The following are translations of two German reviews of James Estes's Godly Magistrates and Church Order: Johannes Brenz and the Establishment of the Lutheran Territorial Church in Germany, 1524-1559. Both are available in the original German.

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The first review is by Matthias Deuschle, in Blätter für Württembergische Kirchengeschichte 102 (2002): 253-4. [Read original German.]

The reformers' understanding of government is usually taught and learned by using the works of Luther or – less often – Melanchthon. Less well known is Brenz's contribution to this subject, although it is one that he repeatedly addressed from 1524/25 on. Thus, for example, the most detailed commentary by a reformer on the Twelve Article of the Peasants was written by Johannes Brenz.

In his monograph, Christian Magistrate and State Church. The Reforming Career of Johannes Brenz (1982), parts of which were based on his earlier articles, the editor and translator of the present volume of sources has already drawn attention to this contribution and its significance, which German Reformation historians, "in their obsessive preoccupation with Luther" (p. ix) were in danger of ignoring. In that study, appropriately, he already brought Brenz's views on government into conjunction with his writings on questions of church order, and one can – without wishing to diminish the importance of Brenz's writings that are theological in the narrower sense – agree with his judgement that the practical transformation of the reformers' ideas [about church order] into institutional form was "Brenz's most original contribution to the Reformation" (p. 58; cf. idem, "Brenz and the Office of Christian Magistrate," BWKG 100 [2000]:186-214, p. 186). It is this inseverable connection between theological foundation and practical activity as a church organizer that constitutes Brenz's specific profile, which he was best able to display in the 1550s, in collaboration with Duke Christopher [of Württemberg], and found its culmination in the Great Church Order of 1559.

The present volume offers excerpts in English translation from the sources that were used in the 1982 monograph. Its aim is to make available to teachers and students a coherent but manageable collection of texts on the basis of which "they can trace the development, both theoretical and practical, of the Lutheran territorial church during the early Reformation" (p. 3). The 23 texts are chronologically arranged in eleven sections, which are preceded by an excellent introduction that acquaints the reader with the two broad themes that the texts deal with: "The Office of Christian Magistrate" (pp. 12-10) and "The Origins of the Württemberg Consistorial System" (pp. 20-31).

The texts on the office of Christian magistrate date predominantly from the earlier years of Brenz's career. The four Election Day Sermons from the 1540s, however, constitute an exception. These deserve special attention, for they give Brenz's position in its mature form and they are now for the first time easily accessible . . . . The resulting collection of texts from the 1520s and 1540s is intended to make visible the division of Brenz's thought on Christian magistracy into the two distinct periods that the author has several times elaborated in a number of places. The turning point was the controversy in Nürnberg [in 1530] concerning which the author has already published a volume of sources: Whether Secular Government Has the Right to Wield the Sword in Matters of Faith. A Controversy in Nürnberg, 1530. (Renaissance and Reformation Texts in Translation, 6), Five Documents Trans. & Ed. J. M. ESTES, Toronto: CRRS Publications 1994. On the basis of the two volumes, one can now see that the development of Brenz's position was as follows. While before 1530 Brenz argues that the establishment of true religion brought secular peace and order, that argument disappears after 1530. Informed by [his participation in the] Nürnberg controversy, he now argues that government must do this for the sake of the glory of God (cf. pp. 16-18 of the volume under review).

The way in which this view finally became the official position under Duke Christopher is demonstrated with exceprts from the forewards to the Confessio Virtembergica [1551] and the Church Orders of 1553 and 1559 (pp. 150-51). To be sure, this leaves certain facets of Brenz's argumentation in the 1550s out of account. The role of the prince with respect to the judgement of church doctrine that is his as praecipuum membrum Ecclesiae, a topic that played a large role in Brenz's Prolegomena to the Apology of the Confessio Virtembergica of 1555, remains unmentioned.

The selections pertaining to church organization cover the entire period from the Hall Reformation (1527) to the Great Church Order (1559). As in the case of the Election Day Sermons, this volume fills a gap – at least for the time being – for the writings on this subject were not included in the edition of Brenz's Frühschriften and thus – as for example the Hall Reformation and other parts of the Hall Brentiana-Sammlung – are accessible only with difficulty or else only in nineteenth-century editions . . . In contrast to the documents on Brenz's view of government, those on this theme demonstrate the element of continuity in Brenz's efforts. Much of what Brenz was able to achieve in the Great Church Order was the result of ideas conceived decades earlier. This is particularly evident in his repeated attempts at the establishment of a single body that would exercise the two functions of church government and ecclesiastical discipline, something finally achieved in the [Württemberg] Synod (on this development, see pp. 23-30).

Thus this anthology imparts important insights into the origins of the present form of the Württemberg territorial church. But beyond that one can think of many uses for this book: it will do service for the study not only of the development of the reformers' understanding of secular government and of the development of church order and landesherrliches Kirchenregiment but also of Brenz's theology. Besides, the authoritative, easily understood translations, which here and there give, without exaggeration, a taste of the elevated style of chancellery German, are often easier [for Germans] to read than the German originals.

Naturally, this volume is aimed primarily at readers in the Anglo-Saxon world, but in this country as well, those who have a command of English will gladly make use of it. It certainly puts us in a strange position: texts that are still difficult of access or that are still unpublished [in the original] are now available to us in English translation – in a translation, moreover, that comes with so helpful an introduction and that is so easily understood that one would like to recommend it to German-speaking students as their preliminary introduction to the above-mentioned themes.

Matthias Deuschle (Tübingen)

The second review, by Martin H. Jung, appeared in Theologische Literaturzeitung 128 (2003) 9: 897-898. This is an abridged translation. [Read original German.]

James M. Estes, Professor Emeritus of History at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, has contributed significantly, as an English-speaking historian of the Reformation, to the investigation of the works of Johannes Brenz as well as to [scholarship on] Philip Melanchthon. The volume under review is an anthology of Brenz texts translated into English by Estes himself in order to provide teachers and students with the means for studying the theoretical and practical foundations of the Lutheran territorial church in Germany via the example of Brenz and the Württemberg church. In an accomplished introduction Estes acquaints his readers with the biography of Brenz and the issues addressed in the texts. Maps and illustrations contribute to the understanding of the texts.

The book is of interest not only, as one might suspect at first superficial glance, to its targeted English-speaking readership but also to Brenz and Reformation research in general, for it includes a number of hitherto unedited Brenz texts . . . by means of which the image of Brenz is enhanced in a number of interesting places. They show how Brenz—less ambiguously than Luther—assigned to secular governments responsibility for regulating matters of religion, including the question of true doctrine. His conception of the "Christian state," which the documents presented illustrate, had its roots, according to Estes, in the pre-Reformation development of territorial churches that, on the one hand, had shaped the city environment in which he grew up and that, on the other hand, was influential in the Erasmian humanism with which Brenz became familiar in Heidelberg.

It should be stressed that there is as yet no comparable anthology in German, which means that something has been achieved in English that would be equally desirable in German. Furthermore, this anthology makes one wish for the resumption of the edition of Brenz's Werke that began in 1970 but broke off in 1986. Perhaps the Mohr-Verlag in Tübingen should attempt to engage the Canadian scholar, now freed from his teaching responsibilities, for this project.

[Here Jung inserts a listing of the texts included in the volume.]

Estes' anthology will surely contribute toward making Johannes Brenz, whose 500th birthday was celebrated in 1999, more highly estimated as a reformer and [consequently] the object of more attention in future. Brenz is one of the few figures who from the beginning helped shape the reform movement and who lived through the whole of the epoch to its end. He died in 1570 as one of the last reformers.

Martin H. Jung
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