morality play. Of course, writers might present scientific reasons why stars and comets behaved as they did, just as a new scientific spirit seeped into other forms of popular literature. But the ultimate meaning behind natural events was religious.”
- 417 – “For the deep current of anxiety running through the almanacs was less the result of astronomical reckoning than a continuation, and an intensification, of the pessimism and apocalypticism prevalent during the age of Lutheran orthodoxy.”
