Political Preaching and a Design of Urban Reform: Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg and Strasbourg

Abstract

Political Preaching and a Design of Urban Reform:Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg and Strasbourg1 Rita Voltmer (bio) I. Introduction and Issues2 In the fifteenth century, the desire of the laity for more convincing religious instruction in the vernacular was not entirely satisfied by wandering preachers like Vincent Ferrer (†1419), Bernardino of Siena (†1444) or Giovanni of Capistrano (†1456). Therefore, north of the Alps, particularly in free cities of the Empire, so-called municipal preaching offices (Stadtprädikaturen) were introduced.3 For the most part, cathedral chapters and their bishops exerted a great influence over these foundations. Subsequently, the newly installed preachers were obliged to discipline the urban population. According to the artes praedicandi, the preachers were expected to avoid any criticism of the religious hierarchy and the ruling magistrates.4 In 1478, such a municipal preaching office was established at the cathedral in the imperial city of Strasbourg.5 [End Page 71] To avoid further quarrels between mendicant preachers and the parish priest, which had taken place in the cathedral during the so called Ultimum-Vale debate (around 1451), the citizens of Strasbourg sought a secular, university-educated, learned priest and preacher to fill this office. They found him in the person of young Johannes Geiler, who was already renowned for his sermons and his scholarship. The new pulpit office was endowed with a chapter sinecure, but most of its revenue came from a generous donation, by the wealthy Patrician Schott family. It is noteworthy that the foundation charter neither mentioned restraints concerning the topics that the cathedral preacher should select for his sermons nor obliged him to refrain from criticizing the ruling authorities and the clergy. On the contrary, the charter ranked the new preacher at the very apex of urban society, above other clergymen, the magistrature and the town’s lay population, calling him the new leading star with the obligation of instructio and correctio, reformatio and purgatio. Thus, Geiler was formally and officially commissioned to initiate a true Christian conversion of the people of Strasbourg, to correct their daily life of sinfulness, vice and blasphemy. In fact, those who had drafted the charter had defined the preacher’s duties rather idealistically and rhetorically and did not realize what kind of force they had unleashed upon Strasbourg. Geiler internalized the requirements of his office quite zealously. From the very beginning, he fulfilled his office with the greatest possible fervor and diligence, and named himself the custodian of the city. Consequently, he intervened in daily urban politics by using the pulpits of the town’s nunneries and monasteries, where he ministered as a preacher, as well as the chair of the cathedral as platforms for zealously advocating his reform plans.6 Very soon, the bishop, the cathedral chapter and the non-Observant mendicant congregations began to consider ways to get rid [End Page 72] of Johannes Geiler and his witty, often infamous, but never incorrect criticism. But neither their attempts to hinder the papal confirmation of the preacher’s office until 1489, nor their endeavors to seize the chapter donations, and not even the threat of physical violence could stop him.7 Geiler had quickly become a famous authority, backed by the network of powerful patrician families, admired by the Emperor Maximilian, and beloved by his main audience, the lay people of Strasbourg.8 During the thirty-two years of his office, he preached more than 4,500 sermons, approximately 1,300 of which are recorded in a wide range of written formats. In addition, there are notes, letters, texts giving advice and gravamina in Johannes’s own hand.9 For inside information about the goings on both in the collegial chapters10 and in the meetings of the magistrate, Geiler could rely on his friends among the canons11 as well as Sebastian Brant, the notary and clerk of the city of Strasbourg since 1500, and Wimpheling, the well-known German humanist, who had settled in Strasbourg from 1501. Altogether, Geiler’s many works provide us with sophisticated insights to late medieval urban society as seen from the perspective of a well learned cleric who took a very critical view of daily city life, of urban...