One Does Not Live by Bread Alone Rural Reform and Village Political Strategies After The Peasants War

Church History 79:3 (September 2010), 556–584.
© American Society of Church History, 2010

doi:10.1017/S0009640710000624
“One does not live by bread alone”: Rural

Reform and Village Political Strategies after the
Peasants’ War
CHRISTOPHER W. CLOSE
O
N July 17, 1539, the evangelical preachers in the free imperial city
Augsburg petitioned the town council to thoroughly evangelize the
surrounding countryside. The clerics bemoaned the treatment of “the
poor peasantry, which has been lamentably misled and left to flounder
without the word of God. The peasants are very confused, for they recognize
papal teachings as deceptive yet are robbed of the Gospel’s healthy
teaching.” It was unnatural that “so many subjects in the countryside are
separated, divided, and alienated from their divinely established magistracy
in matters of faith.” To remedy the situation, the pastors exhorted
Augsburg’s councilors to provide the villagers “with fatherly care” through
“the preaching of the Gospel.” They followed this injunction with a warning.
If it took no action, “then truly the honorable council will have to answer
before God, since the council collects tithes and taxes (zins und gult) from
the poor people as its subjects, but it does not supply them with the food of
souls.”1
For Augsburg’s evangelical clergy, the preaching of the pure Gospel could
not be confined within city walls. Just as it fed the souls of Augsburg’s
burghers, the Word needed to nourish those outside the city who still lived
under the authority of Rome. This powerful ideal of evangelization tied the
religious duty of urban magistrates to the spiritual fate of their rural subjects.
From 1538 to 1547, Augsburg’s council took up its preachers’ call by
pursuing reform in multiple rural parishes, most notably in two nearby
The author would like to thank Thomas Max Safley, Rolf Kiessling, the anonymous reviewers for
Church History, D’Maris Coffman, and J. Melvin for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of
this draft. Special thanks also go to Jason Coy, Marc Forster, and Peter Wallace for their helpful
comments at the 2009 German Studies Association Conference. The Tuck Fund at Princeton
University provided financial support for this research.
1
Quoted in Friedrich Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte (Munich: Ackermann, 1904),
2:476–77. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
Christopher W. Close is a Postdoctoral Lecturer in the Writing Program at Princeton

University.
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“ONE DOES NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE” 557
villages named Haunstetten and Mindelaltheim. Both communities owed fealty
to monastic institutions located in Augsburg that had come under the control of
Augsburg’s council after its January 1537 introduction of the Reformation. By
using the rights possessed by the Dominican convent St. Katharina and the
Benedictine abbey St. Ulrich and Afra to spread reform, Augsburg’s council
sought to increase its jurisdiction in villages where it had previously exercised
limited political authority. The expansion of reform outside the city presented
an opportunity to disseminate Augsburg’s version of the Reformation while
enlarging the council’s religio-political sphere of influence, both major goals
of Augsburg’s external policy during the 1530s and 1540s. For many
magistrates and preachers in Augsburg, the consolidation of the city’s internal
reformation required the exporting of reform to neighboring communities.
The reform initiatives of Augsburg’s council and the 1539 clerical supplication
highlight the interconnected nature of urban and rural reform during the first half
of the sixteenth century. While historians have long characterized the Reformation
as an “urban event,”2 each city’s participation in regional trade and
communication networks ensured that urban reform did not occur in isolation.
As Peter Blickle’s “communal Reformation” model argues, the movement of
reform ideas between city and countryside often shaped the Reformation’s
course in both settings.3 Rural agitation for wide-sweeping reform such as the
1524–1526 Peasants’ War led many urban magistrates to suppress the
Reformation. Conversely, villages that differed in confession from nearby cities
offered a religious alternative for Catholics or evangelicals who could not
practice their faith openly within city walls.4 This dynamic placed pressure on
urban magistrates to try to regulate religious practices in their rural hinterland.
Similar to their influence in the economic sphere, many evangelical cities also
acted as regional hubs for the distribution of reform ideas. The importance of
this urban–rural relationship has led Rolf Kiessling to conclude that in most
south German principalities, “the connection to imperial cities as centers of
reform was itself decisive for the disposition to reform [rural territories].”5
2
Arthur G. Dickens, The German Nation and Martin Luther (London: Edward Arnold, 1974),
182.
3
Peter Blickle, Gemeindereformation (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1985). All quotations in this article
come from the English edition, Communal Reformation, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Atlantic
Highlands, N.J.: Humanities, 1992).
4
One example comes from Augsburg’s neighboring imperial city Kaufbeuren. In a 1546
supplication to the Schmalkaldic League, Kaufbeuren’s council complained “ein dorfflen genant
Obernbeurn das gehort one mitl mit aller obrigkheit auch das pfarlehen der stat zu . . . noch die
messe und alle papstliche Ceremonia gehalten werden/ darzu teglich die burger in der stat so
nach dem papstumb anhengig sind/ hinaus lauffen/ und ob schon in der stat solch hinauslauffen
verbotten . . . wurde.” Evangelisches Kirchenarchiv Kaufbeuren, Anlage 59, fol. 137v–138r.
5
Rolf Kiessling, “Reichsritterschaft und Reformation in Schwaben – Auf dem Weg zu einer
evangelischen Diaspora,” in Staat und Verwaltung in Bayern, ed. Konrad Ackermann and Alois
Schmid (Munich: Beck, 2003), 165.
558 CHURCH HISTORY
Peasants and burghers were therefore integrated in an economic, political, and

religious framework that stretched beyond the boundaries of local
communities.6 These close ties influenced how religious reform spread. This
realization, combined with a focus on the village commune as a site of religious
experience, has led scholars in the last three decades to devote great attention to
the process of rural reform. One school of thought emphasizes the growing
power and reform initiative of central authority against the rural population,
culminating in the social disciplining of villagers through the so-called “Princes’
Reformation.” This perspective has crystallized most clearly in the
confessionalization thesis, which remains a dominant concept in Reformation
studies. Supporters of this paradigm place the impetus for religious change in
the hands of ruling magistrates and clerics, arguing that over the course of the
sixteenth century, political authorities imposed new confessional models on the
general population. In the process, the confessionalization thesis tends to view
rural inhabitants as largely passive recipients of top-down reform.7 In reaction to
this theory, many scholars have argued that rural reform, in both Catholic and
Protestant territories, resulted from a process of discourse or dialogue between
the laity, clergy, and local magistrates. In this model, political authorities did not
impose the Reformation or Tridentine reform from above. Rather, reform
evolved from a continual give and take between numerous parties.8 Recently
6
See especially Rolf Kiessling, Die Stadt und ihr Land (Cologne: Böhlau, 1989); Thomas Scott,
Regional Identity and Economic Change: The Upper Rhine, 1450–1600 (Oxford: Clarendon,
1997); Thomas Scott, Town, Country, and Regions in Reformation Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
7
The literature on Confessionalization is vast. For a recent overview with an extensive
bibliography, see Ute Lotz-Heumann, “Confessionalization,” in Reformation and Early Modern
Europe: A Guide to Research, ed. David Whitford (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University
Press, 2008), 136–57. For the origins of the theory, see the following major works: Wolfgang
Reinhard, “Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung?” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 10 (1983):
257–77; Heinz Schilling, Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1981); Ernst
Walter Zeeden, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen: Grundlagen und Formen der
Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1965). For specific
studies that argue for top-down dynamics in the rural context after 1525, see, among others,
Blickle, Communal Reformation; Franziska Conrad, Reformation in der bäuerlichen Gesellschaft
(Stuttgart: Steiner, 1984), 156–75; Paul Hofer, “Die Reformation im Ulmer Landgebiet –
religiöse, wirtschaftliche und soziale Aspekte,” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Tübingen, 1977); Robert
Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750, trans. Lydia Cochrane
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985).
8
See, among others, C. Scott Dixon, The Reformation and Rural Society (Cambridge: Cambride
University Press, 1996); Marc Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1992); Bruce Gordon, Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation
(New York: Lang, 1992); Philip Hoffmann, Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon,
1500–1789 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984); Thomas Robisheaux, Rural
Society and the Search for Order in early modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989); David Warren Sabean, Power in the Blood (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984); Ulman Weiss, “Gemeinde und Kirche in der Erfurter ‘landschafft,’” in
Landgemeinde und Kirche im Zeitalter der Konfessionen, ed. Beat Kümin (Zurich: Chronos,
2004), 59–90.
David Mayes has added another viewpoint, claiming that until the Peace of
Westphalia, rural communities in Upper Hesse avoided attempts at
confessionalization by practicing a unique form of “communal Christianity.”
According to Mayes, rural religiosity before 1648 deemphasized doctrinal issues
in favor of ethical concerns and the maintenance of communal norms, which
allowed it to coexist with confessionalized versions of Christianity favored by
central authorities.9 Despite their differing conclusions, these various studies
tend to examine rural reform in the same two contexts: during the early 1520s or
after the 1555 Peace of Augsburg.10 Most emphasize the Peasants’ War as a
decisive turning point in the Reformation’s appeal to rural populations,
frequently pointing to the rebellion’s failure as a watershed moment in
suppressing rural zeal for reform. This conclusion is particularly evident in the
work of Blickle, who asserts that the war caused “rural society [to drop] out as a
supporter of the evangelical movement.”11
Such an approach, which Heinz Schilling has dubbed “the ‘mystification’ of
the year 1525,”12 obscures the importance of the 1530s and 1540s for the
Reformation’s course in many parts of Central Europe. Contrary to the
perception that this period was a static or uneventful time for rural reform,
the Reformation expanded rapidly across southern Germany during these
decades. In numerous areas, the years between the Peasants’ War and the
Peace of Augsburg constituted a key period that witnessed new attempts to
introduce the Reformation into countless communities. This was especially
true in Swabia, where many imperial cities and princely territories did not
adopt the Reformation until after the 1530 Diet of Augsburg. Ulm in 1531,
the Duchy of Württemberg in 1534, and Augsburg in 1537—to name but a
few—all introduced evangelical reform several years after the Peasants’ War,
but each had a stake in reforming villages in their regions. A process of
conflict and negotiation resulted between ruling magistrates, the common
folk, and outside political entities that shaped the Reformation throughout
southern Germany. An analysis of peasant reactions to reform during this
crucial period reveals that many in the rural laity retained interest in
evangelical reform after the end of the Peasants’ War. While most villagers
no longer sought to totally remake society, many continued to push for
localized change through religious reform, which opened new religious,
political, and economic opportunities for rural inhabitants. The strategies
they employed often depended on the specific political context of their
9
David Mayes, Communal Christianity: The Life and Loss of a Peasant Vision in Early Modern
Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
10
One exception to this pattern is Dixon’s Refomation and Rural Society, which demonstrates the
pitfalls of following a timeline that overemphasizes the Peasants’ War.
11
Blickle, Communal Reformation, 107.
12
Heinz Schilling, Die Stadt in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993), 73.
560 CHURCH HISTORY
communities, a fact that necessitates a study from the local level in order to
address broader issues of causation in the early Reformation.
In this context, the villagers’ role in Augsburg’s rural reform attempts offers
a particularly interesting case study. Unlike other imperial cities such as
Nuremberg and Ulm, Augsburg did not possess an extensive hinterland. The
council therefore lacked direct jurisdiction in the countryside, instead
exercising authority through “indirect lordship” based on individual rights
held by the city’s monastic institutions.13 Accordingly, Augsburg’s efforts to
evangelize surrounding villages encountered opposition from Catholic
polities that possessed equal or greater rights of jurisdiction in these
communities. The ensuing conflicts frustrated Augsburg’s attempts to spread
reform, but they also gave local villagers the chance to voice their opinions
concerning reform and the proper ordering of relations between rulers and
subjects. The circumstances surrounding reform in Haunstetten and
Mindelaltheim therefore allow one to investigate the interplay between
“multilateral voices and perspectives” in the process of reformation.14 In
both communities, the Reformation enabled the inhabitants to pursue an
expanded range of religio-political strategies by breaking down old ties of
authority and forming new ones in their place. The villagers proved to be
flexible and opportunistic, utilizing Augsburg’s desire to spread reform to
further their own interests while affirming the validity of their existing rights
and privileges. The dynamics of rural reform in Haunstetten and
Mindelaltheim therefore complicate models of top-down confessionalization
by showing how villagers could manipulate disputes over legal jurisdiction
and sovereignty. Rural inhabitants were far from passive recipients of
reform, and magistrates and monks alike recognized the need to secure their
support. In the decades after the Peasants’ War, villagers in Upper Swabia
displayed both resourcefulness in how they responded to reform and a
willingness to use the Reformation for their political and spiritual benefit.
I. REFORM IN HAUNSTETTEN
Augsburg’s first major rural reform attempt began in 1538, roughly one year
after the council’s January 1537 decision to abolish the Latin Mass in all the
city’s churches. This official introduction of evangelical reform led many of
13
On Augsburg’s use of indirect lordship to wield authority in the countryside, see Rolf
Kiessling, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft und Kirche in Augsburg im Spätmittelalter (Augsburg:
Mühlberger, 1971).
14
See Joel F. Harrington, “Historians without Borders? L’Histoire Croisée and Early Modern
Social History,” in Politics and Reformations: Histories and Reformations, ed. Christopher
Ocker, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko, and Peter Wallace (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 79–90, quote at 81.
Augsburg’s Catholic clergy to leave for exile in neighboring territories. Among
those who departed were the monks of the Benedictine imperial abbey
St. Ulrich and Afra, one of the city’s largest and most important monastic
institutions. Founded at the start of the eleventh century, the abbey
controlled a sizeable compound at the southern end of town. Its centerpiece
was the basilica of Ulrich and Afra, which housed the remains of three
prominent local saints: St. Afra, St. Simpert, and St. Ulrich.15 Its claim to
status as an imperial abbey gave St. Ulrich greater independence from the
city council than other monastic institutions in the city, but the advent of
Augsburg’s evangelical reformation caused all but one of the abbey’s monks
to withdraw to their rural holdings at Unterwittelsbach in Bavaria. One
monk, Joachim Gabold, stayed behind to care for the abbey’s buildings, but
once his brethren had departed, Gabold declared his support for the
Reformation by taking a wife and swearing an oath of citizenship.
Augsburg’s council responded by proclaiming Gabold the monastery’s true
abbot, since he was now the sole inhabitant of St. Ulrich’s urban complex. It
then ordered the city’s burghers to direct all payments due the abbey to
Gabold rather than Unterwittelsbach.16 The exiled monks objected to no avail.
Emboldened by their seizure of urban tithes, Augsburg and Gabold next laid
claim to some rural payments due the abbey. Their target was Haunstetten, a
village located a few kilometers south of Augsburg that belonged with all
rights of high and low jurisdiction to St. Ulrich. On July 21, 1538, Gabold,
accompanied by several armed guards provided by Augsburg’s council,
entered Haunstetten and compelled the villagers to transfer their oath of
fealty from the exiled monks to him. This act meant all feudal payments
owed St. Ulrich by the village now went to Augsburg rather than the monks
in Unterwittelsbach.17 It provoked an immediate protest from St. Ulrich’s
abbot Johannes VII, who petitioned the German King Ferdinand for aid. A
lengthy legal conflict ensued that lasted until 1541. At the center of the
controversy stood the Haunstetter, to whom both sides appealed directly for
loyalty. The villagers’ responses reveal how the inhabitants of one rural
community sought to use disputes caused by the Reformation to reshape
their economic, political, and religious status in the decade following the
Peasants’ War.
Augsburg’s actions in Haunstetten formed part of a larger program to expand
the city’s religio-political sphere of influence by exporting Augsburg’s version
of evangelical reform to nearby communities. While the council officially
15
On the general history of St. Ulrich and Afra, see Wilhelm Liebhart, Die Reichsabtei St. Ulrich
und Afra zu Augsburg (Historischer Atlas von Bayern, Teil Schwaben, Reihe II, Heft 2) (Munich:
Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte, 1982).
16
Friedrich Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte (Munich: Ackermann, 1907), 3:136.
17
Liebhart, Reichsabtei Sankt Ulrich, 169–74.
562 CHURCH HISTORY
recognized the Augsburg Confession—the main statement of Wittenberg

reform presented at the 1530 Diet of Augsburg—it did so to maintain
membership in the Schmalkaldic League, a military alliance pledged to
defend the Confession’s adherents. In their own churches, most of
Augsburg’s magistrates and their preachers favored a local version of reform
that struck a balance between the poles of Zurich and Wittenberg theology.
Augsburg’s reformed liturgy differed substantially from Wittenberg’s,18
while the celebration of the Eucharist in Augsburg occurred according to a
formula neither Zwinglian nor Lutheran in orientation.19 It was this specific
Augsburg-style reform that the council wished to spread to nearby
communities, including the imperial cities Donauwörth and Kaufbeuren,
where Augsburg’s magistrates hoped to foster “fine, right-believing flank
town(s) that, God willing, will not only stand beside the city of Augsburg in
religious matters, but also in other Christian and neighborly affairs as
well.”20 These efforts to enlarge the city’s religio-political sphere of
influence led the council to use the Reformation to augment its jurisdiction
in the countryside. In the process, the religious and political interests of the
council fused in a way that made the religious good politically desirable.
In the case of Haunstetten, the personal ambition of Augsburg’s leading
politician Wolfgang Rehlinger seems also to have influenced the council’s
readiness to support Gabold. In 1536, Rehlinger attempted to buy lordship
over Haunstetten from St. Ulrich for 60,000 fl. The monks refused to sell the
village, citing their exclusive ownership of legal rights in the community as
well as “the roughly 600 years that the village Haunstetten has belonged to
the monastery, a right guaranteed by a charter from Emperor Friedrich
Barbarossa.” The monks took great pains to secure the support of nearby
noblemen for this decision, since St. Ulrich’s abbot feared “our refusal to sell
might provoke displeasure and possibly even anger from [Rehlinger].”21 The
18
For an overview of Augsburg’s reformed liturgy, see James Thomas Ford, “Wolfgang
Musculus and the Struggle for Confessional Hegemony in Reformation Augsburg, 1531–1548”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2000), 178–98. For examples of similar
tendencies in other south German cities, see Peer Friess, “Der Einfluss des Zwinglianismus auf
die Reformation der oberschwäbischen Reichsstädte,” Zwingliana 34 (2007): 5–27.
19
Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 46–93.
20
“so wöllen wir gar pald/ ein fein artig/ rechtglaubig/ flügelstettlin . . . das/ ob Got wil/ nicht
allein der Religion halben/ sonder auch inn anderen christlichen und nachtparlichen sachen/ der
stat Augspurg/ wol ansteen wirdet.” Michael Keller to Augsburg’s Council. Stadtarchiv
Augsburg (StadtA A), Reichsstadtakten (RA) 541, 1545 August 27. For Augsburg’s attempts to
reform Donauwörth and Kaufbeuren, see Christopher W. Close, The Negotiated Reformation:
Imperial Cities and the Politics of Urban Reform (1525–1550) (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2009).
21
“solh obgewellt dorf Haunstetten . . . ab 600 Jar bey dem Gotzhaus gewest . . . in halt priefe
unnd sigels . . . durch kayser Fridreichen Barbarossen hochloblicher gedechtnuss uss gnaden bey
dem Gotzhaus zubeleyben/ gegeben”; “wurden wir durch unnser abschlagen/ grossen
bishop of Augsburg also appears to have suspected an ulterior or possibly
vindictive motive from Rehlinger. In a September 1536 letter to Duke
Wilhelm of Bavaria, Bishop Christoph von Stadion asked Wilhelm not to
support Rehlinger’s bid to buy Haunstetten “for reasons we will explain to
your lordship in a timely manner off the record.”22 Coming a few months
before Augsburg’s city council eliminated the Latin Mass within its walls,
the bishop’s statement could very well indicate a fear that the alienation of
Haunstetten to Rehlinger would bring attempts to reform the local parish.
Whether or not he relayed this suspicion to Duke Wilhelm is unknown, but
the bishop’s misgivings, as well as those of the monks, seem to have hit the
mark, since Rehlinger’s failed purchase likely shaped Augsburg’s subsequent
policy toward the village.23 In a 1543 letter to Landgrave Philip of Hesse,
Augsburg’s city physician Gereon Sailer24 opined that
Rehlinger undertook these actions against St. Ulrich in Haunstetten with the
appearance that he wished to enrich the city. Instead, he wanted to buy the
village himself. For this reason, Rehlinger promised St. Ulrich’s
chancellor that Augsburg’s council would pay a commission of 200 fl. if
the chancellor could bring the village under its control.25
In Haunstetten, the individual interests of Rehlinger converged with the broader

religio-political goals of the council to encourage the Reformation’s spread to a
nearby rural community.
St. Ulrich’s reluctance to sell its jurisdiction in Haunstetten stemmed largely
from the taxes it collected from the village, which represented one of the
monastery’s most important sources of rural income. The abbey’s rights in
Haunstetten were greater than in any other community under its authority,
which meant the village held symbolic importance for the monks as well, as
evidenced by their appeal to Barbarossa’s charter. A specially appointed
bailiff oversaw the monastery’s interests in the community, and St. Ulrich’s
abbot designated two of the four members of the Vierer, the ruling Council
undannckh/ unnd villeicht ergers bey dem Burgermayster erlangen miessen.” Staatsarchiv
Augsburg (StA A), Kloster St. Ulrich, Akten (KA) 207, Nr. 3.
22
“wie wir dan EFG mit der zeit selbs neben der feder berichten wellen.” StA A, KA 207, Nr. 6.
23
Liebhart, Reichsabtei Sankt Ulrich, 169–70; Friedrich Roth, “Die Spaltung des Konventes der
Mönche von St. Ulrich in Augsburg im Jahre 1537 und deren Folgen,” Zeitschrift des Historischen
Vereins für Schwaben und Neuburg 30 (1903): 5.
24
For more on Gereon Sailer, see Friedrich Roth, “Aus dem Briefwechsel Gereon Sailers mit den
Augsburger Bürgermeistern Georg Herwart und Simprecht Hoser (April bis Juni 1544),” Archiv für
Reformationsgeschichte 1 (1903/1904): 101–71.
25
Geroen Sailer to Philip of Hesse, 26 December 1543, printed in Max Lenz, ed., Briefwechsel
Landgraf Philipp’s des Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer (Osnabrück: Zeller, 1965), 3:339–40,
quote at 340. See also Liebhart, Reichsabtei Sankt Ulrich, 169; Roth, “Spaltung,” 5.
564 CHURCH HISTORY
of Four that comprised Haunstetten’s local political leadership.26 This privilege

gave the monks substantial influence over Haunstetten’s internal political
organization, a fact that may help explain the villagers’ willingness to pledge
fealty to a new lord. Switching loyalties to Gabold gave the Haunstetter
control over the appointment of all four councilors, placing greater
autonomy in the hands of the commune. It also allowed the villagers to
pursue obedience to a different religious authority, which carried the
potential for a simultaneous reformation of the community’s religious and
economic situation.
Although St. Ulrich’s abbot permitted the Haunstetter to appoint two of the
four Vierer, the villagers had little opportunity to speak for themselves in
political affairs. They possessed no right to correspond directly with foreign
authorities, and all communication with Augsburg, Ferdinand, and other
polities occurred through St. Ulrich’s chancellery. By pledging fealty to
Gabold, the Vierer became responsible for its own correspondence with
outside powers.27 This transfer of loyalties enabled the villagers to act in
ways previously closed to them, making them active participants in the
controversy surrounding religious practice in their village. Their responses to
the parties involved—the exiled monks at Unterwittelsbach and Ferdinand
on one side, Gabold and Augsburg’s council on the other—reveal the types
of political strategies employed by villagers to justify changes in religio-
political orientation. Caught between two opposing powers that claimed
lordship over the village, the Haunstetter sought to exploit the situation in
order to recast their economic, political, and religious circumstances in the
most favorable way possible.
In addition to the potential religio-political advantages of switching loyalties
to Gabold, there appear to have been long standing economic tensions between
the monks and villagers that shaped their desire to escape St. Ulrich’s control.
While the monastery had exercised jurisdiction over Haunstetten for centuries,
the beginning of the sixteenth century brought a new dynamic, as the village
underwent a demographic transformation from a purely agrarian base to a
mixed population of farmers and small artisans. This development created an
increased level of economic disparity in Haunstetten, which may have been
one factor that led some of the villagers to join the rebel forces during the
Peasants’ War. While the rebellious peasants were eventually subdued, the
war soured relations between St. Ulrich and the Haunstetter, many of whom
26
Liebhart, Reichsabtei Sankt Ulrich, 175. Such arrangements were fairly common in Upper
Swabia. The abbot of the imperial abbey of Ottobeuren, for example, held the right to appoint
all four members of the Vierer in most villages under his jurisdiction. Govind P. Sreenivasan,
The Peasants of Ottobeuren, 1487–1726 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 44–45.
27
Liebhart, Reichsabtei Sankt Ulrich, 176.
continued to resent the monastery’s economic demands.28 During the 1530s,
this disgruntlement manifested itself in the Haunstetter’s refusal to pay their
yearly tithe money.29 In 1539, St. Ulrich’s abbot claimed the Haunstetter
“have been averse to paying for many years” and “owe as much as one
thousand Gulden in missed tithes and outstanding loans.” Avoidance of
payment had therefore been going on for some time before the monks’ exile
in Bavaria, predating the introduction of the Reformation in Augsburg.
Indeed, according to the abbot the villagers “continue to owe unpaid taxes
and tithes dating back to 1536 through the time of our departure.”30
In this light, the villagers’ willingness to switch loyalties to Gabold and by
extension Augsburg represented the culmination of ongoing reluctance to
render payment to St. Ulrich. The Haunstetter’s actions fit the category of tithe
disputing described by C. Scott Dixon in his analysis of rural reform in
Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach. Building on the work of James Scott, Dixon
argues that refusal to pay taxes or tithes represented “resistance without
protest,” a strategy “employed by the peasantry . . . to secure the utmost
advantage from a limited reservoir of possibilities.” This form of “native
pragmatism” appears throughout the dispute over Haunstetten31 and is key for
understanding the Haunstetter’s actions in the early stages of the conflict. The
villagers were already resisting St. Ulrich’s authority prior to Augsburg’s
intrusion, and their reorientation toward the imperial city provided a sudden and
unexpected way of freeing themselves from the monks. At least initially, the
villagers were more willing to deal with Augsburg than with the exiled clerics
who traditionally demanded Haunstetten’s loyalty.
The long-term deterioration of relations between Haunstetten and St. Ulrich
provides the necessary context for understanding the villagers’ decisions in
1538–1539. While the Haunstetter did not initiate the monks’ exile or the
establishment of a new religio-political authority in the village, their oath of
fealty to Gabold legitimized their non-payment to Unterwittelsbach. This
switching of loyalties also possessed a decidedly religious element. The
village’s old lords were clergy of the Catholic Church, while its new lord
actively supported evangelical reform and had abandoned vows of monastic
celibacy. Indeed, both Augsburg’s council and the exiled monks were aware
of the implications the transfer of Haunstetten’s fealty had for the village’s
28
Liebhart, Reichsabtei Sankt Ulrich, 165, 175–76. For similar dynamics in other rural parts of
Upper Swabia, see Sreenivasan, Peasants of Ottobeuren, 27–50.
29
Franziska Conrad has identified similar tendencies in Alsace after the Peasants’ War, where
several villages expressed frustration with ecclesiastical overlords by refusing to pay their tithe.
Conrad, Reformation, 166.
30
“lannge jar ubel bezalt”; “biss in ain taussent guldin hinderstelliger verfallener zinse/ unnd
gelihen gelts/ noch schuldig sein”; “des 36 jars biss uff die zeit unnsers ausszugs/ an iren gulten
unnd zinsein/ noch unbezalt ussstendig gewest.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 30r.
31
Dixon, Reformation and Rural Society, 96–97, quotes at 96.
566 CHURCH HISTORY
Fig. 1. Depiction of two rebellious peasants during the Peasants’ War. Hans Sebald Beham,
Standard Bearer and Drumer, 1544, engraving.
religious orientation. According to St. Ulrich’s chancellor Mang Nusser, shortly

after the Haunstetter swore obedience to Gabold, “the Haunstetten priest Liedel
Kamrer . . . volunteered to take a wife, to halt celebration of the Mass, and to
accept many more things that are very pleasing to the Augsburger.”32 An
essential part of Haunstetten’s switch in political loyalties, therefore,
“Liedel Kamrer . . . pfarrer zu Haunstetten . . . der hat sich erpotten ein weib zu nemmen/ die
32
mess zu verlassen und ander ding noch vil mer anzunemmen das denen von Augspurg wolgefellig.”
StA A, KA 208, fol. 14.
involved a change in the village’s religious affiliation. By renouncing
St. Ulrich, the villagers not only denied the abbey’s political dominion in
Haunstetten. They also rejected the monks’ spiritual authority through
acceptance of the Reformation.
For their part, St. Ulrich’s monks viewed the transfer of Haunstetten’s tithes
as a religious as well as a political and financial matter. Gabold’s actions
“violate the imperial peace as well as godly and human statutes. They are a
breach of the recesses promulgated by the general imperial estates at
numerous imperial diets. Even those who name themselves Protestants have
accepted these recesses.”33 Gabold’s conduct was illegal on political and
religious grounds, and the monks feared setting a dangerous precedent:
“Other of our subjects who occupy the countryside around Haunstetten may
learn through these actions how easily they can pledge themselves to
apostate monks and thereby engage in apostasy themselves.”34 St. Ulrich’s
abbot portrayed the events in Haunstetten as something greater than a loss of
income for the monastery. On a larger scale, Gabold’s actions represented an
attack on the traditional nature of rural religious practice and political
authority that imperiled the souls of all peasants in the region.
For economic, political, and religious reasons, therefore, the exiled monks at
Unterwittelsbach were intent on reestablishing their authority in Haunstetten.
After an initial complaint went unanswered, on October 8, 1538, the
monastery sent a second letter to the villagers condemning their disloyalty.
Johannes VII hoped the Haunstetter “would consider your honor and persist
in the duties you have sworn to us.” The villagers should come to
Unterwittelsbach and pay “the yearly tithe. Moreover, you should offer our
apostate, disloyal brother absolutely no reverence and pay him not one
Heller.”35 To strengthen these demands, the abbot cautioned the villagers
about the consequences of continued disobedience. If the Haunstetter
“abandon us without any cause, in violation of your honor and duty, we will
be forced to take action against your possessions and goods. We offer you
this as a fatherly warning to remain loyal.”36
33
“nit allain dem Lanndfriden/ auch gottlichen unnd menschlichen sazung sonder auch den
abschiden durch . . . gemainer reichsstende/ unnd auch den jheingen/ so sych die protestierenden
nennen/ auff ettlichen reichstagen . . . bewilligt angenomen . . . zugegen ist.” StA A, KA 208,
fol. 1r–1v.
34
“anndere unnsere hindersassen/ so der Ende umb Haunstetten gelegen/ derohalben gross
uffmercken haben/ sych leichtlich uffs abtrinigen ordensman . . . zu sollichem abfall begeben
mochten.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 32r.
35
“ir werdet ewer ere pedenncken unnd . . . in der pflicht so ir unns gethan verharren”; “die
jerlichen zinss/ und furtter unnserem abtrunnigen/ ungehorsamen prueder gar khain gehor geben/
auch ainichen heller raychen wellet.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 18r.
36
“one alle ursach wider ewr ere unnd pflicht von unns abweychen/ wurden wir gedrungen . . .
gegen ewren leyben/ unnd guettern zuhanndlen . . . wellen euch auch hiemit vetterlich gewarnet
haben.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 18v.
568 CHURCH HISTORY
Both Gabold and the Haunstetter stayed defiant. In response to the

monastery’s threats, the ex-monk and Haunstetten’s Vierer met in Augsburg
on October 15 with the imperial notary Silvester Raid. Gabold explained he
had remained in Augsburg and taken the citizenship oath “out of the
conviction of my conscience and a true zeal for the Christian religion.”37
Such an act was possible thanks to the city council’s decision “to alter and
eliminate in its parish churches various inappropriate, godless abuses
concerning the papal Mass and other ceremonies that strongly contradict the
word of God.”38 Since his fellow monks had “impiously, obstinately, and
wantonly” fled the city and abandoned their duties, Gabold had decided, “to
collect the yearly rent, taxes, and tithes due St. Ulrich.”39 He had not
overstepped his authority, but was simply acting in his capacity as caretaker
of the monastic complex.
The Vierer voiced support for Gabold. The villagers had received a “wanton
and impudent letter” ( frvenliche und vermessen geschefftbrieff ) from
Unterwittelsbach ordering them “from this point forward to offer Joachim
Gabold no obedience and to pay him not one Heller.”40 Instead, the Vierer
avowed, “such taxes and tithes have always, in every way, as far as memory
records, been paid to St. Ulrich’s complex in Augsburg. Haunstetten belongs
with rights of jurisdiction to [the complex] in Augsburg alone.”41 From the
perspective of Haunstetten’s villagers, the traditional location of their
payment superseded the new demands of the exiled monks. The Haunstetter
owed obedience not to the individual members of the cloister but to the
actual physical location of the monastery’s buildings in Augsburg. By
leaving their complex for exile in Bavaria, St. Ulrich’s monks had alienated
themselves from their rural subjects. Consequently, the Haunstetter would
rather pay “Gabold and the cloister St. Ulrich in Augsburg than a strange,
foreign lord.”42
The Vierer’s October 15 pronouncement emphasized two themes that
dominated the villagers’ perceptions throughout the conflict: the nature of
37
“auss betrangnus meiner gewissen und rechten eifer zur cristenlichen religion.” StA A, KA
208, fol. 8r.
38
“etliche ungeschickte gotlose mispreuch die babstisse mess und cerimonien belangent die zum
thaill dem gotlichn wort stracks entgegen . . . inn den pfarrkirchn irer statt zu endern und abzuthun,”
StA A, KA 208, fol. 7v–8r.
39
“auss frevenlichen truzlichn und mutwilligen bewegnussen,”; “die jarliche rendt gilt und zinss
zu obbemelten stifftung zu sanct Ulrich geherig einzunemen.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 8v.
40
“und die jarlichn zinss bezalen und wir Joichim Gabolt furan kainen gehorsam laistn oder
ainichn haller gebn oder raichen solln.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 9r.
41
“solche gildt und zinss in und allwegen inn und ob menschn gedechtung gen Augspurg gen
sannt Ulrich geraicht worden und Haunstetten allain gen Augspurg mit aber und aller
gerichtsparkait geherig ist.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 9v.
42
“mir [Gabold] und dem Closter sannt Ulrichs zu Augspurg und nit ainer ungewonlichn
frembdn herrschafft gewertig zusein.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 8v.
Fig. 2. Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and Margrave of Burgau, at the time of his election as
German King. Barthel Beham, 1531, engraving.
lordship and the importance of traditional rights. Despite their earlier actions,
the Haunstetter did not dispute their duty to render tithe payments. Rather,
they contested the jurisdiction of the exiled monks based on their physical
location. This argument derived from the Vierer’s belief in the power of
traditional rights and privileges. The village had always delivered payment to
the monastic complex in Augsburg. According to established custom, paying
tithes to Gabold was the appropriate course of action, since he occupied
the proper seat of lordship for the village. Transferring payments to
Unterwittelsbach would have violated the traditional arrangements that
bound the community and its ruler together, an unjust innovation that
threatened to alter the legal status of the villagers for the worse. It would not
have resulted in a diminution of taxes, as their tithe dispute sought, but
would have added an additional economic burden that lacked historical
570 CHURCH HISTORY
precedent. In order to protect their traditional rights, therefore, the Haunstetter

cleaved to their new religio-political authority in Augsburg.
The Haunstetter’s continued refusal to render tithes led St. Ulrich’s abbot to
seek assistance from King Ferdinand, who issued a mandate to the villagers on
December 7, 1538. The king lamented that Haunstetten “has fallen away from
its true and orderly authority” by pledging fealty to a monk “who has
abandoned his religion.” He ordered the villagers “to offer the abbot all
proper and dutiful obedience as the one to whom you are bound by vows
and oaths of duty. If this does not happen, and you persist in your
disobedience, we will be forced to levy penalties against you.”43 This royal
ultimatum presented the Haunstetter with an unusual decision. Should they
continue paying their tithes to Gabold, as they claimed their traditional rights
demanded, but risk punishment by the king? Alternatively, should they
transfer their payments to the Unterwittelsbach monks, an innovation the
villagers had already opposed for over a year? On January 22, 1539, the
Vierer wrote St. Ulrich’s abbot “as poor subjects and peasants who greatly
desire to do the right thing and avoid injustice.” They informed him “we are
currently in the process of composing our written response to the king,
which we will send out soon. We are of the humble opinion the king will be
pleased with our response.”44
In February, the Vierer answered Ferdinand. The village leaders had “sworn
an oath of duty both to the abbot and the cloister St. Ulrich in Augsburg to pay
our rent, taxes, and tithes in a subject and obedient manner. According to old
customs, this payment takes place in Augsburg.” This arrangement worked
well until “about two years ago,” when the abbot and some of his monks,
“for reasons unknown to us, left St. Ulrich and settled in Unterwittelsbach.”
At the time, the abbot’s chancellor ordered the Haunstetter “to pay tithes and
taxes to the cloister complex in Augsburg according to traditional practice,
which we have loyally and willingly done.”45 Now that Gabold was the
43
“von eurer ordentlichen obrigkeitt . . . abfellig zeworden”; “der von seiner Religion
abgetretten”; “Abbte Johannsen/ als dem ir mit Glubden unnd aiden verpflicht seit/ alle billiche
unnd schuldige gehorsam laisstet . . . wo solhes nit beschehen/ unnd ir hieruber in eur
ungehorsame verharren/ so wurden wir verursacht gegen euch mit straff zehanndlen unnd
zuverfarn.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 23.
44
“als arm unnderthan unnd paurssleut die gern recht thun unnd unrecht lassenn.”; “yetz inn
ubung steen/ der ro ko mt . . . unnser . . . anntwurt inn schrifftenn zum fürderlichsten zuthun/
unnd sind unnderthenigsyet zuversicht/ dr ko mt werd . . . daran zufriden sein.” StA A, KA 208,
fol. 26.
45
“obgedachten herrn abbt dessgleichen auch nit mynder dem closster sanndt Ulrichs zu
Augspurg geschworn und verpflicht unnderthenig unnd gehorsamb . . . inen ire rennt gult unnd
zinns wir vor allter herkomen gen Augspurg zuraichen.”; “nit wissn wir aus was ursachen/ das
closster sanndt Ulrichs verlassen unnd sich gen Wittelspach gethan.”; “zinns unnd gullt wie vor
alter beschehen gen Augspurg in das Closter zuraichen/ demselben wir auch trewlich unnd
willig gelebt.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 19r–19v.
abbey’s sole inhabitant, the abbot demanded “we should pay our tithes and
taxes in another place other than the cloister. Such an arrangement would not
only be a breach of our duties. It would violate our rights and privileges.”
The current “schism and conflict in our lordship pains our hearts,”46 but “the
abbot and his convent have sworn to permit us our old customs, rights, and
traditions and not to burden us with any additional demands.”47 In order “to
fulfill our sworn oath to St. Ulrich,” the Haunstetter proclaimed they would
continue to pay “our rent and taxes to the St. Ulrich cloister complex. Our
forefathers did the same many years ago when another abbot fled the
monastery and wished to receive payment from the villagers.”48
The Vierer’s letter to Ferdinand displays the same logic as its October 15
pronouncement. As before, the villagers contested not their duty to render
tithes but the demand that they make payments to Unterwittelsbach. For the
villagers, transferring the site of tithing from Augsburg to another location
violated their long-standing privileges, which the monks had explicitly
sworn to uphold. Infringing upon traditional rights represented a breach of
the lord–subject relationship as well as a contradiction of historical
precedent. This emphasis on preserving “old customs and traditions” formed
the core of the Vierer’s legal justification. In a world where lordship and
customary privileges bound communities together, the Vierer used the tithe
dispute to contest the very nature of St. Ulrich’s dominion in the village.
This strategy marked a continuation of their previous resistance to the
monastery that predated their allegiance to Gabold. While the villagers did
not initiate their reorientation away from the exiled monks, they sought to
exploit the conflict brought on by the Reformation to minimize St. Ulrich’s
authority in Haunstetten.
In their response to Ferdinand, the Haunstetter purposefully avoided mention
of religious developments in Augsburg and the surrounding countryside. The
villagers remained silent regarding their priest’s decision to marry and
the elimination of the Latin Mass. They even claimed to be unaware of why
the monks departed Augsburg. The Haunstetter could hardly have been
ignorant of the monks’ reasons for fleeing the city, however. After leaving
46
“das wir unnser zins und gult . . . an anndere ort dan in das closster geraicht/ das were nit allain
unnsern pflichten zuwider/ sonnder auch unnsern . . . rechten unnd gerechtigkhaiten abbruchhig.”;
“in diser unnser herrschaft spaltung unnd widerwertigkait/ die unns von herzen laidt.” StA A, KA
208, fol. 21r–21v.
47
“prelaten unnd convent vertrosst/ das wir bei unnserm allten herkomen rechten und gepreuchen
beleiben/ unnd gar nichts annders noch weitters beschwert werden sollten.” StA A, KA 208, fol.
19v.
48
“unnsern zum Gotzhauss sanndt Ulrich gethanen aiden . . . nachvolgen und geleben”; “unnser
rennt unnd gullt . . . in Sandt Ulrichsclosster/ wie dann unnser voreltern vor vill jaren/ alls ain
annder abbt aus dem closster enttrunnen und die gult von ine haben wellen/ auch gethan.” StA
A, KA 208, fol. 21v–22r.
572 CHURCH HISTORY
Augsburg in 1537, Abbot Johannes VII “went to the village Haunstetten and
stayed there for many days. He spoke to several people and ordered them
not to stray from him or his convent.”49 The Haunstetter knew the
motivations for the monks’ departure, and they were aware of the larger
religious context surrounding their oath of obedience to Gabold. By avoiding
mention of the religious question, the villagers offered tacit approval of the
changes introduced in their church. If they had found the expansion of
religious reform from the city into the countryside heretical or oppressive,
they could have petitioned Ferdinand to restore their rightful religio-political
lords. Instead, the Vierer self-consciously sidestepped the issue, justifying
their actions by accusing St. Ulrich of dereliction in its lordship.
Simon Goll, St. Ulrich’s new abbot, sharply rebuked the Vierer’s
arguments.50 He dismissed Haunstetten’s claim that “it owes allegiance only
to the cloister complex and its walls, since my convent and I are the
cloister.”51 The abbot asked Ferdinand “to carry out your mandate to return
our disobedient subjects to obedience. This will also ensure that we continue
to collect tithes from our other renters and subjects.”52 The king obliged,
issuing a second decree on May 24, 1539. This time Ferdinand threatened a
fine of “10 gold marks” if the Haunstetter did not pledge renewed obedience
to their “rightful and orderly prelate.”53 To add urgency to his demands,
Ferdinand commanded the royal notary Martin Hochenrainer to visit
Haunstetten and read the decree aloud. Hochenrainer and six witnesses
arrived in Haunstetten on June 15. The notary assembled the villagers in the
central square, but before he could finish reciting the decree, Gabold’s agent
in the village interrupted and mocked Hochenrainer. He ordered the
Haunstetter “not to obey or accept any such royal mandate.” The villagers
agreed, explaining to Hochenrainer that they “do not wish to disdain the
mandate, but neither do they wish to obey or accept it. They say they
already have a lord in St. Ulrich in Augsburg to whom they wish to be
obedient.” After repeated attempts to sway the villagers, Hochenrainer and
his witnesses left Haunstetten in dismay. The frustrated notary informed
Ferdinand that the Haunstetter “have indeed disdained your majesty’s
49
“gan Haunstetten/ in das dorff vertrewlich gezogen/ vill tag dasselbst beliben/ unnd ettlich
derselben aigner person angesprochen/ von ime/ unnd seiner Convent nit zu weichen.” StA A,
KA 208, fol. 29v.
50
Goll became abbot on March 17, 1539 after the death of Johannes VII. Liebhart, Reichsabtei
Sankt Ulrich, 171.
51
“alls sollten sy dem Closter/ alls dem gemeur verpflicht/ dan ich unnd mein Convent sein das
Closter.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 48r.
52
“auf irer . . . mandat . . . verfarn . . . unnd volziehen/ damit meine ungehorsame zu gehorsam
gepracht/ unnd ich unnd mein convent/ unnserer zinss wie von allen anndern/ meinen zinssleutten
unnd unnderthanen erkhomen mogen.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 49r.
53
StA A, KA 208, fol. 50.
mandate and are in breach of it.”54 The king should deal with them accordingly.
The failure of Hochenrainer’s mission marked an escalation of the conflict.
What began as a local tithe dispute between a rural community and its monastic
overlord quickly evolved into a complex legal battle between royal agents and
urban magistrates. The next move came from Augsburg’s council, which
instructed its jurist Lucas Ulstat to examine Ferdinand’s May 24 mandate.
Ulstat declared the royal decree invalid, contending that it lacked the proper
seal. The king’s demands also violated the recently signed Truce of
Frankfurt, argued Ulstat, which declared “all clerics, even evangelicals,
should be allowed to remain true to their current religious persuasion.”55
Accordingly, Ulstat concluded that Haunstetten should not return to the
exiled monks, for such an action would alter the village’s confessional
orientation, thereby abrogating the treaty’s terms. In stark contrast to the
Haunstetter, therefore, Augsburg’s magistrates employed religion as the
primary justification for opposing Ferdinand and St. Ulrich. They did so in a
way they hoped would give legal weight to the city’s newly acquired
jurisdiction in the village. For Augsburg’s council, the religious and political
stakes at play in Haunstetten were closely intertwined, which made the
expansion of the city’s sphere of authority dependant on the successful
spread of the Reformation. The king countered on September 11 with a third
mandate. Ferdinand ordered the Haunstetter “to pay the abbot within one
month’s time all overdue and unpaid tithes, rent, taxes, and services. From
this point forward you should display proper and dutiful obedience toward
the abbot.” If this did not happen, “we will be forced to proceed against you
immediately according to our previously threatened penalties in order to
correct your disobedience.”56
Ferdinand’s September ultimatum sparked debate within the village about
the wisdom of continued opposition to St. Ulrich.57 At the same time, the
Haunstetter faced growing pressure from neighboring rural communities to
54
“das sy sollich kunigklich mandat nit horen noch annemen sollten”; “sy wollten [das mandat]
nit verachten aber nit horen noch annemen/ dann sy hetten ainen herren zu sant Ulrich zu Augspurg
dem wollten se gehorsam sein”; “das sy sollich ir mt mandat veracht und verschmecht hetten.” StA
A, KA 208, fol. 24.
55
Quoted in Roth, “Spaltung,” 21. The Truce of Frankfurt, signed on April 11, 1539, extended the
1532 Truce of Nuremberg, which suspended reformation suits against the Empire’s Protestant
estates. The Truce of Frankfurt emerged in response to the October 1538 imposition of the
Imperial ban on the city of Minden. Thomas A. Brady, Protestant Politics (Atlantic Highlands,
N.J.: Humanities, 1995), 206–10.
56
“in ainem Monat . . . alle und yede/ bisher verfalne/ und noch unbezalte/ zinss/ rent/ gült und
dienstparkaiten . . . benantem Abbte füranhin/ alle geburende und schuldige gehorsame/ erzaiget
und beweiset”; “das wir gegen denselben/ umb ir ungehorsame/ auch zu einziechung
obbestimpter peen/ unverzogenlich und wie sich gepurt/ procedieren und verfarn lassen werden.”
StA A, KA 208, fol. 15.
57
Liebhart, Reichsabtei Sankt Ulrich, 179–80.
574 CHURCH HISTORY
capitulate to the monks’ demands. In a letter to Augsburg’s council written in

the first half of October 1539,58 the Vierer complained “when we meet our
neighbors and other honorable people we are often ill-received. They address
us as those who abandoned their true lord unreasonably and without need.
They say we will have to answer for this before God.”59 Both the king and
many of their fellow peasants called for the Haunstetter “to display
obedience in all matters to our correct and natural lord the prelate of
St. Ulrich.”60 Accordingly,
we are in no way disposed to continue striving against his majesty’s royal

mandates, which would mean the ruin of our possessions and goods. We
have no intention to burden our conscience and souls further. Above all
else, we wish to follow our conscience, which directs us to God Almighty
and demands that we offer full obedience to our correct and natural
authority. We therefore dissolve our oath of duty to Joachim Gabold.61
Both sides responded swiftly to the Haunstetter’s announcement. On October

11, the village sent a delegation to Gabold informing him of its decision.
Upon their arrival in Augsburg, Gabold “imprisoned the delegates in his
house for approximately two hours.”62 The next day, Gabold petitioned
Augsburg’s council for assistance dealing with “the Haunstetter, who
willingly offered vows of duty to me.”63 He asked “the council to offer
advice and help so the Haunstetter do not fall under the authority of the
abbot and the invalid convent. This is necessary so other authorities do not
establish themselves in the hearts of the Haunstetter, thereby turning the
58
Liebhart dates this letter to the beginning of November (Reichsabtei Sankt Ulrich, 180), but
circumstances suggest an October dating is more accurate. In their correspondence, the villagers
sought to inform Augsburg of their decision to switch loyalties back to St. Ulrich. Such a letter
would have been superfluous in November, when the council was already fully aware of the
villagers’ intentions. It is more likely, therefore, that the peasants composed the missive in
October after deciding on their new course of action.
59
“so wir aber zu unnsern nachtpauren/ unnd andern erbarn leutten khomen/ werden wir von
inen/ unnd menigclichs ubel angesehen/ und als die jhenigen die unpillich/ und on nott/ von
irem aignen herren gewichen/ unnd dess wir vor gott/ und recht schuldig seyen/ nit wol bedacht
haben/ angeredt.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 42r.
60
“unnserm rechtenn naturlichen herren und prelaten S. Ulrichs gotzhaus mit allen dingen
gehorsame zu sein.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 42v.
61
“dieweil wir nun . . . Ro. Kun. Mandaten . . . mit verderbung unsser leib unnd gietten zuwider
streben kains wegs gelegen/ auch unnser seele unnd gewissen weytter zubeschweren gar nit
vermaint/ sonnder wellen wir zuvorderst got dem almechtigen/ dahin unns unnser gewissen
weyst/ unnd unser rechte naturlichen oberkhait . . . alle gehorsame laysten/ und Joachim
Gabolten unser . . . pflicht uffsagen.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 42v–43r.
62
“hat er die gesantten all/ in dem haus ungeferlich/ biss in zwo stundt verspert/ und vencklichen
erhalten.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 63r.
63
“die von Haunstetten in glubd und pflicht genomen (dartzu sie sich selbs willigclich angepotten
und ergeben).” Quoted in Roth, “Spaltung,” 22.
rightful master into a servant.”64 Augsburg’s council agreed, reacting to the
Haunstetter’s revocation of loyalty with force and intimidation. On October
16, “three men [from Haunstetten] who were in Augsburg on business were
all taken prisoner by the Augsburger and placed in irons.” These actions
worried the monks at Unterwittelsbach, “since if the Augsburger act against
the poor people in such a deplorable manner, there arises the concern that,
out of fear, the people may return to their apostasy.”65 To prevent this,
Abbot Simon wrote directly to the Vierer. He assured the Haunstetter “if you
receive molestation from the apostate monk or anyone else who wishes to
help or assist him in this matter, we stand ready to offer you solace, help,
and support. This is our fatherly pledge to you, our obedient and beloved
subjects.”66
Despite the punitive measures employed by Augsburg and Gabold, the tide was
turning. The villagers’ decision to renounce Gabold convinced St. Ulrich’s abbot
that Haunstetten was once again within his grasp. Abbot Simon therefore issued
renewed appeals for aid to Ferdinand while striking a more conciliatory tone
toward the Haunstetter. By offering fatherly assistance to his “obedient and
beloved subjects,” the abbot sought to contrast for the villagers the strong-arm
tactics of Augsburg with the promised benevolence of their traditional lord,
St. Ulrich. This shift in rhetoric shows the speed with which the tone of
dialogue between subject and lord could change based on larger religio-political
circumstances. Against the opposition of Ferdinand, St. Ulrich, and now the
villagers, Augsburg could not hold out for long. In late November, Ferdinand
made good on his previous threats. On orders from the king, “this past Sunday
November 23, the knight Wolf Dietrich von Knöringen entered the village with
thirty riders. He forced the peasants, who were assembled together in church at
the time, to take an oath affirming they would pay their taxes from this point
forward to the exiled monks in Unterwittelsbach.”67 Augsburg’s council
64
“dass sie mir wollen rätig und hülflich erscheinen, damit die von Haunstetten . . . nit wider
undter den abbt und das nichtig convent gedrungen . . . damit auch ander herrschaft den fuess nit
gar gen Haunstetten und e. ft. . . . ins hertz setzen und den wirt zue ainem gast machen.” Quoted
in Roth, “Spaltung,” 23.
65
“den 16. seind drew erbar man irer geschafft halber zu Augspurg gewest/ die dan all drew durch
die von Augspurg/ fencklichen angenomen/ und in die eysen gelegt worden.”; “diewyll dan die von
Augspurg gegen und wider die armen lewt . . . also verschrockenlichen handlen/ ist zubesorgen/ sy
werden uss forcht/ widerumb zum abfall gepracht.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 63r–63v.
66
“ob ir . . . von dem abtrinningen munch/ oder andern/ so ime hierin hath/ hilff/ unnd beylegen
thun mochten . . . wurden angelanngt/ so wollend dess ewrn hochsten trost/ hillff und beystandt/
sein lassen . . . wolt ich euch als gehorsamen/ unnd erliebenden/ hie mit vatterlichen
zuerkhennen geben.” StA A, KA 208, fol. 61r–61v.
67
“jetzt jungst verschinen sontags (23. November) ernannter herr Wolff Dietrich von Knöringen . . .
mit 30 pferden gen Haunstetten eingefallen ist/ unnd die baurn so eben inn der kirchen versamblet
gewesen/ dahin gemuessigt/ das sie schworen muessen/ den entrunnen munichen zu Wittelspach
hinfuro ire guldt zu geben.” StadtA A, Literaliensammlung (LitS), November 27, 1539.
576 CHURCH HISTORY
dutifully protested this military action, initiating a protracted legal controversy

over possession of the ius reformandi in the village that lasted for two years. As
of November 23, 1539, however, Haunstetten returned to its “rightful and
orderly prelate.” The village once again became a possession of the exiled
monks, who restored Catholic religious practice in Haunstetten.
Throughout the duration of the dispute, the Haunstetter never employed
religious reform as justification for their actions. Instead, the villagers based
their resistance on a specific interpretation of their traditional “rights,
privileges, and customs.” In this respect, their actions fit C. Scott Dixon’s
observation that “a tithe dispute was a local concern; it had specific legal
and temporal reference, and nothing to do with God’s Word.”68 At the same
time, however, the events in Haunstetten possessed a decidedly religious
overtone, which temporarily opened up new political and economic
opportunities for the villagers. The transfer of the village’s loyalty from the
exiled monks to Gabold entailed a shifting of Haunstetten’s confessional
allegiance. This development turned the tithe dispute into a conflict between
different views of Christianity. St. Ulrich ordered the Haunstetter to renounce
both their “apostasy” and “the apostate monk,” while Augsburg’s council
defended the villagers’ actions by appealing to imperial treaties protecting
religious reform. By avoiding the dispute’s religious dimensions, the
villagers may have sought to simplify the debate by focusing on “legal and
temporal” matters where they felt they had the upper hand. In some respects,
the tithe controversy over Haunstetten represented a local affair that centered
on rights of dominion and tradition. It also involved competing religious
interests that were inseparable from the larger political and economic issues
surrounding the village.
While engaged in the dispute, the Haunstetter displayed the ability to
formulate complex legal arguments and justifications, as well as the
willingness to pursue new religious, political, and economic strategies they
believed in their self-interest. By cooperating with Gabold and Augsburg, the
Haunstetter were able to escalate their preexisting tithe dispute with
St. Ulrich while opening the village to the evangelical faith. Many of the
villagers appear to have been receptive to these new arrangements. Unlike
their relationship with the old monastic leadership, the Haunstetter even paid
their tithe to Gabold.69 In the end, much as had happened during the
Peasants’ War, military force returned the villagers to St. Ulrich’s fold.
Tellingly, von Knöringen’s raid occurred on a Sunday with the Haunstetter
assembled in church. The timing ensured a majority of people were present
in one place at one time to facilitate the new oath of obedience. It also meant
68
Dixon, Reformation and Rural Society, 96.
69
Roth, “Spaltung,” 25.
a forceful termination of the new religious situation that had existed in the
village since July 1538. Symbolically, von Knöringen’s disruption of
evangelical church services made a powerful statement about the political
and religious supremacy of St. Ulrich. In the immediate circumstances
surrounding Haunstetten’s return to the Catholic Church, the religious
devotion of the local villagers intertwined with the ongoing conflict of
opposing Christian confessions within the empire as a whole.
II. MINDELALTHEIM AND “THE FOOD OF SOULS”

Five years after the failure of its policy in Haunstetten, Augsburg’s council tried
again to reform a nearby village under the jurisdiction of another territorial lord.
Control of the council had shifted in the intervening period to a different
leadership group,70 which pursued a more aggressive strategy of religio-
political expansion than Rehlinger and his associates had. A central aspect of
their external policy involved the extension of Augsburg-style reform to the
countryside, efforts that took on increasing urgency as civil war within the
empire drew nearer. After securing pledges of support from its ally Ulm, in
October 1544 Augsburg’s council installed an evangelical preacher named
Hans Hess in the vacant parish of Mindelaltheim, a hamlet in the Habsburg
Margraviate of Burgau. Low justice, the parish’s ius patronatus, and its
tithes belonged to the Augsburg Dominican convent St. Katharina, which
Augsburg’s council had taken under its full protection in 1537. King
Ferdinand, in his role as margrave, controlled high justice in the village. As
he had done in Haunstetten, the king opposed Augsburg’s actions, arguing
his ownership of high justice allowed him to determine the religious
orientation of subjects in his principalities. After months of legal wrangling,
Ferdinand’s argument won the day. Augsburg’s council ultimately removed
Hess in June 1545, less than one year after installing him in the rural parish.
Similar to events in Haunstetten, Augsburg’s second major attempt at rural
reform became “a matter that could make us look foolish.”71
Despite the similar outcomes, the circumstances surrounding Augsburg’s pursuit
of religious reform in Haunstetten and Mindelaltheim were quite different. The
Mindelaltheim affair did not involve a tithe dispute. The legal debate focused
solely on Augsburg’s claim to the ius reformandi in a village where Ferdinand
exercised territorial lordship. Moreover, Augsburg’s installation of a preacher in
Mindelaltheim occurred at the direct request of the villagers, who petitioned the
imperial city for a pastor in summer 1544, over two years after the village’s last
70
Katharina Sieh-Burens, Oligarchie, Konfession und Politik im 16. Jahrhundert (Munich:
Vögel, 1986), 156–69.
71
StadtA A, LitS, July 21, 1545.
578 CHURCH HISTORY
Catholic priest had died.72 During that time, Mindelaltheim had been “left without
any church service, pastor, or proclamation of the word of God.73 Not only are the
imprudent youth left without any explanation of the articles of the holy Christian
faith, but general morals and fear of God are also less nurtured.”74 The villagers
turned to Augsburg as their “dear authority,” exhorting the council “not to leave
us, a poor, subject community, without your fatherly care.”75 A preacher was
needed soon, for
the longer we wait, the greater the danger and disadvantage to us becomes.
Since no one besides your honor the council will accept our petition, we
humbly beseech you to act as our fathers, to whom we are devoted with
our love and service, and to give us an instructor in holy teachings and the
word of God. . . . This person should deliver and explain to us the food of
souls, for one does not live by bread alone, but draws life from the Word
that issues forth from the Lord’s mouth.76 In this manner, we wish to
behave as pious parishioners and to serve you in any way possible.77
72
The letter bears no date. The Findbuch in the StadtA A dates the letter to 1542, while 1545 has
been written on the document in modern handwriting. Mindelaltheim’s petition, however, must
have been sent during the summer of 1544. The villagers state they have been without a cleric
“nun biss inn das dritt jar.” This corresponds with the timeframe mentioned by Ulm’s council in
a letter to Augsburg written on August 15, 1544: “der pfarr Minderallthaim . . . nun mer inn das
dritt jar one alle fürsehung des wort gottes/ unnd der hailligenn sacrament ledig stee.” StadtA A,
LitS, August 15, 1544. 1542 would have been too early for the timeline described in these two
letters, while 1545 makes little sense, since Hess was already installed in the village in October
1544. Accordingly, the letter appears to have been sent sometime during the summer months of
1544, probably prior to August 15. For more on the legal implications of the controversy over
Mindelaltheim, see Christopher W. Close, “The Mindelaltheim Affair: High Justice, Ius
Reformandi, and the Rural Reformation in Eastern Swabia (1542–1546),” Sixteenth Century
Journal 38, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 371–92.
73
Such situations were not uncommon. From 1540 to 1543, the village of Binzwangen in
Franconia was unoccupied by a cleric while the local margrave and the bishop of Eichstätt
debated control of the ius reformandi. During this interim, the villagers attended Mass and
received Catholic sacraments in neighboring communities. Dixon, Reformation and Rural
Society, 69.
74
“on allen kirchendiennst pfarren unnd verkunndigung dess wortt gottis gelassen seien/ dadurch
nit allain die unverstenndig jugennd/ unbericht der articul/ hailigs christlichs glaubens pleibt/
sonnder auch destweniger zucht/ unnd gottis forcht gepflannzt wurt” StadtA A, LitS Nachträge
1545, undated. All documents relating to Mindelaltheim stored in the StadtA A, LitS Nachträge
can found in the box entitled “Nachtrag 1545” bound together in a folder entitled “Acta
Mindelaltheim 1542–1545.”
75
“wie wir ain armen unnderthenige gemaind . . . eur F E W wurden unns mit vatterlichen
fursehung nit gelassen.” StadtA A, LitS Nachträge 1545, undated.
76
This statement alludes to Matt. 4:4 and Deut. 8:3.
77
“dieweil sich dann die zeit so gar lanng vorweilen/ unnd verziehen/ auch die farlichait/ unnd ye
lennger je mehr zu nachtail raichen/ unnd sich sunnst ausser E F E W unnser niemannd annemmen
will/ so konnen wir nit umbgeen/ eur F E W auffs unnderthenigst zuersuchen/ hie mit
diemuettigclichen bittende/ die wollen alls vatter/ den wir mit unnsern leiben/ unnd diennsten
verpflicht/ an unns unnd unnser armen gemain thun/ unnd unns ainen vorgeer/ inn der leere und
wort gottis . . . der unns die speiss der seelen/ weil der mennsch nit allain vom prot/ sonnder
vom wort/ das vom munnd dess herren ausgeet/ sein leben hatt/ mittailen/ unnd ordennlich
This petition, especially the peasants’ desire for a cleric versed “in holy
teachings and the word of God” who could bring “the food of souls,” echoed
closely the injunction Augsburg’s preachers had offered to their council five
years earlier. The similarity of this rhetoric could reveal a desire for closer
contact with evangelical ideas, but it could also indicate a deliberate strategy
on the part of the villagers to employ language likely to receive a favorable
response from Augsburg. Intriguingly, the Mindelaltheimer’s letter did not
make any claim to communal control over the local church or pastor. Such
requests had appeared in the pre-Reformation era and were a hallmark of
peasant demands before and during the Peasants’ War.78 The villagers did
assert, however, their right to stipulate which moral and intellectual attributes
their new pastor should possess, a move they justified through a call for
preaching based on scripture. This request for a specific type of preacher,
while distinct from earlier, more radical programs of peasant reform, shows
the ongoing ability of rural inhabitants to seize the initiative in recruiting
preachers for their community.79 Taken together with the rhetoric used in the
letter, it reveals one way in which peasants continued to use reform after the
Peasants’ War to push for change in their local spiritual and political conditions.
This reading is supported by the central metaphor the Mindelaltheimer
employed in their letter, that “one does not live by bread alone.” This
expression referred to the Gospel of Matthew 4:4, wherein Christ rejects the
first of Satan’s three temptations in the desert. Through this appeal to
scripture, the Mindelaltheimer expressed a biblical understanding of their
relationship to Augsburg that emphasized Augsburg’s duty to care for the
villagers’ spiritual health. Dietmar Schiersner has described a similar
dynamic between Augsburg and the inhabitants of Lützelburg, another
village in Burgau where Augsburg’s council possessed the right of patronage.
In 1603, roughly sixty years after the Mindelaltheim affair, the Lützelburger
petitioned Augsburg to fill their vacant preachership. The absence of a cleric
meant the villagers were “without the public proclamation of God’s Word.”
Consequently, they felt “like sheep left without a shepherd.”80 Schiersner reads
this statement as a reference to Matthew 9:35–38, in particular to Christ’s view
vorsteen mag so wellen wir unns/ nach gesunnder leere/ als frummen pfarr volckh zusteet/ unnd
sonnst inn allen zufallen.” StadtA A, LitS Nachträge 1545, undated.
78
Blickle, Communal Reformation.
79
David Mayes has identified similar dynamics among the peasantry of Upper Hesse. Mayes,
Communal Christianity, esp. 38–42.
80
“ohne die offentliche yebung Gottes Worts . . . wie Schaaf ohne ein Hirten verlassen sein
muessen.” Quoted in Dietmar Schiersner, “Die Suche der Schafe nach dem verlornen Hirten,” in
Ländliche Frömmigkeit, ed. Norbert Haag, Sabine Holtz, Wolfgang Zimmermann, Dieter R
Bauer, and Hans-Christoph Rublack (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002), 62.
580 CHURCH HISTORY
of the Israelite crowds as “sheep without a shepherd.” By framing their situation in

these scriptural terms, argues Schiersner, the Lützelburger simultaneously
expressed “an identification with those living around Jesus” and a demand that
“political authority feel sympathy for its ‘people’ and make sure they were sent
a cleric.”81
In their 1544 supplication, the Mindelaltheimer evoked a similar biblical
connection. The villagers stressed that only a preacher sent by their “dear
authority” Augsburg could slacken their hunger for the “food of souls.” They
highlighted this dependence through the idea of fatherliness, a form of address
employed in sixteenth-century correspondence to indicate deference toward
another party, usually one of higher authority.82 The Mindelaltheimer’s appeal
to Augsburg’s “fatherly care” implied religio-political reliance on the council. It
also offered an injunction to urban magistrates to fulfill their responsibility to
care for the villagers’ souls. As holder of the parish’s ius patronatus,
Augsburg’s council had a duty to minister religiously to the villagers. Its failure
to appoint a new cleric had left the peasants lost in a desert of temptation.83
Only Augsburg’s magistrates could remedy the situation by fulfilling their
obligations and supplying the village with preaching based on the gospel. In the
eyes of Mindelaltheim’s peasants, the city council’s rights gave it privilege, but
they also made Augsburg responsible for the community’s spiritual well being.
For this reason, the Mindelaltheimer used their relationship with Augsburg’s
council to press for what they believed was needed improvement in their
community.
Closely connected to Mindelaltheim’s request for a preacher was the
villagers’ desire to preserve moral discipline. This concern resulted directly
from the lack of a cleric, which left the villagers without sure religious
guidance during their proverbial time in the desert. The Mindelaltheimer’s
petition cited this as one of their chief concerns, emphasizing the neglect of
“general morals and fear of God” that resulted from the absence of an
official religious presence. The Mindelaltheimer lamented especially the lack
of religious instruction for the village’s youth, and they stressed that this
81
Schiersner, “Die Suche der Schafe,” 62–63. Biblical translation taken from the New Jerusalem
Bible, Matt. 9:36.
82
Fatherliness was a common trope in subject–lord correspondence, but it could also be used for
strategic purposes in communication between urban magistrates. During the 1540s, for example,
the imperial city Donauwörth sought to curry favor with Augsburg’s council by addressing its
neighbor as its “dear sirs and fathers” on multiple occasions. Close, Negotiated Reformation,
esp. 110–19.
83
The city council decided not to install an evangelical preacher in Mindelaltheim at the 1542
death of the local priest because it feared retribution from Ferdinand and the bishop of
Augsburg. To counteract the opposition of these two Catholic lords, Augsburg’s council tried
repeatedly to gain the official support of the Schmalkaldic League. While it failed to gain the
alliance’s backing, in 1544 the council received a formal letter of support from Ulm that
temporarily assuaged its worries.
erosion of community morals “has given rise to considerable dangers” that
threatened the village’s social fabric.84 By appealing to Augsburg for a
cleric, the villagers sought spiritual care as well as the restoration of proper
discipline, which in their thinking appear to have been intertwined.
Ironically, while uncertainty surrounding the Reformation had led to the
absence of a cleric and the breakdown of morals in the first place, allowing
religious reform into the community now presented an opportunity for the
Mindelaltheimer to reestablish moral order while simultaneously receiving
confirmation of their rights as Augsburg’s subjects. As had the Haunstetter,
the Mindelaltheimer sought to manage the religio-political situation in which
they found themselves in order to serve the community’s best interests.
Augsburg’s council granted the Mindelaltheimer their wish by installing
Hess. Unlike the Haunstetter, the Mindelaltheimer did not play a prominent
role in the ensuing conflict between the city and Ferdinand, although
Augsburg’s council did employ the villagers’ petition as justification for its
actions. The magistrates defended their preacher with the claim that he had
gone to the village “at the urgent request of the poor people, who had been
robbed of all care for their souls.”85 This argument, while it failed to
persuade Ferdinand, points to an important connection between urban reform
centers and nearby villages. The Mindelaltheimer took the initiative in trying
to change their spiritual circumstances, but they could not achieve their goals
without Augsburg’s cooperation. The village relied on Augsburg religiously,
a responsibility the magistrates took seriously. This dependence formed the
cornerstone of relations between the two sides. By petitioning Augsburg for
a preacher, the Mindelaltheimer sought the fulfillment of their rights as the
city’s religious subjects. By supplying a preacher, Augsburg’s council hoped
to extend its sphere of influence while discharging its religious obligations to
peasants under its authority.
This dynamic reflects the notion of Herrschaft described by David Warren
Sabean and C. Scott Dixon for rural communities in Württemberg and
Franconia. According to Dixon, “this notion of obedience, inherent in the
relations between ruler and ruled in early modern Germany . . . was also
fundamental to the parishioners’ reception of the faith. The villagers
demanded the word of God, for . . . it was their right as . . . subjects.”86 This
statement rings true for Mindelaltheim. Augsburg’s council held the village’s
ius patronatus through St. Katharina and therefore controlled the
appointment of clergy. It was natural that the Mindelaltheimer petitioned aid
84
StadtA A, LitS Nachträge 1545, undated.
85
“das er . . . den armen leuten zu gute uff ir hochst anrueffen unnd bitt nach dem sie ob
dritthalben jar aller seelsorg beraubt gewest/ dahin verordnet worden.” StadtA A, LitS
Nachträge, May 26, 1545.
86
Dixon, Reformation and Rural Society, 203–4; Sabean, Power in the Blood.
582 CHURCH HISTORY
from Augsburg, but they also recognized their right to proper spiritual care as
Augsburg’s subjects. In order to meet this need, they wrote their “fathers,”
reminding the magistrates of their duty and urging them to care for the
villagers’ souls. As in Haunstetten, the options available to the villagers
depended on the local political climate and the constellation of legal rights
surrounding the parish. Within these confines, the Mindelaltheimer proved
capable of employing specific religio-political strategies that allowed them to
address perceived problems of moral and spiritual stagnation in their commune.
The general contours of religiosity evident in Mindelaltheim’s letter recall
the facets of communal Christianity sketched by David Mayes. This apparent
similarity could indicate that the relationship between rural Christianity and
official reform present in Upper Hesse during the latter part of the sixteenth
century existed in some places already in the first half of the century.
However, in attempting to draw such parallels, one must be careful about
projecting late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century norms back onto the early
part of the Reformation. The pitfalls of doing so appear in the parallel
language used by the Mindelaltheimer and Augsburg’s preachers, especially
in their central metaphor of the “food of souls.” Rather than suggesting that
clerical authorities “absorbed and appropriated . . . certain concepts that
would sooner be associated with the peasant world,”87 as Mayes argues for
Upper Hesse, the metaphors used by Augsburg’s clerics and Mindelaltheim’s
peasants had a common basis in biblical norms. While each side naturally
applied their use of these metaphors to their own interests, the language
itself derived from sacred idioms based on scripture with which both could
identify. Peasant concepts about religion, therefore, did not always operate in
an autonomous sphere shaped by wholly different concerns than those who
lived in cities. They existed in a reciprocal environment where urban and
rural religious forces influenced and often paralleled each other through a
common grounding in biblical imagery.
III. CONCLUSION
During the late 1530s and 1540s, the inhabitants of Haunstetten and
Mindelaltheim sought to use the Reformation to serve their own local interests.
In Haunstetten, the Reformation accompanied the village’s reorientation toward
Augsburg and the renegade monk Joachim Gabold. Economic disgruntlement
over the village’s tithe dispute with St. Ulrich fused with religious and political
interests to make the local population receptive to this change in lordship. This
dynamic opened new political strategies for the villagers that allowed them
87
Mayes, Communal Christianity, 34.
to ward off a quick return to their former overlord. In correspondence with
Catholic authorities, the Haunstetter self-consciously avoided the religious
question, justifying their actions based on their “traditional rights and
privileges” while remaining silent concerning their “apostasy.” For reasons
outside the villagers’ control, they could not sustain this line of argumentation.
Despite the eventual outcome, however, the Haunstetter helped determine the
nature and course of the conflict. Their responses to Augsburg, Ferdinand, and
St. Ulrich’s abbot reveal their sense of Haunstetten’s place in the larger religio-
political landscape of Upper Swabia, as well as one way in which common folk
in the countryside could justify allegiance to a new religious authority.
In Mindelaltheim, the villagers played a less prominent role than the
Haunstetter in the legal controversy surrounding reform. This does not mean
they were passive actors or indifferent to the religious issues under debate.
On the contrary, by petitioning Augsburg for a new preacher, the
Mindelaltheimer helped to redraw the boundaries of local religious practice.
Their emphasis on the educational and moral standards the new preacher
should meet affirmed the community’s desire to stipulate the character of
their pastor, while the rhetoric of their letter points to an ongoing rural
interest in addressing local spiritual and ethical problems through scriptural
ideals. Indeed, the Mindelaltheimer’s direct appeal to the imperial city
advanced a call for ministry that paralleled the hopes of Augsburg’s
preachers by expressing a hunger for “the food of souls.” Augsburg’s clergy
had been encouraging their council to deliver such nourishment for the better
part of five years. When it finally came to Mindelaltheim, the Reformation
failed not because of lay opposition or apathy, but because of specific rights
of authority in Burgau.
The events in Haunstetten and Mindelaltheim reveal the continued desire of
many Upper Swabian villagers for contact with the Reformation, as well as the
ability of villagers to use reform to achieve their own goals. In the process, the
experience of these villages undercuts the view of the 1530s and 1540s as a
static period marked by rural apathy toward religious reform. The
Reformation’s course in each village depended on multiple contingencies
and evolved out of a process of discourse between local political authority,
the villagers, and external agents such as Ferdinand. Particularly noteworthy
in both instances was the villagers’ use of sophisticated political strategies
aimed at improving their religio-political circumstances. According to Peter
Blickle, the Peasants’ War marked “a distinct and irreversible setback”
for the Reformation in many rural regions of southern Germany.88 In
Haunstetten and Mindelaltheim, however, support for reform ideas and the
attendant reorganization of religious life existed almost two decades after the
88
584 CHURCH HISTORY
end of the Peasants’ War. Neither set of villagers were passive bystanders but
instead sought to manipulate the conditions present in their village while
receiving confirmation of their traditional rights. While the Peasants’ War
represented an important turning point in the history of the rural
Reformation, therefore, by itself the war can explain neither the subsequent
course of rural reform nor the nature of disputes like the one between
Haunstetten and St. Ulrich. Most importantly, even as it may have impaired
attempts to communalize local churches, the Peasants’ War did not mark the
end of villagers using reform for political, economic, or religious gain.
Mindelaltheim’s requests in its letter to Augsburg, as well as the political
maneuvering of the Haunstetten villagers, reveal this ongoing dynamic.
At the same time, the strategies employed by the Haunstetter and
Mindelaltheimer operated within restricted parameters. Repeatedly, the
peasants returned to the idea of Herrschaft. In Blickle’s words, during the
communal Reformation, “submission to the gospel became the stamp of
legitimacy. Lordship as such meant nothing.”89 By the late 1530s, lordship
once again meant something. When viewed from the perspective of the
ensuing decades, the radical relationship of the Peasants’ War to the
Reformation appears as the aberration, not the norm, for how rural
communities encountered and reacted to religious reform in the early
Reformation. Any timeline that overemphasizes the Peasants’ War therefore
runs the risk of missing the fluidity of rural reform in the Reformation’s first
decades, as well as the central place bonds of authority held for rural
inhabitants.90 Authority and lordship sat at the heart of interaction between
peasants and larger political entities, but this relationship was a two-way
street. It could allow villagers, at least for a short time, to manipulate their
religio-political situation to their perceived advantage. Top-down models of
confessionalization often overlook this dynamic. The village political
strategies employed in Upper Swabia, however, reveal the active manner in
which many peasants continued to confront reform years after the tumult of
the Peasants’ War had past.
89
90
In this respect, my findings are similar to Thomas Robisheaux’s, who argues that even during
the Peasants’ War, bonds of authority guided peasant actions in the Hohenlohe region of Franconia.
Robisheaux, Rural Society, 41–67.

One Does Not Live by Bread Alone Rural Reform and Village Political Strategies After The Peasants War

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Church History 79:3 (September 2010), 556–584.

© American Society of Church History, 2010

“One does not live by bread alone”: Rural

Christopher W. Close is a Postdoctoral Lecturer in the Writing Program at Princeton

Peasants and burghers were therefore integrated in an economic, political, and

recognized the Augsburg Confession—the main statement of Wittenberg

In Haunstetten, the individual interests of Rehlinger converged with the broader

of Four that comprised Haunstetten’s local political leadership.26 This privilege

religious orientation. According to St. Ulrich’s chancellor Mang Nusser, shortly

Both Gabold and the Haunstetter stayed defiant. In response to the

precedent. In order to protect their traditional rights, therefore, the Haunstetter

capitulate to the monks’ demands. In a letter to Augsburg’s council written in

we are in no way disposed to continue striving against his majesty’s royal

Both sides responded swiftly to the Haunstetter’s announcement. On October

dutifully protested this military action, initiating a protracted legal controversy

II. MINDELALTHEIM AND “THE FOOD OF SOULS”

of the Israelite crowds as “sheep without a shepherd.” By framing their situation in

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