By Ronald K. Rittgers
The Catholic Church's claims to non secular and temporal authority leisure on Jesus' promise within the gospels to provide Peter the keys to the dominion of heaven. within the 16th century, leaders of the German Reformation sought a basic transformation of this ''power of the keys'' as a part of their efforts to rid Church and society of alleged clerical abuses. valuable to this modification was once a thoroughgoing reform of personal confession.
not like different Protestants, Lutherans selected to not abolish inner most confession yet to alter it to fit their theological convictions and social wishes. In a desirable exam of this new spiritual perform, Ronald Rittgers strains the advance of Lutheran deepest confession, demonstrating the way it continuously balanced competing matters for non secular freedom and ethical self-discipline. The reformation of non-public confession was once a part of a far higher reformation of the facility of the keys that had profound implications for using spiritual authority in sixteenth-century Germany.
because the first full-length examine of the position of Lutheran inner most confession within the German Reformation, this publication is a welcome contribution to early glossy eu and non secular heritage.
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Additional info for The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany
Example text
19 By the late Middle Ages the Church had compiled a long list of sins that only a bishop or pope could absolve. 21 How well did the theory of confession as expressed in diocesan synods translate into actual practice in late medieval cities like Nürnberg? With regard to frequency of confession, a dearth of sources complicates the historian’s task considerably. 23 How nearly, then, did this expectation approximate actual behavior? Because confession and communion went together in the minds of Between Hope and Fear • 27 both Church officials and the laity, one may assume that frequency of participation in the Eucharist accurately reflects how often laypeople received the sacrament of penance.
11 The result was a decidedly penitential outlook that gave the piety of this era its distinctive form and appeal. 12 In theory the confession of sins in Nürnberg and other late medieval cities followed the guidelines laid out in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which governed the practice throughout Christendom. 13 After performing their assigned penance, absolved penitents were then to receive the Eucharist at Easter. Those who did not were to be barred from entering a church while they were alive and denied Christian burial upon their death.
Geiler insisted that, short of divine revelation, penitents could not know if they had achieved true sorrow for sins and therefore could not be certain they were forgiven; they simply had to do their best and trust in God’s mercy. Gerson agreed with Geiler but also saw the potential for this view to encourage scrupulosity. He therefore taught that penitents could achieve a moral certainty of their status before God based on their knowledge that they had confessed all their mortal sins to their priest and resolved not to commit any more in the future.