20.10.1999
Augsburg, the city of religious peace
In 1530 Philipp Melancthon tried to keep the church from being splitGENEVA, 20 October 1999 (lwi) – The Roman historian Tacitus considered Augusta Vindelicorum the most beautiful colony in the Province of Rhaetia. Until 14 B.C. it had been Damasia, the capital city of the Licatian Celts. But as soon as the Romans renamed it after their Emperor Augustus the town grew visibly in importance, standing at the crossroads of several trade routes. There was also an early Christian community there, according to credible reports of the martyrdom of Saint Afra in the year 304.
Its present name, Augsburg, harks back to the Roman colony. This German city on the banks of the River Lech became famous for its role in Renaissance and Reformation history. From the end of the 13th century the emperor and nobles of the Holy Roman Empire’s German nation held their parliaments here. By the end of the 15th century, Augsburg was the most important business and financial center north of the Alps. The activities of the Fugger and Welser families in Augsburg extended to Latin America and East Asia. Money flowed in growing streams through their account books, including money earned from indulgences on its way to Rome. (See article on Luther and Fugger)
Jakob Fugger “the Rich” (1459-1525), as he was called, dared to write to Emperor Charles V: “It is a known fact that without my help, Your Majesty would not have gained the crown of the Holy Roman Empire.” People talked about the four million ducats, a sum unimaginable in those days, which the Emperor owed his banker in Augsburg.
Martin Luther set foot in Augsburg in 1518, and met Cardinal Cajetan, the papal envoy, in Fugger’s house. This meeting with the young monk from Wittenberg was supposed to put an early end to the turmoil Luther had unleashed by nailing his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg’s castle church. All that was needed was for Luther to recant. But he refused, and he fled the city right afterward.
When the Reichstag met again in 1530 and the Protestant princes presented the Emperor with the Confessio Augustana, (CA) - their Augsburg Confession, Luther had long since been outlawed by the Emperor and banned by the Pope. He dared not even be present at the Reichstag. His friend Philipp Melancthon negotiated on his behalf. Melancthon wrote the Confessio Augustana as a reply to the charges brought against the Reformation in the 404 theses of Luther’s opponent Johannes Eck. Melancthon was seeking peace and conciliation, unfortunately in vain. The Emperor saw to it that the document was rejected.
After years of conflict, and a victory in battle against the Protestant princes, the Emperor tried to banish the Reformation by force. The “Leipzig Interim” of 1548 granted the Protestants the married priesthood and the Lord’s Supper with the bread and cup for the laity, but they were to obey the bishops and Pope and celebrate the mass in its old Latin form again.
In the years that followed, however, the Emperor could not completely break down the power of the Protestant princes. In 1555 he had to agree to the “Peace of Augsburg”, which was supposed to guarantee the peaceful existence of Protestant and Catholic areas side by side. But this could not yet be called real tolerance. There was freedom of conscience only in the free cities of the Empire - the rule followed everywhere else was that princes decided what their subjects should believe.
It was only after the cruelty and suffering of the 30 years’ War that the Peace of Westphalia, again signed in Augsburg, introduced the principle of parity. The Protestant and Roman Catholic populations of the city had to share power. On the one hand this reinforced their awareness of how different each was from the other, but on the other this ruling made it possible for confessions to exist peacefully side by side. Questions of faith were no longer settled by the decisions of political majorities.
When they confirm the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, by signing the Official Common Statement in Augsburg on 31 October, the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) will be reminded of what this city has meant for the Reformation. This is especially true of the Confessio Augustana, with which Philipp Melancthon tried to prevent the split. For Luther he went almost too far. He himself could not tread so softly, Luther wrote to his friend in Augsburg.
Even so, Luther too hoped that the division would be overcome. “I am worried that we will never again come so close together as we did at Augsburg,” he stated at the end of the 1530s. That worry was justified. It has taken almost half a millennium for the fellowship of Lutheran churches and the Roman Catholic Church to meet again in Augsburg to take a decisive step towards overcoming the division of the church.
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