London Church Courts and Society on the Eve of the Reformation

And for a change this title has NOTHING to do with this post!


Ok, it does ... this and my leisure reading this weekend, Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen (ISBN 0253207517) were both written by the same author, history professor Richard Wunderli at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. The other title might fit more regarding to next year's Western North Dakota Synod gathering. (And in London, the vast majority speak English -- so does most everyone at the Synod!) In 2017, the 500th anniversary of a signature event in what became and I believe is becoming the Protestant Reformation of Christianity.


And then there is the rarely mentioned fact that Germany was the home of the printing press. In northern Europe books were cheap and the Bible was no longer a mysterious manu-script owned and explained by the priest.


It concerns me when people who if they will even admit to owning a Bible don't bring it to church or if they do bring it read it more often than when it looks good. I've been in those places with the crosses on the steeples where the number of Bible readers or Bible carriers you can count on both hands. What started out as a post of ninety-five theses against what Martin Luther at Wittenberg [Germany] University as the abuse of indulgences by the Catholic Church as simple money-grabbing ventures sparked a revolution over what people who were able to read actually read in the Bible and what the church was saying it said.

It was a household book of many families where Latin was understood by the father and by the children. Whole families began to read it, which was against the law of the Church.


What started out as a post against what Martin Luther at Wittenberg University as the abuse of indulgences by the Catholic Church as simple money-grabbing ventures sparked a revolution over what people who were able to read actually read in the Bible and what the church was saying it said. Of course, today understanding Latin or Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic is not a requirement to read the Bible. And to understand the Bible, you're already promised help through the Holy Spirit and those He directs! You just have to want to start, say "I will, and I ask God to help and guide me."


They discovered that the priests were telling them many things which, according to the original text of the Holy Scriptures, were somewhat different.


Oh, today's italicized quotes are NOT from Peasant Fires but rather from Hendrik Willem van Loon's The Story of Mankind and its chapter on the Reformation. Just love his writing! But back to the book I was reading ... forty-one years before Luther posted (that would be 1476), an illiterate shepherd and street musician named Hans Behem received a vision from the Virgin Mary (Jesus' mom, who gets way more veneration in Catholicism) to burn his drum and begin preaching. Though most of this year Hans' preaching attracted a huge following through southern Germany.


People began to ask questions.


And questions, when they cannot be answered, often cause a great deal of trouble.


At first, the governing authorities were willing to let him preach more for the money Hans (and two monks who may or may not have been aiding and abetting him, the historical record isn't clear) brought into their treasuries as sites of pilgrimage. But enough became enough when Hans inspired by the Virgin Mary advocated property to be held in common and killing the priests. I know I wouldn't go that far, but then I'm not an illiterate peasant who along with legions of my fellows suffered through an especially bad winter. Arrested on a feast day, tried, and burned at the stake.


This is getting long, my friends.


Come back tomorrow when I'll detail more what I actually DID this weekend, David