Obrigkeitliche Armenfursorge in deutschen Reichsstadten der fruhen Neuzeit. StadtischesArmenwesen in Frankfurt am Main und Koln. by Robert JutteReview by: Thomas A. Brady, JrThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 390-391Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2540346 .

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390 The Sixteenth Century Journal

D. Foxgrover's description of Calvin is one of the weaker contributions. He presents a collage of paraphrases excerpted from limited sources and lifts out the reformer's pro- found pessimism concerning a decaying world and a church suffering under the cross. This caricature depicting an eschatological and vindictive Calvin may reflect one aspect in his overall make-up, but it surely is not the whole picture. That apocalyptic does play a major role in a reformer's theology is clear from P.S. Donaldson's original research on Pole. He demonstrates from the historical and biographical context of De unitate and Apologia that Pole's conversion in Rome prompted him to assume the role of a prophet who sees current events and persons in the light of sacred history. His apocalyptic typolo- gy served as a theological basis to reveal the mysterium iniquitatis of the satanic Machiavel- lianism underlying Henry VIII's polity.

N.L. Roelker summarizes the current research on the impact of the Chatillon brothers in the French Reformation by condensing a wealth of historical information to a few pages. Her approach may confuse the uninitiated because it presupposes too much. C.H. Carter attempts to dispel the notion that Ferdinand II was a zealous authoritarian who tried not only to reestablish Catholicism in Germany but also to establish his absolute rule. The re- sult of Carter's attempt to portray the emperor as his contemporaries saw him is ambigu- ous, for both friend and foe spoke of him as a religious figure, but almost always in purely secular terms. J.S. McGee sets out to revise Laud's image as an Anglo-Catholic who tried to move the church toward Roman Catholicism. The archbishop was a sort of tragic figure whose love for concord and order exactly engendered the opposite. His aversion to doc- trinal controversy, devotion to ceremony, and high esteem for the priesthood made him a strong supporter of the monarchy, the architect of Charles' I religious polity in a last ditch effeot to maintain the unity of church and state under the sacred king before Christendom definitively broke into its denominational pieces.

Aimed at addressing the question of how the reformer's personal charisma and indi- vidual religiosity figured in the constellation of political, economic, social, and cultural forces bringing out the Reformation, the different essays meet with varied success.

Manfred Hoffmann Emory University

Obrigkeitliche Armenfursorge in deutschen Reichsstadten der friihen Neuzeit. Stadtisches Armenwesen in Frankfurt am Main und Koin. Robert Jutte. Kolner Historische Abhandlungen, no. 31. Cologne- Vienna: Bdhlau Verlag, 1984. X + 400 pp. DM 118.00.

Competition between the confessions in nineteenth-century Germany sparked many controversies about the German Reformation, few of which have remained hotter longer than the debate about poor relief in the German cities. For many scholars it has been an ar- ticle of faith that Luther's theology inspired the series of civic poorlaws in Germany. Since almsgiving no longer helped the giver as well as the receiver of charity, as good works no longer affected salvation, Luther's theology made it possible to organize a public system of social welfare on a rational, efficient basis. So the argument goes, and so it lives on, largely untouched by either the literature on poverty and ideas about poverty before Luther's time (e.g., Michel Mollat, Les pauvres au Moyen Age. Etude sociale [Paris, 1978]) or the work of social historians such as Brian Pullan, Henry Kamen, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly.

In a recent Freiburg dissertation, Thomas Fischer (Stddtische Armut und Armenffirsorge im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen am Beispiel der Stddte Basel,

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Book Reviews 391

Freiburg i. Br. und Strassburg [Gdttingen, 1979]) concluded that during the last quarter of the fifteenth century-well before the beginnings of the Reformation-civic governments in South Germany began moving into the control of begging. During the 1520s followed a second phase, in which the new police of the poor its institutional form in the poorlaws and poorhouses of Luther's time. Social and political motives were paramount in the re- placement of caritative with civic modes of poor relief. The poorlaw reformers sought to help the needy through centralized, efficient relief, which was regulated to the level of poverty of the recipient, not to the generosity of the giver. The Reformation speeded up the process in Protestant Basel and Strasbourg but did not change its direction or charac- ter.

Robert Jutte reopens the entire question, because he believes that Fischer's analysis fails the test of comparability: Austrian Freiburg was simply not a reasonable comparator for the large mercantile cities of the Upper Rhine. He selects instead Protestant Frankfurt and Catholic Cologne, large commercial cities for which the sources are relatively full. Jttte argues that what happened with the Reformation was the beginning of a revision of social theology, based on practices already well established, but that the changes "had their in- tellectual roots in a rationally and pragmatically oriented humanism, in a Lutheranism which aimed at religious and ethical renewal, and in a Catholicism attempting to free its own forces of self-purification" (31). There were differences: whereas Protestant writers advocated the total control of begging, Catholic ones defended the exceptional rights of the mendicant orders. The first voices, however, against uncontrolled almsgiving spoke up well before the Reformation, and John Major was but one of the pre-Reformation theo- logians who saw poor relief as a task of civil government. Neither Protestants nor Catho- lics were agreed on the extent of the state's role in poor relief.

The bulk of this interesting book studies relatively centralized system of poor relief in Protestant Frankfurt, which conformed to the "common chest" type of the Lutheran lands, with the relatively decentralized system in Cologne, where poor relief was in private, parish, and governmental hands. These large sections contain rich materials for a compar- ative history of the urban poor in sixteenth-century Europe, a subject which has gained urgency from Wilhelm Abel's demonstrations (e.g., in Masssenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Deutschland [Gdttingen, 1972]) of the catastrophic fall in real wages and the massive impoverishment of urban populations.

Jitte concludes with a comparison and contrast of poor relief in Frankfurt and Col- ogne. In both cities poor relief over the course of the sixteenth century became more com- munal, rational, and bureaucratic, and even more attention was devoted to eliminating begging altogether. This was the major change in cities of both confessions: the construc- tion of a system which would help the truly needy, keep watch over the sturdy beggars, and inculcate in the deserving poor a desire to work. On this point Jiitte's fine book con- firms Fischer's findings: the new systems of poor relief grew out of a perceived need for governmental control of poverty, not simply from the spread of Luther's ideas; the Refor- mation speeded the process along the path on which it had already been set, while the Catholics plodded along behind. This is a pattern we are discovering in sector after sector of the social history of the Reformation and Counterreformation, and the more we learn, the more archaic seem the old confessional debates. With these two excellent studies in hand -Jfitte's and Fischer's -it is surely time to lay to rest the old debate about poor relief and the Lutheran Reformation.

This book is handsomely printed but rather overpriced, and its utility would have been greatly enhanced by an index. The bibliography is full and accurate, though the American theologian Carter Lindberg is turned into Lindberg Carter.

Thomas A. Brady, Jr. University of Oregon

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