Steven Ozment

A Preface to Walter Ullmann, Part 2(a) of 2 (Ozment)

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The first half of our treatment on Ullmann can be found here, and the prelude to this two-part series can be found here (and the forerunner to the prelude [!] is here); in the six (a through e) parts of this second post, we’ll cover the way that his students, admirers and critics have presented the outline of his thought, and the faults they have found with it. 

I began to draft this over two years ago, but let it go, pursuing other projects; I release it here roughly as it has been sitting for the past two years, with the full admission that, as it stands, it is little more than an obscenely bloated compilation of the opinions of others — Ullmann’s direct or indirect students, for the most part, but all the leading English-language scholars in the field of medieval thought and politics. I have an entire box of notes and books and articles that make what is represented here look like a mere sampling of post-it notes on a manuscript compared to what I have (post-it notes which themselves need trimming!), but, knowing that I won’t get to it soon, it needs to be released as-is. I hope that it will be helpful, as a long list of extracts, for individuals who are preparing to read Ullmann, so that they will have a sense of how his students and professional historians who were indebted to him (and who hold sway within the field) read him; this should give readers of Ullmann a sense of what to gather, and what to leave behind as they read him. Looking back, it seems that a collection-of-the-opinions-of-others approach was my intention two years ago, so I hope this cut-up post, while it certainly falls egregiously far short of the high watermark I had intended for it, nonetheless has, basically, enough of the material any interested party could wish for to gain a foothold. 

Finally, I also hope that the impression it leaves is not uncharitable, and that people will not deny Ullmann a generous and open-minded reading on account of it.

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Merit & Grace in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period, Part 3

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Continued from part one, which was followed by part two: this is the third and final post (for now, until I get to Calvin at some future date.)  Continue reading →

Merit & Grace in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period, Part 2

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Continued from the previous post.  Continue reading →

Merit & Grace in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period, Part 1

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1) There are a number of helpful topics by which one might examine some of the differences and similarities across the centuries from the Medieval period up through the Reformation, and each allows a set of concerns to come into focus. The related questions of the nature of grace and whether a person might merit salvation is one such helpful pair of topics. These questions, conjoined from the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Reformation, begin at a point where they are very much tied up with ontological questions about the relationship between beings and God, and about the character of knowledge, in general, and the nature of theological knowledge, in particular. Do beings naturally participate in God to some degree (i.e., in a manner according to the nature of a being), or are they wholly separate, radically contingent and entirely superfluous ephemera of the divine will, thoroughly alien in their being to divinity, without a native point of contact? Is knowledge –even secular knowledge– a participation in divine knowledge, or is it a navigation of singularly unique particulars through signs? Is grace participation in God, likeness to God, favor from God, divine acception, or else some or even all of these? Is this grace something which people are able to know they are partaking of? The Nominalists’ and Reformers’ answers to these questions illumine some of the crucial elements that come to characterize the Modern period, our secular cultural condition. We will begin with Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), briefly noting the Ockhamist/Nominalist tradition which follows shortly after him, then we will move through these questions in Martin Luther (1483–1546).

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A Preliminary Synopsis of the Life of Thomas Müntzer (Occasionally Updated)

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It has become a truism that history is written by the victors, and the case of Thomas Müntzer (died 1525) would not falsify this. During and after his lifetime he had acquired such high-caliber opponents as the iconic religious reformer Martin Luther, to say nothing of the secular princes of Saxony. Müntzer (also spelled Münzer, or Müncer, or even other ways, meaning “miner”) was thus largely remembered through the eyes of his opponents, until his literary remains were rediscovered in the 19th century. These remains cover a limited stretch of his life, however: his “extant, authentic writings and correspondence from the scant ten years between 1516 and 1525, along with scattered reports about him, are not sufficient sources for writing a genuine biography.” [Seebass, 338[1]] Indeed, “Little can be told with certainty about Müntzer before 1517”. [Gritsch, 1[2]]

Müntzer Medaille 1976

An East German coin

This uncertainty has not prevented various factions from advancing their claims for or against him, however. Frederick Engels and Marxist historians have claimed him as a forerunner of revolution, championing the working class against the oppression of the landlords (he became a hero in East Germany‘s Socialist national narrative). Martin Luther and Lutheran historians have despised him as a rebel and revolutionary, because of his role in the German Peasant’s War above all, and a fanatic, because of his propounding the necessity of a mystical and activist spirituality which required spiritual purification through suffering and divine abandonment, for which a special illumination distinct from the biblical text was required — as opposed to the sufficiency of a trusting response to the divine promise in the divine Word as it was set forth in proper preaching and rites of worship, per Martin Luther and the Wittenberg reformers (Müntzer thought that the text of the Bible was dead “Babel” without this illumination and transformation through the Spirit, just as Calvin would in a few short years say that the Bible was not the Word by the act of preaching and the rites of worship, as Luther taught, but was a deposit of divine teaching, requiring the additional illumination of the Spirit to properly interpret it). Anabaptists and other contemporary groups stemming from the so-called Radical wing of the Reformation have a conflicted stance toward him, disapproving of his use of the sword, while looking favorably upon many elements of his theology and spirituality, especially his emphasis on a faith that bears fruit in deeds and on the separation of the chosen people of God from “the world.” (Most current works on him attempt to temper or remove any ideological excesses of previous scholarship, even if they incline one way or another.)

Another East German coin, marking what was presumed to be the 500th anniversary of Müntzer's birth.

Another East German coin, marking what was presumed to be the 500th anniversary of Müntzer’s birth.

Psychologically, it is very easy to drape upon his words and deeds the most noble or else the basest motives, making chastity of psychological conjecture important for lack of certainty. As a final flourish of uncertainty, we don’t even know what he looked like — the earliest portrait of him was made long after his execution (not that a portrait would be an enormous help in reconstructing his life and motives). Yet despite the lack of certainty on nearly every level, we can say from what we do know that his life was at least iconic for many threads of the modern world, as the war over his legacy illustrates.

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