The Town Chronicle of Johannes Hass: History Writing and Divine Intervention in the Early Sixteenth Century

Martin Christ

doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghw141

Abstract

The council annals of Johannes Hass, the last Catholic mayor of the West Bohemian town of Gorlitz, are a fascinating document. In a single source we can see the author’s changing interpretation of divine intervention between c.1509 and 1542. After the introduction of the Reformation, Hass steadily decreased the importance of God, whilst the Devil became increasingly important. Regardless of Hass’s staunch Catholicism, Martin Luther’s impact can be felt in his vision of the divine and the demonic as he subconsciously incorporated minor elements of Lutheranism and commented positively on small changes brought about by the Reformation. Hass shows how receptive Catholics were towards Lutheran theology, without necessarily acknowledging it, as long as the new religion did not challenge the urban order. In rich and colourful language, Hass changed the very nature of God, the Devil and the saints. In this way he was responding to the slow but steady introduction of the Reformation in Gorlitz. Only by gradually turning God into a passive observer and giving greater agency to human actors could Hass make sense of the absence of a clear sign in favour of the Catholics in Gorlitz.

Highlights

On 26 June 1519 Johannes Hass, the town scribe of Görlitz, was inspecting the erection of a wall between two pillars of the Church of Saint Nicholas
Foremen were shouting instructions to stonemasons who were balancing precariously on unstable scaffolding and council members were observing the progress on the building site, while all around the ordinary activities of town life continued.[1]
For Hass these events provided one of the last instances where he perceived a clear divine intervention. He waited to see this kind of decisive intervention for the Catholic minority of Görlitz, who found themselves trying to fend off the Lutheran advance, just as the inner Swiss cantons had had to fend off Zwinglian advances

Summary

I: Johannes Hass and His World

Johannes Hass lived in a region that was both part of the Holy Roman Empire and a side land (Nebenland) of the Bohemian crown.[9]. In Görlitz, the first evangelical stirrings occurred in 1521, when the priest Franz Rotbart, appointed in 1520, started to preach in the manner of Martin Luther.[27] Rotbart was still Catholic in his beliefs when a copy of Luther’s excommunication bull was nailed to the main church, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, on 23 February 1521.28 On the back of the bull, Hass is mentioned as protonotarius and supporter of the displaying of the bull.[29] Later in the year, plague broke out in Görlitz and almost all council members left town With their departure, the town became increasingly open to religious change. Hass was able to operate within this context with confidence because of the king of Bohemia’s explicit rejection of the Wittenberg Reformation, but the reality in Görlitz was an increasingly non-Catholic council and citizenship

II: The Council in Charge

Findings

IV: Conclusion