Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Dezember/2018 |
Spalte: | 1296–1298 |
Kategorie: | Kirchengeschichte: Reformationszeit |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Michel, Stefan |
Titel/Untertitel: | Die Kanonisierung der Werke Martin Luthers im 16. Jahrhundert. |
Verlag: | Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2016. XIV, 386 S. = Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation, 92. Lw. EUR 119,00. ISBN 978-3-16-154453-8. |
Rezensent: | Anna Vind |
The book is Stefan Michel’s Habilitationsschrift and a result of his work within the church-historical environs of the Universities of Jena and Leipzig. The work situates itself in a discussion of the Lutheran legacy in the 16th century: what happened to Luther’s ideas, especially in the second half of the century after his death in 1546? How did his followers preserve what they had received? What role did Luther’s heritage play in the religious and political landscape of Early Modern Germany? These and other questions have been approached in many ways in previous research. The present book is nevertheless not yet another study of the intra-lutheran quarrels of the years after 1546 (5), but describes itself as an attempt to map the preservation or, as M. calls it, the specific ›canonization‹ of Luther’s writings. That canonization took place in a complex web of theological, confessional, territorial, political and personal inter-ests, a web that the author unravels in a close scrutiny of the complex source-material and the existing scholarly literature.
The book has a tripartite structure, focusing on three specific media of conservation and distribution of Luther’s legacy: the Luther bible, the production of the collected works, and the Luther-an confessions. Contemplating the difference between oral and written media in the 16th century, and situating his analysis within the established understanding of the reformation as a multime-dial revolution in general, M. states that the three chosen media made an especially robust contribution to the cultural memory within Lutheranism. Furthermore the choice of these written genres helps him to limit the timespan of the investigation, since the establishment of these ›canonical‹ works of Luther was com-plete in Germany around 1580, at the time of the Book of Concord. Finally, M. also considers the use of the word ›canonization‹ (9 ff.) which he does not wish to conceive of theologically as merely shadowing the biblical process of canonization. With reference to the original Greek word he defines it as a ›measure‹ or ›benchmark‹ and relates the term directly to Jan Assmann’s definition, made in the context of cultural anthropology, in which a ›canon‹ is »jene Form von Tradition, in der sie ihre höchste inhaltliche Verbindlichkeit und äußerste formale Festlegung erreicht. Nichts darf hinzugefügt, nichts weggenommen, nichts verändert werden« (10).
The book is systematically built up. After an introduction (1–15), three chapters follow, each concluded with a summary. At the end we are given an overall summary of the whole work (298–306) and an appendix with an overview of the Luther texts referred to by Georg Rörer during the production of the Jena edition of the col-lected works (307–332).
The first chapter stresses how Luther held out the Bible as the principal book for establishing the new faith, and worked intensively on the translation of it into German in a strong collegial context. M. follows the complicated attempts, in the years after Luther’s death, to produce a truly authoritative ›Luther bible‹ – a Bible translated by Luther alone with no additions from the hand of others. Already in this first chapter we are reminded of what it meant to the preservation of Luther’s legacy, that the reformer died leaving no clear and indubitable leader behind (Melanchthon did not count as such for all): we are reminded that the fear called forth by the Schmalkaldic War and the Augsburg Interim of 1548 were the frames of reality for a while; that the people who had met Luther slowly vanished and a second generation of reformers took over, and finally that the German princes loudly insisted on a ›canonical Luther‹ to secure the consolidation of the church in their territories. In this first chapter we are also made aware of the rivalry between the Lutherans at Wittenberg and those at Magdeburg/Jena, an instance of which is the production of the ›Jenaer Kampfbibel‹ (60 ff.) in response to the bibles produced at Wittenberg.
In the second chapter we are guided through the first attempts to collect Luther’s writings during his own lifetime, both the print-ed texts and the oral, but recorded performances such as lectures, sermons and the Tischreden. In 1539 – maybe provoked by Luther’s serious illness at that time – the first initiatives to create an edition of his collected works were taken at Wittenberg. A few volumes were published before his death, whereas the whole edition (12 German and seven Latin volumes) was finished in 1559. This edition was organized thematically, whereas the later ›response edition‹ created in Jena chose to organize Luther’s writings historically in order to be more true to the cherished reformer.
The third chapter, on the confessions, diligently depicts the history from Luther’s and Melanchthon’s early understanding of confessions, through the political interest after Luther’s death in established confessions, leading to the common work on the Book of Concord.
Many interesting questions are treated in M.’s book. We get a very close impression of the active first and second generation reformers, their historical situation and a concrete and nuanced insight into the complicated genesis of the three different textual corpora. M.’s acquaintance with the historical detail is admirable, and the book may serve any scholar of the reformation as a trea-sure-trove of information. Highly interesting themes such as valid criteria for translation of the Bible, textual editions of the works of ›canonical‹ theologians, images of Luther, the source value of preserved texts and notes, 16th century concepts of authorship and authority, and political agendas among the 16th century Lutherans are pointed to and touched upon.
One minor weakness might be that the treatment of important theological questions implicitly present in the material is to some extent pushed aside with reference to previous more in-depth treatments (an example being the understanding of the oral vs. the written word and of the interpretation of Scripture, see p. 28–29, footnotes 63–66). M. accentuates the church-historical character of his work (5), doubtless in order to indicate that a deeper treatment of theological questions such as the ones mentioned is somewhat beyond the scope of his book. The question is however whether a more profound consideration of such theological issues, as are also they a part of the historical tale would have created a different framework for the carefully presented material. An obvious ques-tion is, what is the relation between the actual, concrete ›canonization‹ of Luther’s heritage in the Luther bible, the collected works and the Formula of Concord and his original thoughts on theol-ogical authority, the clarity of Scripture, the Word of God and the work-ings of the Spirit? M. does mention how fluent, vital and testing was Luther’s work on the translation of the Bible (25 ff.) and how critical he remained of the cultivation of his person, and the attendant collecting of his utterances in whatever form, oral or written (117).
However, the primary aim and the length of the present study considered, this task belongs more likely to M.’s future scholarly endeavours. The book we have now is a pleasure to read, being both well written and prepared for the press with commendable care.