ROLF KIEssLING, THOMAS MAX SAFLEY, and LEE PALMER WANDEL, editors. Im Ringen um die Reformation: Kirchen und Pradikanten, Rat und Gemeinden in Augsburg.

Abstract

This edited volume is comprised of essays by German and American scholars who are at varying stages of their careers and whose research focuses on Augsburg. It offers in-depth studies of Augsburg's diverse evangelical congregations and the medieval foundations from which they grew, and aims to reveal how decisively medieval institutions and traditions influenced the shape of Augsburg's Reformation. Moreover, each author underlines the Reformation's local contexts, which, by necessity, produced a plurality of reformations in terms of their character and realization. The collection presents more than intriguing vignettes about the specific features of the Reformation “on the ground”; it argues strongly for a different kind of Reformation history that homogenizes less and is more alert to the particular, multiple, and contingent character of the reformations. After two introductory essays that position the volume historiographically (Lee Palmer Wandel) and sketch the coordinates of the Reformation in Augsburg (Rolf Kießling), five articles trace the course and distinct manifestations of religious reform in Augsburg's various parishes from the Middle Ages through the Thirty Years' War, with the decades from the 1520s to the 1550s receiving primary attention. A sixth chapter sheds light on the congregation of the Anabaptists. Augsburg possessed several characteristics that had critical bearing on the course of its reformations: the parishes discussed were all tied to a cloister or foundation (Stift). These parishes had both lay preachers and, more importantly, lay administrators. The office of the Zechpfleger, who represented the interests of the congregation and oversaw its financial, political, and legal affairs, was unique to Augsburg and was instrumental to the course of the reformations, particularly during the early decades.