Reformation, gender, and sexuality in Switzerland: two case studies

Abstract

Niklaus Manuel, active in Bern, painter, playwright, and politician, wrote a carnival play in 1525 entitled the Der Ablasskrämer [The Indulgence Seller], which stages seven women as rather aggressive propagators of the Reformation. The first case study examines this play and questions the predominant tendency among scholars to qualify Manuel's staging of women simply as a case of literary inversion. The second case study is concerned with sexual deviance among the Anabaptists of the St. Gall and Appenzell areas of eastern Switzerland in the mid-1520s. It interprets this, in line with other recent research, as an attempt to spiritualize sexuality.

Keywords:

• Niklaus Manuel
• Swiss Reformation
• Anabaptism
• gender
• sixteenth-century sexuality

Notes

1 The following is a revised and annotated version of a keynote paper delivered at the annual conference of the Society for Reformation Studies in Westminster College Cambridge on 10 April, 2014. The translation of citations from sources and secondary literature in German is my own.

2 Conrad A. Beerli, Le peintre Nicolas Manuel et l’évolution de son temps (Geneva: Droz, 1953); Jean-Paul Tardent, Niklaus Manuel als Staatsmann (Bern: Historischer Verein des Kantons Bern, 1968); Kunstmuseum Bern, ed., Niklaus Manul Deutsch: Maler − Dichter − Staatsmann, [Exhibition catalogue] (Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1979); Hans Christoph von Tavel, Niklaus Manuel: Zur Kunst eines Eidgenossen der Dürerzeit (Bern: K.J. Wyss Erben, 1979); 450 Jahre Berner Reformation: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Berner Reformation und zu Niklaus Manuel, Archiv des Historischen Vereins des Kantons Bern, 64–65 (Bern: Stämpfli, 1980/81) — especially the contributions by: Hans Rudolf Lavater, ‘Niklaus Manuel Deutsch: Themen und Tendenzen’, 60–103; Hans Christoph von Tavel, ‘Niklaus Manuel als Maler und Zeichner, 313–49; Jean-Paul Tardent, ‘Niklaus Manuel als Politiker’, 405–31. Cf. Glenn Ehrstine, Theater, Culture and Community in Reformation Bern, 1523–1555, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

3 Von Tavel, Niklaus Manuel, 56–60, 63–76.

4 Niklaus Manuel, Werke und Briefe, new ed., ed. Paul Zinsli and Thomas Hengartner (Bern: Stämpfli, 1999), 125–80.

5 Quoted in Peter Pfrunder, Pfaffen, Ketzer, Totenfresser: Fastnachtskultur der Reformationszeit − Die Berner Spiele von Niklaus Manuel (Zürich: Chronos, 1989), 193, n. 193.

6 Manuel, Werke, 268.

7 Manuel, Werke, 273.

8 Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Antiklerikalismus und Reformation: Sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995); cf. Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, eds, Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 51, Leiden: Brill, 1994.

9 Manuel, Werke, 273.

10 Manuel, Werke, 276.

11 Manuel, Werke, 280. See also Beerli, Le peintre Nicolas Manuel, 246–47.

12 Müller, ‘Sichtbarmachung’, 138, 141.

13 Glenn Ehrstine, ‘Of Peasants, Women, and Bears: Political Agency and the Demise of Carnival Transgression in Bernese Reformation Drama’, Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 685; see also the discussion of Der Ablaßkrämer in Ehrstine, Theater, Culture, 107–13.

14 Ehrstine, ‘Of Peasants’, 685; Pfrunder, Pfaffen, Ketzer, Totenfresser, 213.

15 Pfrunder, Pfaffen, Ketzer, Totenfresser, 212f.

16 Cf. for example Helga Möbius, Die Frau im Barock, licensed ed. (Leipzig: W. Kohlhammer [Stuttgart], 1982), 50; [John Smith?], ‘The Women Fighting for the Breeches’, first half of the 18th century, National Portrait Gallery, London, Portrait NPG D11772, online at http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw60623/The-Women-Fighting-for-the-Breeches?search=ap&subj=94%3BGroup+portraits&displayNo=40&wPage=65&rNo=2636, accessed 16 May 2015.

17 Beerli, Nicolas Manuel, 57f; Kurt Guggisberg, Bernische Kirchengeschichte (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1958), 56.

18 Ernst Walder, ‘Reformation und moderner Staat’, in 450 Jahre Berner Reformation, 499–502.

19 For this and the following see Guggisberg, Bernische Kirchengeschichte, 84–93; the number of districts is listed by Walder, ‘Reformation und moderner Staat’, appendix, 580–81. A relatively more recent treatment is André Holenstein, ‘Konsens und Widerstand. Städtische Obrigkeit und landschaftliche Partizipation im städtischen Territorium Bern (15.16. Jahrhundert)’, Parliaments, Estates and Representations: International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions 10: 18–19; this largely confirms Ernst Walder's detailed interpretation of the role of these consultations in Bernese religious and church politics during the 1520s.

20 On this see especially Claudia Ulbrich, Verflochtene Geschichte(n): Ausgewählte Aufsätze zu Geschlecht, Macht und Religion in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Andreas Griesebner et al. (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2014), 36–39, 41–45.

21 Marion Kobelt-Groch, Aufsässige Töchter Gottes: Frauen im Bauernkrieg und in den Täuferbewegungen (Frankfurt am Main, New York: Campus, 1993), 53. See also Marion-Kobelt-Groch, ‘Von “armen frowen” und “bösen wibern”: Frauen im Bauernkrieg zwischen Anpassung und Auflehnung’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 79 (1988): esp. 122–29.

22 Tom Scott, The Early Reformation in Germany: Between Secular Impact and Radical Vision (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013), chap. 5, 117–41.

23 Bruce Gordon, ‘Toleration in the early Swiss Reformation: The art and politics of Niklaus Manuel of Berne’, in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 133.

24 Konrad Hoffmann, ‘Cranachs Zeichnungen “Frauen überfallen Geistliche”’, Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 26 (1972): 3–14.

25 Tardent, Niklaus Manuel als Staatsmann, 98–102.

26 Tardent, Niklaus Manuel als Staatsmann, 99.

27 Holenstein, ‘Konsens und Widerstand’, 19; see also Tardent, Niklaus Manuel als Staatsmann, 102–17.

28 Tardent, Niklaus Manuel als Staatsmann, 109, with reference to Beerli, Le peintre poète Nicolas Manuel, 279.

29 See Auke Jelsma, Frontiers of the Reformation: Dissidence and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 1998), 40 (erratum there with Vadian's first name).

30 On Johannes Kessler as a chronicler and the other contemporary St. Gall chroniclers referred to below, see Renate Frohne, ‘Städtische Chronistik zur Zeit der Reformation’, in St. Gallen: Geschichte einer literarischen Kultur: Kloster − Stadt − Kanton − Region, vol. 1, ed. Werner Wunderlich (St. Gallen: UVK Fachverlag, 1999), 299–328.

31 Note, for example, the empathy he expresses for an Anabaptist who would rather die than swear an oath: Johannes Kessler, Sabbata mit kleineren Schriften und Briefen, ed. Historischer Verein des Kantons St. Gallen (St. Gallen: Fehr'sche Buchhandlung, 1902), 284.

32 Kessler, Sabbata, 148.

33 Kessler, Sabbata, 147.

34 Werner Näf, Vadian und seine Stadt St. Gallen, vol. 2 (St. Gallen: Fehr'sche Buchhandlung, 1957), 207, 229.

35 Kessler, Sabbata, 157.

36 Next to Kessler's personal testimony discussed below, this is widely attested by contemporary sources. See, for example, Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz (= QGTS), vol. 2, Ostschweiz, ed. Heinold Fast (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1973), 276–77, no. 358 (edict by Abbot Franciscus of St Gall, 11 March 1526); 408–09, no. 485 (mandate of the St Gall city council, 9 February, 1526); 417, no. 496 (letter of Zwingli addressed to Vadian, 3 April, 1526); 418, no. 498 (judgement by the St Gall High Court against Barbel Müglin, 19 April, 1526).

37 This passage (Kessler, Sabbata, 158) reads ‘und für alle gschriftlich anzeigung erhept’ and is difficult to translate. It could mean that the words spoken by those who were ‘resurrected’ were taken down in writing.

38 Kessler, Sabbata, 158. On the spread of the practice cf. also Katharina Reinholdt, Ein Leib in Christo werden: Ehe und Sexualität im Täufertum der Frühen Neuzeit, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, 227 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 97.

39 The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version, self-pronouncing ed. (Philadelphia: The National Bible Press, 1970), Rom. 6: 4–7.

40 See, for example, QGTS, vol. 2, 409, no. 487 (release from prison in St Gall of Verena Kötz and Verena Guldin, 15 February, 1526); 414, no. 493 (interrogation by the Siebnergericht [St Gall court of inquiry] concerning sexual misconduct at the Guldin home, 20 March, 1526); 419, no. 499 (imprisonment and banishment of Bartolomeus Schömpperlin because of sexual misconduct committed with Verena Guldin, 19 April, 1526); 427–28, no. 513 (judgement by the High Court of St. Gall concerning Magdalena Müller and Wybrat Vonwiler, 9 November, 1526). An initial assessment of these sources was part of the Lizentiat thesis of Sylvia Franziska Schnyder, ‘“Der vatter hettz gehaißen”: Sexualität und Religion im Ostschweizer Täufertum (1524–1530)’, University of Basel, 2008.

41 Fridolin Sicher, Fridolin Sicher: Chronik, ed. Ernst Götzinger, Mitheilungen zur vaterländischen Geschichte, new series 10 (1885): 191. I have found no other reference to the role of children in this. The ‘Father's command’ is also referred to by Thomas Schugger in his own defence for having decapitated his own brother. He was condemned to death for this by the St Gall High Court on 16 February, 1526, see QGTS, vol. 2, 410, no. 488. This was a cause célèbre at the time, which, next to the reports and rumours about sexual deviance, severely damaged the reputation of Anabaptism in north-eastern Switzerland.

42 Sicher, Chronik, 191.

43 Katharina Reinholdt, ‘“durch fleischliche vormyschunge geheilliget” − Sexuelle Devianz und spirituelle Ehen bei den “Blutsfreunden aus der Wiedertauf”’, in Grenzen des Täufertums / Boundaries of Anabaptism: Neue Forschungen, ed. Anselm Schubert, Astrid von Schlachta and Michael Driedger, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, 209 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2009), 295–313.

44 ‘Die Chronik des Hermann Miles’, in Mittheilungen zur vaterländischen Geschichte, ed. Ernst Götzinger and Traugott Schiess, vol. 28, 3rd series (1902): 275–386, 308–09.

45 The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version, Eph. 4: 22–24.

46 Reinholdt, Ein Leib, 67.

47 Reinholdt, Ein Leib, 67.

48 Näf, Vadian, vol. 2, 235; Heinold Fast, ‘Die Sonderstellung der Täufer in St. Gallen und Appenzell’, Zwingliana 11 (1960): 233.

49 Katharina Reinholdt makes a good case for limiting our usage to the notion of deviance, especially where the sexual practices of the Anabaptists in question are concerned. Cf. Reinholdt, Ein Leib, 24–25.

50 Reinholdt, Ein Leib, 88–89.

51 This is confirmed by a letter of Vadian addressed to Heinrich Bullinger in Zürich, and in which he complains about the Anabaptists’ disdain for higher learning; see QGTS, vol. 2, 474–75, no. 571 (26 July, 1534).

52 Reinholdt, Ein Leib, 102.

53 Lyndal Roper, ‘Sexual Utopianism in the German Reformation’ [1991], in Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 82–85; Anselm Schubert, ‘Der Traum vom Tag des Herrn: Die “Uttenreuther Träumer” und das apokalyptische Täufertum’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 97 (2006): 106–137.

54 Reinholdt, Ein Leib, 116.

55 See Andrea Strübind, Eifriger als Zwingli. Die frühe Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2003), and the discussion of this monograph in Grenzen des Täufertums / Boundaries of Anabaptism, ed. A. Schubert et al., 21–62, 147–50, 379–405.

56 See, for example, Reinholdt, Ein Leib, 21.