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ABSTRACT
This article explores the evolving nature of affectivity in the long Reformation, focusing especially on the place of lament in the ‘emotion script’ of early modern Lutheranism. It examines this script by introducing readers to an extremely rich and previously unknown ego-document or ‘Selbstzeugnis’ from early seventeenth-century Nürnberg: Johann Christoph Oelhafen's ‘Pious Meditations on the, Alas, Most Sorrowful Bereavement’. The article argues that the ‘Pious Meditations’ was shaped by the liturgical life of the early modern Lutheran house-church, even as it contributed a new and important ‘setting’ to this liturgy that allowed greater room for biblical lament in times of overwhelming grief. This new ‘setting’, in turn, constituted a revision of the early modern Lutheran ‘emotion script’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 Oelhafen, Diarium Familiare, entry for February 12, 1619.
3 Ibid., entry for February 12, 1619.
4 Ibid., entry for February 13, 1619.
5 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 57.
6 I situate the Pious Meditations in the context of contemporary historical and theological scholarship, including scholarship on the history of emotions, in A Widower’s Lament, 18–33 (history of emotions, 19–23).
7 On emotion scripts, that is, the cultural rules about which emotions people were to feel and express (or not), see Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, 254–55 (citing the work of Anna Wierzbicka).
8 See Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 251–54.
9 See Rittgers, “Nuremberg,” 554–55.
10 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 6.
11 For a fuller introduction to Johann Christoph, see Ibid., 4–13. Such hymn-writing was common among the lay upper classes in early modern Germany. See Laube, “Materializing Music in the Lutheran Home,” 121.
12 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 128.
13 According to one source, Johann Christoph began and ended each day with Scripture. See Oelhafen, Zwei Reden, 12.
14 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 203–09.
15 WA 35: 483 (no line numbers).
16 Johann Christoph cites Moller’s Manuale de praeparatione ad mortem and once made a gift of Moller’s Praxis Evangelorium to a friend. He may also cite Moller’s Mysterium Magnum. See Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 13, 208–09, n. 6.
17 This Lutheran devotion included funeral sermons. For discussion of the ones that may have influenced Johann Christoph, see Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 21–22.
18 See Rittgers, “Mystical Union and Spiritual Desire in Late Reformation Devotion.”
19 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 208-09, n. 6. Johann Christoph appears to be borrowing from Moller’s Mysterium Magnum here.
20 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 9.
21 On Arndt, see Illg, “Johann Arndt.” On Johann Christoph’s connection to Arndt, see Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 11–13.
22 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 45–6.
23 On Saubert, see van Dülmen, Orthodoxie und Kirchenreform. (On his friendship with Gerhard, see 646.) See also Sommer, “Johann Sauberts Eintreten für Johann Arndt,” 243. For a treatment of Gerhard and mysticism in the late Reformation, see Steiger, Johann Gerhard, 54–89.
24 See Steiger, “Die Gesichts – und Theologie-Vergessenheit der heutigen Seelsorgelehre,” 75-6; Resch, Trost im Angesicht des Todes; and Reinis Reforming the Art of Dying. See also Rittgers, “A Widower’s Wisdom.”
25 On late medieval and early modern Gebetbücher, see Schulz, “Gebetbücher III: Reformations- und Neuzeit,” and Baum, Reformation of the Senses, 77–98.
26 Johann Christoph would have learned from Luther’s Small Catechism that each day his sinful nature needed to be drowned through repentance and his new nature raised anew with Christ. See “The Sacrament of Holy Baptism, Fourth [Question],” in Kolb and Wengert, The Book of Concord, 360. 11–12.
27 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 69–70.
28 Luther refers to ‘der froelich wechßel’ in the German version of The Freedom of the Christian. See WA 7: 25.34.
29 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 80, 111, 113.
30 On private confession as a marker of Lutheran confessional identity, see Rittgers, “Private Confession and the ‘Lutheranization’ of Sixteenth-Century Nördlingen.”
31 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 73–4.
32 For a fuller treatment of the connection between justification by faith and attitudes toward suffering in the Reformation period, see Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering.
33 See Eph. 1:13.
34 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 219.
35 WA 1:362.28-29/LW 31: 53. For a helpful introduction to Luther’s Theology of the Cross, see Kolb, “Luther on the Theology of the Cross.”
36 See Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 111–24.
37 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 96. The hymn is Adam Reusner’s (1496-ca. 1575) ‘In dich hab ich gehofet’ (In You I Have Hoped), which is based on Ps. 31. On its publication history, see Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied, vols. III, 133 (no. 170) and V:1, 373–74 (no. 587). Here and throughout, the format of Johann Christoph's hymns reflects their original format in the Pious Meditations.
38 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 131.
39 See John 4:46–54.
40 See Ps. 28:1, Ps. 35:22, Ps. 83:1.
41 see Rittgers, A Widower's Lament, 202.
42 I define lament as follows: ‘the passionate outpouring of deep sorrow and grief over loss, which helps one avoid being completely overcome by the strong emotions that attend it. In Scripture, lament is primarily directed toward God and can include protest.’ Ibid., 1.
43 Ibid., 64.
44 Ibid., 83.
45 Ibid., 87.
46 Ibid., 172.
47 Ibid., 177.
48 Ibid., 203.
49 Ibid., 200.
50 On Johann Christoph’s work for the Protestant Union during the early stages of the Thirty Years War, see ibid., 10–11.
51 Ibid., 147.
52 Ibid., 158.
53 Steiger, “Zorn Gottes.”
54 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 233.
55 See Ibid., 271 n.110
56 Rawski, Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Foul and Fair, vol. 3, 63–4.
57 Linton, Poetry and Parental Bereavement,180, 187.
58 See Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 62, 153, 244–56; and idem, “Protestants and Plague,” 143, 144, 146, and 150.
59 Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State; Taylor, A Secular Age, 115–9, 155.
60 On ‘emotional communities’, see Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History,” 842–5; and idem, Generations of Feelings, 3–10.
61 See Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 18
62 It should be noted that Petrarch engages in lament in the face of plague. See discussion in Hughes, Lament, Death, and Destiny, 101.
63 For the place of Lipsius’s On Consolation in the Lutheran consolation tradition, see Carrdus, Classical Rhetoric and the German Poet, 47; and Linton, Poetry and Parental Bereavement, 187. For a discussion of the work’s general influence in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, see Sellars, Justus Lipsius, On Constancy, 1–19.
64 This may be a reference to ‘Filli die schöne Schäferin’, which appeared in Johann Hermann Schein’s popular Venus Kräntzlein (Wittenberg, 1609). I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Thomas Gerhard Wilhelmi of the University of Heidelberg for this reference. On Schein, see Prüfer, Johann Hermann Schein. Johann Christoph might have also had in mind ‘Gott grüß euch schöne Schäferin so reine’, which appeared in Drey Schöne Lieder (Valentin Schönig, Augsburg, 1600) (VD 16 ZV 15924).
65 See Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 124-8, stanzas 1, 3, 5, 9, 10.
66 Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, 96, 97, 105, 178, 201, 226, 251-252.
67 See John 15:5.
68 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 108-9.
69 See Prov. 3:12 and Heb. 12:6.
70 See Ps. 46:10.
71 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 130. The concluding biblical allusion is to Job 5:19.
72 Lipsius saw patience as the mother of constancy and defined it as ‘a voluntary suffering without grudging of all things whatsoever can happen in or to a man’. See Sellars, Justus Lipsius, On Constancy, 37.
73 See Ps. 42:3.
74 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 157–8. See Nicolai, Freudenspiegel des ewigen Lebens, 413; and Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied, V:1, 259–60 (no. 396).
75 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 175. See Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied, III, 863–64 (no. 1016).
76 See Weller, Antidotvm, fol. Liiii r.
77 See Parsons, Luther and Calvin on Grief and Lament, and Ngien Fruit for the Soul. Both take issue with Hughes’s argument in Lament, Death, and Destiny (101–17) that the Reformation had no room for lament. Haemig has similarly argued for the presence of lament and even protest in Luther’s understanding of prayer. See “Luther on Prayer on Authentic Communication,” 312–13, and “Prayer as Talking Back to God in Luther’s Genesis Lectures,” 286 and 289.
78 See Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 98, 211.
79 See Rittgers, “Job in the German Reformation.”
80 Parsons, Luther and Calvin, 123–32; Ngien, Fruit for the Soul, 157–98.
81 WA 40/III:539b.25-26/LW 13:108.
82 WA 40/III:540b.14-22/LW 13: 108–09. Luther similarly accused Job of blasphemy in his protests against God. See Rittgers, “Job in the German Reformation,” 263–69.
83 WA 40/III:555b.12-13/LW 13: 118.
84 See the discussion of lament in the hymns of Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630), Johann Christoph’s contemporary, in Lorbeer, Die Sterbe – und Ewigkeitslieder in deutschen lutherischen Gesangbüchern, 441–7, 481.
85 In one entry in the Pious Meditations, Johann Christoph writes, ‘From my youth onward I have been delicate and still am to this hour’. Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 177.
86 Ryrie, Unbelievers, 25, 108, 116.
87 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 45.
88 Johann Christoph quotes from the Rosicrucian work, Einfaeltige Antwort. See Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 221-22. The work’s author is identified simply as ‘L.V.’ As the online catalogue of the Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg (UEN) (https://ub.fau.de) makes clear, Johann Christoph owned this work along with three others associated with the Rosicrucian movement: Andreae’s Fama Fraternitatis, Andreae’s Epistola Ad Illustrem, and Sperber’s Sendbrieff. The provenance information provided by the UEN online catalogue lists Johann Christoph Oelhafen for each work. They all have the same shelf mark: H00/HIST 403a.
89 See discussion in Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 36–8.
90 On early modern Lutheran culture, see Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur, and Kolb, Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture.
91 Veit refers to the ‘Verhäuslichung’ of religious life in “Private Frömmigkeit, Lektüre und Gesang im protestantischen Deutschland der frühen Neuzeit,” 271–72; “Die Hausandacht im deutschen Lutherthum,” 195; and “Die evangelische ‘Hauskirche’,” 195. On the Lutheran house-church, see also Lotz-Heumann, “Housefather and housemother.”
92 Luther calls for the ‘head of a house’ to lead his family through the different sections of the Small Catechism. See Kolb and Wengert, The Book of Concord, 351, 354, 356, 359, 362, 363, 364.
93 This summary of the content of the Lutheran house-church’s religious activities is based on a composite picture drawn from the scholarship of Patrice Veit. See his works listed in the bibliography.
94 I do not mean to suggest that the Lutheran house-church had a formal written liturgy that each house-church followed. There was no doubt a fair bit of variety from one Lutheran house-church to the next, even as most, including Johann’s Christoph’s, were likely using many of the same devotional materials for their domestic services. This is what the scholarship of Patrice Veit suggests. By ‘house-church liturgy’ I mean a flexible form or rubric for domestic devotion that would be developed by a house-father, perhaps with assistance from the house-mother. This liturgy would include devotional materials chosen and, in some cases, produced by the house-father or his family.
95 On the Hauskirche as complement to the local church, see Veit, “Private Frömmigkeit,” 271–72; and idem, “Die evangelische ‘Hauskirche,’” 206.
96 Carrdus, “‘Thränen=Tüchlein für Christliche Eltern’,” 11 and 15; idem, “Consolatory Dialogue,” 414.
97 Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 81 and 122.
98 Lotz-Heumann, “Housefather and housemother,” 111.
99 Taylor, A Secular Age, 37–38.
100 Kormmann, Ich, Welt, Gott, 6. See also Gabriele Jancke, “Autobiographical Texts,” 119, 160, 164–65.
101 For information on Johann’s Christoph’s second marriage, see Rittgers, A Widower’s Lament, 251–55.
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Ronald K. Rittgers
Ronald K. Rittgers, Professor of the History of Christianity, Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC, USA.