The councillor and chronicler Johannes Hass (c.1476–1544) illustrates how a Catholic perceived early Reformation changes. Hass was not the last proponent of a traditional kind of Catholicism in Görlitz. He incorporated minor elements of Lutheranism into his religiosity while at the same time considering himself to be a Catholic. This chapter explores the early Reformation years as a time of confessional uncertainties: Lutheranism had no clear shape and Catholics had not formulated a unified response to Lutheran challenges. Hass changed his religious outlook: before the Reformation, he wrote about a visible and active God, but with the Reformation, he changed the nature of divine intervention and turned God into a more watchful and passive deity with the Devil taking on a more prominent role. These patterns of change can be linked to the introduction of Lutheranism in Görlitz. Individuals sought to position themselves in a changing world, and Hass was one of them.
The first chapter gives an overview of the Reformation in the six towns and shows how the lack of a political centre led to continual compromise. The size and economic importance varied greatly in the six towns, resulting in different patterns of reform, including Zwinglianism, popular preaching, and convents which survived the Reformation. The chapter asks when religious change turned into ‘the introduction of Lutheranism’, showing that the six towns took individualistic and unique paths towards establishing the Reformation. The biographical focal points for this chapter are Lorenz Heidenreich (1460–1557) and Oswald Pergener (1490s–1546). Heidenreich was a Wittenberg-educated Lutheran preacher, yet there is no indication that any problems existed between him and a group of Zwinglians in the town. The presence of the Zwinglians shows how, especially in the early phase of the Reformation, the towns of the Lusatian League differed significantly in their religious outlook.
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. chapter 17 * This chapter was written in the Centre for Advanced Studies 'Urbanity and Religion: Reciprocal Formations' , based at the Max-Weber-Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies of the University of Erfurt. The group is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG,
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