Volume 12, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Conversions and Lutheranism in Early Modern Central Europe; Guest Editors: Benedikt Brunner, Martin Christ and Richard Kirwan

This article not only considers conversions to Lutheranism from the convert’s perspective, but understands conversion as a process involving multiple actors with a range of motivations. This perspective moves the conversation away from the converts’ own narratives and instead concentrates on Lutheran theologians, urban dignitaries and Protestant princes, who participated in the conversions in various ways. It asks how these actors benefitted from supporting the converts and argues that they actively promoted conversion to Lutheranism. Conversion became a key feature of the Lutheran self-perception and theologians and princes celebrated and promoted them in Germany and beyond. Contrary to previous scholarship, this article shows that Lutherans actively advocated conversions and the converts played a crucial role in the construction of a Lutheran identity.

Jewish conversions to Lutheranism occurred in the imperial city of Nuremberg under specific cultural, religious, social and economic conditions, which were closely related to the question of the benefits for the local university in Altdorf. The article shows, by analysing a printed baptismal sermon, the efforts to convey certain religious and cultural norms that the baptizand was to take with him into his new life and that were also intended to illustrate the superiority of Christianity. It is significant that Michael of Prague turned his back on Protestantism again a few years after his conversion, thus demonstrating great flexibility with regard to his affiliation. At the same time, anti-Jewish prejudices on the part of Lutheran “orthodoxy” were increasingly reinforced by such cases. The article therefore shows how strongly Jewish conversions were characterized by ambiguity and that confessional clarity was hardly achievable in such cases.

Converts from Judaism played an important role in the expansion of Christian Hebraism as teachers of Hebrew and Aramaic, mediators of Jewish scriptural interpretations and procurers of Jewish books. This article examines Lutheran universities as spaces for converts who were often self-fashioning themselves as former rabbis with expertise in Hebrew and Jewish learning. The controversies arising from attempts to secure a permanent post holder for the first chair in Hebrew at a German university at Wittenberg demonstrate the role that Hebrew played for an emerging Protestant self-understanding. The article also discusses the academic precarity of German converts, suggesting that they had not acquired the habitus of a Lutheran scholar as students because Jews were not permitted to study at German universities. Finally, once Christian Hebraism no longer depended on Jewish mediation, the main value of converts was their remaining loyal to the faith. Converts who reverted to Judaism were judged harshly by Christian society.

This article examines the case of Christian Fischer, a secretary to Wolfgang Wilhelm, Count Palatine of Neuburg, who departed the re-Catholicized territory of Pfalz-Neuburg in 1627 for neighbouring Württemberg with the aim of re-converting to Lutheranism, the confession he was born into. In doing so, Fischer followed the example of other converts from Pfalz-Neuburg who had sought refuge in Württemberg in the 1620s. Fischer’s case draws attention to the influence of models and pathways of conversionary migration, particularly as established in local contexts, in informing and motivating flight and conversion. It also highlights the significance of networks of patrons and brokers, within and between territories, and the politics of confessional rivalry in encouraging the bold step into exile. From Stuttgart, Fischer was sent to the University of Tübingen where his credentials were tested by its theologians. In contrast to most convert cases directed to the university, a decision was reached on Fischer in a single day resulting in his referral with a commendation to the city authorities in Strasbourg. At this point, Fischer began to describe himself as an exul (exile), self-consciously moving away from the more problematical designation of proselytus (convert). This article examines the circumstances that led to Fischer’s flight to Württemberg, reconstructs the management of his case for support in the duchy and ponders the reasons for his favourable treatment. In doing so, it attempts a broader assessment of the factors that contributed to the success or otherwise of converts seeking refuge in Württemberg in the 1620s and offers observations on the challenges of identity and status experienced by converts in the confessional age.

Conversions of professed nuns certainly jeopardized the fragile agreements in convent congregations and territories forged during the sixteenth century and the formal parity agreements in the late seventeenth century. In the more rigid post-Westphalian confessional landscape, the formal and public conversion or reconversion of even a single nun, like her departure, in a multiconfessional convent became an active concern for congregations and rulers alike. This essay will explore the rhetorical, spiritual, pragmatic and community dynamics in convent conversions and reconversions and argue for the inclusion of these flexible forms in conversion studies.

Lutherans and Catholics lived alongside one another peaceably as neighbours and shared political power in Early Modern Augsburg. Yet cases of conversion from one confession to the other were rare. Augsburg’s Lutherans and Catholics seldom changed confession even though they interacted regularly in domestic spaces, in public markets and taverns, and even in churches. Lutheran fears of recatholicization and Catholic concerns about minority status built confessional boundaries after 1555, making conversion socially disruptive. After 1648, under a new government based on confessional parity, conversion threatened to upset the political order as well. Neighbourliness and peaceful confessional coexistence in Augsburg depended on clear divisions between Catholics and Lutherans, making conversion a threat not only to the soul of the convert, but to the civic order of Augsburg.

This article addresses Lutheran baptismal sermons related to African slaves and Ottoman captives in the Holy Roman Empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It investigates how the “worlds” of the converts were presented, and how these sermons functioned as vehicles to bring “global” information to confessionalized Christians at home. I will discuss which information on non-Christian religions and lands appears in these sermons, where the pastors’ knowledge came from, what purpose and perhaps strategy they followed when they educated their listeners and readers about foreign worlds, and which information may have been – perhaps deliberately – excluded. The article attempts to add a new perspective to discussions on the global missionary outreach of Early Modern Protestantism, taking baptismal sermons as one possible entry point. It also hints at connections with a broader history of inter-religious dialogue and toleration.

In early sixteenth-century Rome, the Apocalypsis Nova , a prophetic text allegedly written by the Franciscan friar Amadeus Mendez da Silva, captivated the attention of scholars and churchmen alike. Readers were fascinated by its occult appeal and its calls for reform within the Roman Church. While the early discourses about the text are intriguing in themselves, the actual contents are even more puzzling. In addition to broad scholastic and Mariological discussions, the Apocalypsis Nova presents certain theological positions now associated with Protestant theology, such as a call for Eucharist under both kinds (bread and wine) and an emphasis on justification by God’s grace. The authoritative revelations in the text stand in stark contrast to its literary ambiguities, creating a paradoxical dynamic that undoubtedly enhanced the text’s appeal to its contemporaries. This is evident not only in the large number of copies that were made of the text, but in the extensive annotations found within them. This paper aims to illuminate the Apocalypsis Nova as an example of the complex theological discourses of reform that preceded the Reformation(s).