Popular Astrology and Lutheran Propaganda

in Reformation Germany
C. SCOTT DIXON
The Queen's University of Belfast

Abstract
Lutheran orthodoxy of the later sixteenth century was marked by a sense of pessimism
and anxiety. This was due in part to the apocalypticism at the heart of Luther's
theology, but it was also the heritage of failed expectations. At the century's end,
Lutheran clergymen doubted whether the movement had succeeded in its essential task,
that of winning hearts and minds to the new faith. In the face of this perceived failure,
and inspired by the urgency of their moral crusade, the clergy turned to other media in
order to preach the faith. One such forum was popular astrology. Lutheran clergymen
and almanac writers used almanacs and prognostications to relate the essentials of
Luther's moral message. This `preaching of the stars' projected an image of the natural
world ordered and a€ected by human conduct, and it detailed in signs and wonders a
divine anger which could only be overcome through a turn to improved moral conduct
and intense faith. The logic of Lutheran theology was writ in the stars. Far from the
desacralized universe of popular perception, the Protestant world was infused with its
own forms of sacrality.

I
t was a widely held belief in sixteenth-century Europe that 1588
would be a year of wonder. Some thinkers, religious men in par-
ticular, even thought it might mark the end of man's time on earth.
`Witness that admirable year eighty-eight', wrote the preacher Thomas
Taylor in 1631, `it was a year of strange expectation before it came, and of
admiration, when it was come. Some designed it to be the end of the
world, but were deceived.' Richard Harvey claimed that `the great year of
1588' was `in everie mans mouth'. Francis Bacon wrote on it in his Of
Prophecies; Thomas Dekker referred to its `terrible' promise; Maurice
Ky€ penned verse in its honour; and Dr. Gabriel Harvey breathed a sigh
of relief in his Gorgon (1593) when he wrote `the wonder was no wonder
fell that year' ± quite a claim, considering that the English ¯eet had
enjoyed its famous victory in the middle months of that very year.1

1 Walter B. Stone, `Shakespeare and the Sad Augurs', The Journal of English and Germanic

Philology, lii (1953) [hereafter Stone, `Shakespeare and the Sad Augurs'], 463±4; Leslie Hotson,
Shakespeare's Sonnets Dated and Other Essays (1950) [hereafter Hotson, Shakespeare's Sonnets],
p. 12.

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404 POPULAR ASTROLOGY AND LUTHERAN PROPAGANDA

French forecasters, caught up in the growing tensions of the religious

leagues, were quick to declare its sinister implications. The year will bring
with it famine, plague, disease and threatening winds, advised one French
almanac, `after which many troubles will come into play, impostures,
treason, in®nite a€airs and calamities, leaving no one unscathed'.2 While
in the empire, in the German lands, the many almanac-makers sounded
their notes of warning about the coming `great, wondrous leap year'.
Concern was so great in Germany that popular works, such as the 1558
prognostication of Wilhelm Friess, were revised and reissued with new
dates to accommodate the fatal year. It was all too much for the Catholic
critic Johann Nas, who saw the scare as a Lutheran delusion, `proving
from the constellations that Luther's doctrine is right and steady, and will
last until the end of the world, which they say will come in 1588'.3
The European fascination with the Wonder Year of 1588 was uniquely
German in its provenance. Writers made repeated reference to the
pedigree of the omen, for it had been forecast by the ®fteenth-century
German astrologer Regiomontanus (Johannes MuÈller), who was alleged
to have scribbled the prediction on a leaf of paper. Moreover, it was more
than just a technical, if fateful, calculation. The prediction was in verse,
and it soon assumed the status of a prophecy. In the English translation,
it ran as follows:
When from the Virgin Birth a thousand yeares
With full ®ve hundred be compleat and told,
The Eightie Eighth a famous yeare appeares,
Which brings distresse more fatall then of old.
If not in this yeare all the wicked world
Do fall, and land with sea to nothing come;
Yet Empires must be topsie turvie hurl'd
And extream grief shall be the common summe.
The prediction of Regiomontanus was a fabrication, though this
hardly seems to have mattered. Kaspar Brusch, German humanist and
poet, published it for the ®rst time in 1553; and while he claimed to have
found it among MuÈller's papers in Nuremberg, it was probably no more
than an updated treatment of a common folk myth. It found such
currency because it was quickly endorsed by the leading astrologers of
the day. Cyprian Leowitz, for instance, published the verse in his
Ephemerides (1557) and De coniunctionibus magnis (1564) and his work
became, in the words of one historian, `the direct instrument by which
the Prediction of Regiomontanus swept the continent'.4 By 1580 it was a

2
Denis Crouzet, `La repreÂsentation du temps aÁ l'eÂpoque de la Ligue', Revue Historique, cclxx
(1983) [hereafter Crouzet, `La repreÂsentation'], 297±388, at 314.
3 Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran

Reformation (Stanford, 1988) [hereafter Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis], pp. 81, 285, n. 57, 161.
4 Stone, `Shakespeare and the Sad Augurs', 460±1; Hotson, Shakespeare's Sonnets, pp. 12±13

(English translation of verse); Crouzet, `La repreÂsentation', 325 (French translation); Lynn
Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (8 vols., New York, 1941) [hereafter
Thorndike, History of Magic], v. 332±77.

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widely held belief that a conjunction of Saturn and Mars would occur in
the house of Pisces and bring with it great destruction. `Who hath not
read or hard [sic]', wrote the Englishman Leonard Wright, `what
wonderful strange eclips of sun and moon, terrible blazing stars,
glistering comets, dreadful coniunctions of planets, strange ¯ashing of
®re in the elements, and alteration of the heavens, resembling as it were
the countenance of the angry judge.'5
The year 1588 was not the ®rst date to generate anxious speculation in
Europe; nor was it the ®rst time that German astrologers gave rise to a
tide of prognostications. In 1499 two German stargazers, Johannes
StoȂer and Jacob P¯aum, warned that in February 1524 a planetary
conjunction would occur in the sign of Pisces. Although the authors
themselves made no mention of a ¯ood, astrological speculation soon
appropriated the notion of a second deluge, a washing away of sinful man
(Sint¯ut). Before it was over, the debate had engaged ®fty-six authors ±
Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Netherlanders and Italians. In total,
133 works dealing with the 1524 prediction were published. Although
some writers, such as the Spaniard Augustino Nifo, doubted the truth of
the prognostication, most authors were willing to concede the possibility
of a ¯ood. Even Johann Carion, Philip Melanchthon's classmate at
TuÈbingen and later Brandenburg's court astrologer, granted this much.6
But, in a sense, the reception of the theory in the astrological community
was strictly academic, for by the year 1517 the prediction had spread to all
social levels. As witness to its popular pro®le, the episcopal secretary to
WuÈrzburg, Lorenz Friess, blamed the run of horrifying title-page wood-
cuts for the scare.7 It had caused such disquiet that Martin Luther felt
obliged to address the portent in his 1522 Advent sermon in Wittenberg.8
Once it had come and gone, the deluge controversy was quickly
forgotten. Astrologers returned to their fatal speculations and the art of
sidereal divination ¯ourished as never before. In the German empire the
prognostications of the ®fteenth-century court astrologer Johannes
Lichtenberger were issued and reissued in the 1520s and 1530s, Luther
himself providing a preface for the 1527 edition. At the same time, new
works emerged, necessarily so with the German nation in political
turmoil and the sky itself subject to such mutation. Wilhelm Friess, as
mentioned, published his most popular almanac in 1558, itemizing for

5 Hotson, Shakespeare's Sonnets, p. 14.

6
Thorndike, History of Magic, v. 178±233; Max Steinmetz, `Johann Virdung von Haûfurt, sein
Leben und seine astrologischen Flugschriften', Astrologi hallucinati: Stars and the End of the World
in Luther's Time, ed. Paola Zambelli (Berlin, 1986) [hereafter Astrologi hallucinati ], pp. 195±214;
Anne-Marie Lecoq, `D'apreÁs Pigghe, Nifo et Lucien: le rheÂtoriqeur Jean TheÂnaud et la deÂluge aÁ la
cour de France', Astrologi hallucinati, pp. 213±37; R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk:
Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford, 1994), pp. 123±6.
7 Helga Robinson Hammerstein, `The Battle of the Booklets: Prognostic Tradition and Proclama-

tion of the Word in Early Sixteenth-century Germany', Astrologi hallucinati, pp. 140±1.
8
Heike Talkenberger, Sint¯ut: Prophetie und Zeitgeschehen in Texten und Holzschnitten astro-
logischer Flugschriften 1488±1528 (TuÈbingen, 1990), pp. 292±300.

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406 POPULAR ASTROLOGY AND LUTHERAN PROPAGANDA

the reader the `most strange and horrible changes' of the next ®ve years.
Nicolaus Weiss foresaw man's brutal lot in his Prognosticon astrologicum
(1571), predicting nothing but anguish and hardship for the coming
years. A new star appeared in 1572, prompting Tycho Brahe to prophesy
the end of the world, and in 1577 Brahe was busy at work observing the
passage of a new comet. By the 1580s speculation was at a fever pitch.
`The frame of the worlde, cannot endure longe after', wrote Richard
Harvey in An Astrological Discourse, contemplating the anticipated
conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in April 1583.9 And, while some
freethinkers such as Christopher Marlowe could dismiss Harvey as `an
ass, good for nothing but to preach of the Iron Age', most stargazers
feared the worst.10 In the empire astrological predictions grew increas-
ingly bleak and desperate in the latter half of the century. And no decade
seemed more ominous than the 1580s. An almanac of 1580, o€ering
predictions from three of the most famous astrologers of the age, looked
at the decade to come and could see no year free of dissension or trouble.
The future looked dark.11
The sixteenth century was an anxious age. Knowledge creates anxiety,
as does uncertainty or a sense of dissociation, and the century of
Reformation gave rise to its share of novel and divisive ideas. Yet
whereas medieval cosmology o€ered the anxious thinker `a fully articu-
lated system of boundaries' for understanding the world, the onset of the
early modern age saw the disintegration of this order. What replaced it,
in the ®rst instance, was not an alternative cosmology, but an anxious
scramble to reassociate the culture's disparate parts.12 From the level of
the parish to the broad stage of imperial politics, observers grew increas-
ingly anxious when faced with the seeming instability all around them.
Sixteenth-century society, especially German society, was ®xated with
the idea of order ± hence the numerous church ordinances, disciplinary
mandates, laws, codes and decrees. Protestant and Catholic rulers alike
endeavoured to discipline the subject population, to control the nature of

9 Ibid., pp. 347±72; Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, pp. 81, 119±22, 154±5, 164±5; Dietrich Kurze,

`Popular Astrology and Prophecy in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Johannes Lichten-
berger', Astrologi hallucinati, pp. 177±93; Carroll Camden Jr, `The Elizabethan Almanacs and
Prognostications', The Library, fourth series, xii (1931) [hereafter Camden, `Elizabethan
Almanacs'], 194±207; Rene Pruvost, `The Astrological Prognostications of 1583', The Library,
fourth series, xiv (1934), 101±6.
10 Hale Moore, `Gabriel Harvey's References to Marlowe', Studies in Philology, xxiii (1926), 343.
11
Robin Bruce Barnes, `Hope and Despair in Sixteenth-century German Almanacs', Die Reforma-
tion in Deutschland und Europa: Interpretationen und Debatten, ed. Hans R. Guggisberg and Gottfried
G. Krodel (GuÈtersloh, 1993) [hereafter Barnes, `Hope and Despair'], pp. 454±5; Prognosticon
Astronomicum mox sequentium annorum: Astronomische und aus himelsleu€t Erklerung/Erkentnis und
O€enbarung der Neuen folgende Jahre (Eisleben, 1580), pp. Av-B. Whenever possible, I have used the
title format from Bibliographie der Flugschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hans-Joachim KoÈhler
(TuÈbingen, 1991).
12
William J. Bouwsma, `Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture', After the
Reformation: Essays in Honour of J. H. Hexter, ed. Barbara C. Malament (Manchester, 1980)
[hereafter Bouwsma, `Anxiety'], pp. 229, 225, 215±46.

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behaviour and belief at the parish level.13 For some rulers, increased
supervision was the only answer; others, like Martin Luther, knew but
one cure: `who does not see', he wrote, `that God is compelled, as it were,
to punish, yes, even to destroy Germany'.14 The anxieties fed on the
disorders of the day, and in every corner there seemed a new threat. In
response to the general climatic deterioration of the 1580s, for instance,
the witchcraft trials in central Europe reached hitherto unknown dimen-
sions.15 Likewise, continuous reports of the advance of the Turks created
an atmosphere of fear, for the reporting became more sophisticated in
the latter half of the century and the dissemination of news more
widespread. Little wonder that the Augsburg chronicler Georg KoÈlderer
could conjure the demise of the Turks and the coming of the last days
while re¯ecting on the shedding of a ¯ower's petal.16 For many, the only
hope in the face of life's tribulations lay with God. `I would bow down
before the Lord' was how Mephistopheles answered Faustus when asked
what he would do if he were a human creature, `that I might not move
him to anger against me . . . and that I might know that, after death,
eternal joy, glory, and bliss await me.'17 It was timely advice. The ®rst
edition of Faust was published in 1587.
The most intense anxiety was spent on unknown, rather than known,
dangers. Fundamental to the Christian tradition was the belief that the
end of the world was forecast in the Bible. Although it was dicult to
make out the exact schedule, certain things seemed clear: faith would
wane, a prophet would appear, the Antichrist would wage a war against
the faithful, and the Catholic church would fall. This type of apocalypti-
cism, this fear of the last days, was an inheritance of the middle ages.
Prophets of doom such as Joachim of Fiore (1131±1202) had developed
complex predictions, dividing time into three stages or ages, with the
®nal age, the Age of the Holy Spirit, bringing with it divine retribution.18
But the Reformation had in fact heightened this sense of expectancy, not
just among the opponents of the new faith, but among the reformers
themselves. Luther's own sense of expectancy was intense; he was, as
Heiko Oberman portrays him, a man caught between God and the Devil,

13
Gerald Strauss, Enacting the Reformation in Germany (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 1±16.
14 Bouwsma, `Anxiety', p. 225.
15 Wolfgang Behringer, Mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tod (Munich, 1988), p. 78; Wolfgang

Behringer, `Weather, Hunger and Fear: Origins of the European Witch-hunts in Climate, Society
and Mentality', German History, xiii (1995), 1±27.
16
Winfried Schulze, Reich und TuÈrkengefahr im spaÈten 16. Jahrhundert: Studien zu den politischen
und gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen einer aÈuûeren Bedrohung (Munich, 1978), pp. 21±66; Bernd
Roeck, Als wollt die welt schier brechen: Eine Stadt im Zeitalter des DreiûigjaÈhrigen Krieges
(Munich, 1991), p. 41.
17 Gerald Strauss, `How to Read a Volksbuch: The Faust Book of 1587', Faust through the

Centuries: Retrospect and Analysis, ed. Peter Boerner and Sidney Johnson (TuÈbingen, 1989)
[hereafter Strauss, `How to Read a Volksbuch'], p. 33.
18
Marjorie Reeves, The In¯uence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1969).

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waiting for the ®nal hour.19 This sense of expectancy was even greater
among Luther's followers. Robin Bruce Barnes has claimed that
`Lutheranism was the only major confessional group of the Reformation
era to give a clear, virtually doctrinal sanction to a powerful sense
of eschatological expectancy.'20 Throughout the sixteenth century,
Lutheran authors came up with more and more ingenious methods of
calculating and broadcasting the arrival of the end of the world. Most
spoke of it in sermons, pointing out the many ominous signs ± plague,
war, hunger, confessional division, gluttony, lack of faith. Others, such
as Matthias Flacius Illyricus, wrote detailed histories to lend weight to
their calculations. Caspar FuÈger, whose projections ended in the year
1588, relied on scripture, the ancients, hermetic literature and medieval
apocalypticism, while Nicolaus Winckler fell back on number reckon-
ing.21 Massive compilations of prodigies and signs of wonder appeared
during this period. Lycosthenes, writing in Basel, published his Prodig-
iorum ac ostentorum Chronicon in 1557 and a host of similar works
followed. This inclination to sift through the odd and unusual in search
of God's plan was, as Rudolf Schenda observed, a thoroughly Protestant
phenomenon.22 And, of course, there was always astrology, probably the
most e€ective way to broadcast the message. This type of medium
reached a peak in the ®nal decades of the century, not only in quantity,
but also in the intensity of its sense of urgency and pessimism. From
about mid-century onwards, popular prognostications assumed a much
more bleak and desperate tone. By the 1580s, the last days were certainly
reckoned to be at hand. This feeling of expectancy, this sense
of approaching doom, informs Lutheranism throughout the age of
orthodoxy. It was central to its character.23
Given the pronounced apocalyptical turn to Lutheran theology, it
should come as no surprise that many of the doomsayers and stargazers
were themselves clergymen. This was not such an odd pairing, for
astrology had always been central to the Christian faith, especially in the
middle ages. Granted, the two schools of thought, Aristotelian and
Augustinian, could not agree on the relationship between celestial cause
and terrestrial e€ect, but most religious thinkers yielded to the notion
that God might reveal man's destiny in the stars. Luther granted that
certain heavenly signs might herald the judgements of God, but he gave
the practice of astrology short shrift. In his eyes, it was not a predictable

19
Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (1993).
20
Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, p. 3.
21
Ibid., pp. 23±126.
22
Rudolf Schenda, `Die deutschen Prodigiensammlungen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts', Archiv fuÈr
Geschichte des Buchwesens, iv (1963), 668.
23 Sabine Holtz, `Der Furst dieser Welt: Die Bedrohung der Lebenswelt aus lutherischorthodoxer
È
Perspektive', Zeitschrift fuÈr Kirchengeschichte, cvii (1996), 29±49; Barnes, `Hope and Despair',
pp. 440±61; Hartmut Lehmann, `Endzeiterwartung im Luthertum im spaÈten 16. und im fruÈhen 17.
Jahrhundert', Die lutherische Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland, ed. Hans-Christoph Rublack
(GuÈtersloh, 1992) [hereafter Die lutherische Konfessionalisierung], pp. 545±54.

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science; moreover, he rejected it on theological grounds: it placed limita-

tions on the powers of God. Yet Luther never came out and condemned
astrology, perhaps because respected fellow thinkers such as Philip
Melanchthon and Georg Spalatin set such store by it.24 As a result,
astrological speculation increased after Luther's death, not least among
the Lutheran clergy. Andreas Osiander, Andreas Musculus, Georg
Caesius, Johann Arndt, Leonard Krentzheim, Johann SchuÈlein, Georg
Meder ± all were respected and active clergymen who wrote in or com-
mented on yearly almanacs. Taking a leaf from Luther's book of doom,
later Lutheran clergymen looked to the heavens for evidence of God's
plan, and they saw but wrath and anger in the stars. `For there is not only
misery and despair on earth', wrote the author of a letter found in the
papers of the 1561 Nuremberg visitation progress,
but God the Almighty has also placed in the heavens many horrible and
hitherto unheard of signs before our eyes, the like of which have increased
with the years. Witness the year 1561: we have seen far more signs now
than in any other year. The sun and the moon have been darkened on a
number of occasions. A cruci®x in the sky was seen, as were biers and
cons with black men beside them. Further, rods and whips and many
other signs were seen in a multitude of places . . . and scarcely a year has
passed as of late without an eclipse of the sun or the moon. Experience
suggests, and the histories instruct, that there were not as many eclipses in
the past as there have been in the last twenty years. Moreover, in the year
past many horrible and terrifying comets were seen; three suns in
addition, which were seen in the heavens. To recount all of the heavenly
signs seen lately would take too much time, especially as a great number
of pamphlets and books have been published [about them].25
Thomas Wirsing, a parish pastor near DinkelsbuÈhl, took pains to record
the hour and location of each `sign of wonder' he spied in the heavens.26
With the approach of 1588, Lutheran clergymen sounded an even
more apocalyptical note of warning. Andreas Musculus, city pastor in
Frankfurt an der Oder, professor of theology and later superintendent in
the Mark Brandenburg, warned of the fatal year as early as 1569. In his
sermonizing Gebet umb abwending wolverdienter zunahender Stra€ uber
Deudschland (1569), Musculus foreshadowed the monumental changes
of the 1580s. `For my part', he wrote, `according to my own limited
understanding, I cannot count it as nothing that nearly all Prognostica
and Practica go no further than 1580 or at the most 1588.' No one can
say for sure, Musculus added, whether misery or goodness will come of it

24 Ingetraut Ludolphy, `Luther und die Astrologie', Astrologi hallucinati, pp. 101±7.
25 Gerhard Hirschmann, Die Kirchenvisitation im Landgebiet der Reichsstadt NuÈrnberg 1560 und
1561 (Neustadt a/d Aisch, 1994), pp. 202±3.
26
Landeskirchliches Archiv, Nuremberg, Tagebuch des Thomas Wirsing (o.d. Donaueschingen
676a, 1573±1591), 30 May 1573.

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in the end.27 Closer to the date, authors sometimes made allusions to the
approach of eighty-eight, while citing the spate of recent astral wonders
as an apocalyptic build-up. The star of 1572, the comets of 1577, 1580,
1582 and above all the conjunction of 1584 ± each could be viewed as a
precursor to the conjunction of Saturn and Mars. Some authors believed
that the crucial event was in fact the 1584 conjunction; its e€ects, they
advised, would not be felt until four years later.28 Thus, on the eve of the
event, in 1587, writers had a frightening arsenal of reasons as to why the
year to come would bring with it grief.
Georg Caesius, pastor of Burgbernheim in the principality of
Brandenburg±Ansbach, a man reckoned to have published an almanac
every year between 1570 and 1604 and whose fame as an astrologer was
left for the ages in a published funeral oration, recorded the year's
promise in detail.29 Caesius counselled his prince, Georg Friedrich, in
his published almanac. `Recently a number of works by Georg Ursinus
and Nikolaus Orphanus have been published about the year 1588', he
wrote:
To touch very brie¯y on the contents: in 1588 there will follow horrible,
frightening, hitherto unheard of things. It remains to be seen, whether all
will go to ruin and come to grief, whether all the elements, all mankind
and the beasts in the ®eld will mourn for their current misfortune and
their future ill. For it is certain, that a great change will a€ect the entire
world. Firstly, there will be frightful storms, earthquakes, and ¯oods,
destroying the crops and causing misfortune. Secondly, following from
this, there will be in¯ation, famine, and pestilence. Great changes will
occur in the Empire, principality, and neighbouring lands ± the death of
powerful lords, war, the spilling of blood. Further, through pillaging and
burning many lands and their peoples will be destroyed, and this will
result in more laws and ordinances. Germany and its adjoining kingdoms
will experience war and bloodshed. No nation or land will be spared.30
Caesius was perhaps a bit reluctant to proclaim the horrors of the
coming year without some form of justi®cation, for the margrave had
already called his fellow pastor and almanac-maker, Johann SchuÈlein, to
account for his predictions. Georg Friedrich empowered the Ansbach
clergyman Michael Stiber to evaluate SchuÈlein's Vorhersage fuÈr 1588.
Stiber informed the margrave that SchuÈlein `terms the year 1588 a leap
year, and soon after a year of wonder, and he gives reasons in support of
this claim.' The grounds for his prediction ranged from the principles of
astronomy to the gnostic revelations of number reckoning. Stiber advised

27
Ernst Koch, `Andreas Musculus und die Konfessionalisierung im Luthertum', Die lutherische
Konfessionalisierung, pp. 264±5.
28 Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, pp. 164±3.
29 Michael Lochner, Christliche Leich-Predigt uber der Begraebnus dess Astronomi, M. Georgii

Caesii, weylandt Pfarrherrn zu Marck Burck Bernheim, so Anno den 4. Septembris seliglich
entschla€en, und den 6. Septembris bestattet (Nuremberg, 1604).
30
Georg Caesius, Prognosticon Astrologicum oder Practick Au€ das Jar, nach unsers hern und
Seligmachers Jesu Christi Geburt MDLXXXVIII (Nuremberg, 1587), pp. Aiii±Aiiiv.

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against its publication: `For myself', he concluded, `I cannot see it clear

that pastors should dabble in such work. It would be better if the
practitioners of astronomy were ordered and commissioned, and that
they write only what is well-grounded in astronomy and in harmony with
the Holy Word of God.'31
Stiber raised an important issue. Why were the pastors so hard at work
writing almanacs? How did it serve the interests of the faith? For all of
the Lutheran almanac-makers of a pronounced religious conscience, the
stars were simply a window on God's mind. Although Luther himself
balked at the notion that astrology amounted to a science, he was willing
enough to concede that certain astral signs might portend divine intel-
ligence. `For it is incredible', he said, `that they [the planets] be observed
to move without inquiring whether there isn't somebody who moves
them.'32 Later Lutherans took this logic to its ultimate conclusion. The
stars implied more than just a formal cause; they were beacons of the
divine mind at work. This is what David Chytraeus meant when he
termed them the sermons of God.33 Stars, indeed the whole order and
disorder of the heavens, spoke of God's will as clearly as the gospels. As
Georg Caesius had it: `Astronomy is a noble, wonderful, certain, useful,
and dear art, the consideration of God's ordinance re¯ected in nature.'34
`It is therefore undeniable', concluded one writer in 1572, `that all the
signs seen in the heavenly ®rmament (and unfortunately, especially this
year, there are all too many) signify something; they are harbingers of the
wrath and punishment of Almighty God.'35 Indeed, these authors were
not long in pointing out that man's failure to heed the word of God
preached on earth had given rise to these starry sermons. `For this
reason', wrote Georg Busch, `God has been provoked to reveal to us
through natural and supernatural means, in water, on earth, air, in the
®ery elements, even in the starry ®rmament, his wrath, mercy, and
works of wonder, that our adamantine hearts, poisoned by the Devil's
tempting counsel, might relent, turn from evil, and come to rights.'36
`God preached now through heavenly signs', added Andreas Celichius in
1578, `for the Lord speaks, he thunders, throws bolts of lightening.'37
Valentin Faber could think of no other way to explain the profusion of

31 Landeskirchliches Archiv Nuremberg, Markgraȯiches Konsistorium Ansbach, Spez. 942, Wall-

mersbach Miscellanea: Kalendarium des Pfarrers Johann SchuÈlein 1588±91.
32
Ludolphy, `Luther und die Astrology', Astrologi hallucinati, p. 104; Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis,
pp. 146±7.
33
David Chytraeus, Vom neuen Stern (Rostock, 1577) [hereafter Chytraeus, Vom neuen Stern],
p. Ciiii.
34 Georg Caesius, Prognosticon Astrologicum (Nuremberg, 1574); Georg Caesius, Prognosticon

Astrologicum (Nuremberg, 1578), p. Aiiiiv.

35 Kaspar Bucha, Prognosticon astrologicum auf das Jahr 1573 (Erfurt, 1572), p. B.
36
Georg Busch, Von dem Cometen (Augsburg, 1573) [hereafter Busch, Von dem Cometen], p. Aiii.
37
Andreas Celichius, Christliche, notwendige, nuÈtzliche und Theologische erinnerung, von dem newen
Cometen (Leipzig, 1578), p. Aiiv.

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412 POPULAR ASTROLOGY AND LUTHERAN PROPAGANDA

heavenly signs in the last years of the century. They are preachers of
penance, he wrote, heralds of God's mounting wrath.38 Of this last point,
the authors were in no doubt. The sky was alight with a sermon on the
need for penance and moral reform.
Few almanac writers could recall an age so deep in sin. The subject
population of the Holy Roman Empire paid no heed to God's word; all
preaching was in vain, and a life of improbity, vanity and excess was the
order of the day. As testimony to this depravity, Lutheran authors
pointed to the many recent wonders in the sky. The comet of 1582, for
example, was viewed as a herald of divine displeasure with the unrepen-
tant lifestyle of most people, `which grows from day to day, moment to
moment'.39 As the parishioners made no attempt to improve themselves,
no real e€ort to consider the words of the pastors or observe the moral
dictates of scripture, God was driven to punish them with plagues,
unnatural weather, hails, storms and miraculous signs. Counted among
the ®ve certain signs that the Day of Judgement was nearing was this
decline into improbity and earthly pleasures ± that this `scong and
boozing, scraping and saving for provisions, should not be held as a sin,
but rather seen as a noble work'.40 Almost every almanac published in
the latter decades of the century made reference to the poor quality of
moral life ± gluttony, drunkenness, adultery, blasphemy, trust in magic,
lack of faith. And while the condition of sin worsened, the preaching of
the word made no progress. Man can know God's heart, Georg Busch
counselled, `®rst through his solitary Word, and with that his appointed
servants, through whom, in words and in text, moves the Holy Spirit.
But the world has ignored these admonishments, and neither preaching,
writing, songs, nor words will help, and mankind from day to day
returns to its godless, unrepentant life.'41 As a consequence of this turn to
evil, the heavens were alight with warnings. Valentin Faber tried to make
this clear to his readers. These heavenly signs, he wrote, `these preachers
of penance, heralds of God's wrath, visit us as a result of our self-
assurance (Sicherheit), our disdain for God's word, stubborn unrepent-
ance, and other great sins.'42 `Since we pay no heed to the warnings, nor
wish to reform ourselves', sighed David Chytraeus, writing on the
appearance of a comet, `He has placed before our eyes a ®ery prophet

38 Valentin Faber, Chronicon, darinnen wahrhaftige Beschreibung von den schrecklichen Zornzeichen
Gottes (Leipzig, 1591) [hereafter Faber, Chronicon], p. Aiiv; Valentin Engelhart, Observatio und
Bedeutung des Cometen, so dieses 1556 Jahr erschienen ist (Erfurt, 1556), p. Aii.
39
Nikolaus Erben, Zur Buû vermanende Comet: Anno MDLXXXII. Den XIIII Maij, den abendt,
umb VIII. Uhr erscheinen (Erfurt, 1582) [hereafter Erben, Zur Buû vermanende Comet],
pp. Aiiv±Aiii.
40 Nikolaus von Amsdor€, Fu
Èn€ fuÈrnemliche und gewisse Zeichen aus heiliger goÈttlicher Schri€t, so
kurtz vor dem JuÈngsten tag geschehen sollen (Jena, 1554) [hereafter Amsdor€, FuÈn€ fuÈrnemliche und
gewisse Zeichen], p. Div.
41
Busch, Von dem Cometen, p. Aiii.
42
Faber, Chronicon, p. Aiiv; on Sicherheit, see Strauss, `How to Read a Volksbuch', p. 34.

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 C. SCOTT DIXON 413

and preacher, set in the Heavens, which prophecies and preaches that
God's wrath burns like a ®re.'43
And there was good cause for wrath. The Lutheran Reformation was
as much a campaign to reform society as it was an episode of intense
theological insight. The evangelical movement was, after all, a mass
exercise in propaganda, and there is only one measure of the success or
failure of propaganda: the reaction of the audience.44 Granted, social
reform was never the primary concern of men like Martin Luther. For
many reformers, spiritual redemption was the only goal of human
endeavour. But the perspective of the most thoughtful minds of the
century should not be taken as the outlook of the age. For all of their
theological hair-splitting, the Lutheran reformers recognized that the
true test of the faith's achievement was its presence or non-presence in
the parish mind. And in many Lutheran eyes, when surveying the moral
landscape of the empire, the moral message of the Reformation move-
ment had yet to take hold in the parishes. As recent studies of parish life
in Germany have testi®ed, the majority of parishioners enjoyed a quality
of culture, a pattern of behaviour and a frame of religious belief which
was little changed from that of their medieval ancestors. Gerald Strauss's
famous observation of the results of the Lutheran pedagogical campaign
sums up the ®ndings of more recent, more detailed investigations: `A
century of Protestantism had brought about little or no change in the
common religious conscience and the ways in which ordinary men and
women conducted their lives.'45 Popular culture continued as it had for
centuries; the Reformation made little or no di€erence to the nature of
village life. Even in the mainstay Lutheran principalities ± Saxony,
Hesse, WuÈrttemberg, Brandenburg±Ansbach ± the authorities could do
little to e€ect a change in behaviour. Protestant pastors were acutely
aware of the limitations of reform. As the almanac writers insisted, God
was active in the heavens above because there was no religion below.46
We can get an impression of the sense of frustration experienced at
the personal level by the Lutheran pastor through a closer look at life
in the parish of Burgbernheim, a village community in the margravate of
Brandenburg±Ansbach. In 1580 the proli®c almanac writer Georg
Caesius was appointed to the parish, and he was immediately faced with
a community of free spirits. By way of example, the visitation return
of 1578, two years before Caesius's arrival, registered the words of
Linhardt Megel, a man who refused to accept the sacrament because he
believed he was God. `The powers above, he claims, do not want him
back in Heaven', the visitors noted, `because they have stolen all of his

43 Chytraeus, Vom neuen Stern, p. Ciiii.

44 See Mark U. Edwards Jr, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (1994), pp. 1±13.
45 Gerald Strauss, Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German

Reformation (1978), p. 299.

46
See the discussion and the literature cited in C. Scott Dixon, The Reformation and Rural Society:
The Parishes of Brandenburg±Ansbach±Kulmbach, 1528±1603 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 102±202.

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belongings. For this reason he must labour on earth.' Caesius may have
had some success with Megel, for he disappears from the record, but he
soon faced more tenacious opponents. Linhard GoÈtz, a tailor, went so
far as to challenge Caesius's interpretation of sin and would not give way
to Caesius. The following year GoÈtz was brought before the visitation
commission, but he defended his reading with reference to Luther, the
Augsburg confession, the Schmalkaldic articles, and the works of
Johann Spangenberg. Most parishioners would not have been as
articulate or as theologically well-informed as GoÈtz, but their mulish
resistance was no less for that. Every autumn Caesius cited the worst
o€enders before the visitation commission under the general heading
contemptores sacramenti. The same names appear over and over again,
year after year. Often they promised to do penance, some going so far as
to do so while the visitors were still in the village, only to return to their
former ways when the progress left the parish. The arch-o€ender was a
man named Georg Bauer. Bauer ®rst appeared on the list in 1583; he
remained there until 1591, when the archival record ends. In 1587 the
visitors noted `that Georg Bauer had not appeared before us, though he
had confronted the pastor before our arrival and promised once again to
better himself. He has said the same to pastor Unfug in Waldbad, though
he has never honoured it.' Perhaps the history of Georg Bauer was going
through Georg Caesius's mind in July as he ®nished his prognostication
for the wonder year of 1588.47
This is what lay at the root of the Lutheran almanacs of the 1580s ±
this sense of frustration and failure, the conviction that the preaching of
the gospel was not enough to indoctrinate the teachings of the church or
the fear of God. Pastors thus made a deliberate attempt to cast their
sermons in a di€erent medium. Hence the rise of the `preaching of the
stars', almanac writing as sermonizing, a type of literature for the masses
which could reach the widest possible audience and still trumpet the call
to reform.48 Indeed, very often these almanacs contained a sermon or a
common prayer in the text. Alternatively, they might address a particular
congregation, as when Georg Caesius reminded his parishioners of
the ®re of 1553, or when Anton Brelochs predicted a grim future for the
people of Crailsheim.49 But more often it was a general address to the
people of the German lands.
By this stage, Lutheran authors had conceded the failure of the word
to work the wonders Luther had presaged. `It is sad to see', wrote
Nikolaus Erben, `that these false Evangelicals are nothing other than
tired of the blessed truth'; their ears are stopped to God's word, he

47 Staatsarchiv Nuremberg, Ansbacher Neues Generalrepertorium, no. 49, rep. no. 103e, fos. 17, 25,
56, 79, 88, 133. Caesius ®nished his Prognosticon Astrologicum oder Practik Au€ das Jar, nach unsers
hern und Seligmachers Jesu Christi Geburt MDLXXXVIII on Thursday 27 July 1587.
48
Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, pp. 155±68.
49
Georg Caesius, Prognosticon Astrologicum (Nuremberg, 1583); Anton Brelochs, Practica deutsch
auf das 1559 Jahr (Nuremberg, 1558), p. Bv.

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added, `their hearts and ears stubborn and blocked'. For this lack of
faith they are showered with comets.50 `For the eclipses, comets, and evil
appearances of the outer planets bode ill', Georg Caesius warned, and he
also presented the reader with the only defence against a wrathful God:
`we should not ignore these signs as heathens might, but rather with that
much more ardour call to God and pray that He may reduce the meaning
of nature's omens, forgo punishment, or at least show some mercy.'51
Here was the only way in which mankind could ward o€ the disaster
forecast by the heavens: prayer and penance. `Wake and wait' was the
advice of authors such as Nikolaus von Amsdor€: `there is nothing for it
but to improve oneself, leave o€ sins, renounce them, call to God in true
faith, and ask for his mercy.'52 The truly just, others advised, would
welcome such signs, for here was proof of Christ's immanence.53 The
faithful must repent, for there was still hope if the parishioners turned to
the church. `I know and believe in my heart', wrote Caesius, `that God
the Almighty can change the order of nature and hear the prayers of the
just.' Few almanac writers, even those of the Aristotelian bent, had any
doubt that the signs and prayers of the faithful could avert impending
natural disaster. As Matthaeus Bader explained:
For God, the Almighty Lord, is not bound to secondary causes, so that
everything must occur according to nature and not otherwise. Rather, he
is a free agent, a free nature, who works with and without nature. For this
reason, oftimes the prayer of a truly pious man can stave o€ or at least
ease future misfortune.
The only saving response was a turn to faith.54
Implicit in this understanding of the world was the conviction that
God could intervene at any time and alter the course of nature. It was not
the same as the late medieval Catholic notion of sacrality, for Lutheran
theology rejected the idea that the material world was a repository of the
sacred or that man's earthly vessel could be tapped for preternatural
power. But Protestantism did not completely sever the relationship
between God and the natural world; it became rather a `weaker and more
ill-de®ned form of sacrality'. Robert Scribner has described this as a
subtle shift `from sacramental world to moralised universe'.55 Central to

50
Erben, Zur Buû vermanende Comet, pp. Aiiv±Bv.
51
Georg Caesius, Prognosticon Astrologicum (Nuremberg, 1578), p. Aiiii.
52 Amsdor€, Fu
Èn€ fuÈrnemliche und gewisse Zeichen, p. Diiv; Jeremias Eisenhardt, Prognosticon auf
das naÈchstkuÈnftige 1584 Jahr (Leipzig, 1583), p. Bv.
53
Der dreyer Sonnen, mit iren Regenbogen (1542).
54
Georg Caesius, Prognosticon Astrologicum (Nuremberg, 1583), entry for November; Matthaeus
Bader, Praedictiones Meterologicae et Physicae (Strasburg, 1578), p. Aii; Kaspar Bucha, Prognosti-
con astrologicon (Erfurt, 1578), p. Aii; Johannes Cuno, Ein Gebetlein, wegen des schrecklichen harten
Donnerschlags (Magdeburg, 1576), pp. Aiii±Aiiiv.
55 Bob Scribner, `Reformation and Desacralisation: From Sacramental World to Moralised

Universe', Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia
and R. W. Scribner (Wiesbaden, 1997), pp. 75±92, at 76; Robert W. Scribner, `The Reformation,
Popular Magic, and the ``Disenchantment of the World'' ', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxiii
(1993), 475±94.

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this conception was the belief that human action could provoke super-
natural intervention. God was no longer bound to the sacraments and
the sacramentals of the Catholic church, but he was seen as an active
force in a universe de®ned in terms of moral agency. Human conduct
now determined whether God would intervene ± the less moral the
conduct the greater the chance of intervention. God's displeasure was
manifest in the natural world. There was a clear connection between
moral disorder and natural phenomena such as earthquakes, ¯oods,
®res, hailstorms, comets and unusual heavenly events. And just as later
Lutheran theology (as projected from the pulpit) was transformed by the
pressing concerns of daily life in the parishes,56 so too did the Lutheran
mind imagine the natural world touched by the urgency of its moral
crusade.
Thus, the Lutheran Reformation did not desacralize or disenchant the
natural world, though this has often been claimed.57 On the contrary, at
least with reference to works of popular astrology, leading Lutheran
clergymen saw God's will writ all about them. They used this type of
literature as propaganda for the faith. As the century came to a close, the
almanac-makers were describing a universe which seemed little more
than a Lutheran morality play. Of course, writers might present scienti®c
reasons why stars and comets behaved as they did, just as a new scienti®c
spirit seeped into other forms of popular literature.58 But the ultimate
meaning behind natural events was religious. And while Matthias
Flacius Illyricus could proclaim as late as 1549 that God no longer found
it as necessary to reveal his will in the heavens now that the gospel was
preached on earth, most other clergy saw the last chance for the faith in
these `astral sermons'.59 We have already seen ample evidence of the
explicit relationship maintained in the astrological literature between
God's will and natural events. Whether comets, stars or the cross and
`tools of Christ's passion' seen by Joseph GruÈnpeck, the faithful could
read the stars as they might read the Bible.60 And where the message was
not made explicit ( for in the gospel too there was a lack of clarity) an
underlying Lutheran morality provided the explanation. This process
was well underway by mid-century. When a thunderstorm destroyed an
arsenal in Heidelberg, for instance, killing three people and blowing the

56 Sabine Holtz, Theologie und Alltag: Lehre und Leben in den Predigten der TuÈbinger Theologen
1550±1750 (TuÈbingen, 1993), pp. 314±76.
57
See the recent discussions in SaÈkularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im
neuzeitlichen Europa, ed. Hartmut Lehmann (GoÈttingen, 1997).
58
Rebekka Habermas, `Wunder, Wunderliches, Wunderbares: Zur Profanisierung eines Deutungs-
musters in der fruÈhen Neuzeit', Armut, Liebe, Ehre: Studien zur historischen Kulturforschung, ed.
Richard van DuÈlmen (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 38±66.
59 Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Etliche grei‚iche gewisse und scheinbarliche warzeichen . . .

(Magdeburg, 1549), pp. Eii±Eiii.

60
Joseph GruÈnpeck, Practica der gegenwaÈrtigen groûen TruÈbsaln und vielfaÈltiger Wunder am
Himmel (Strasburg, 1540), pp. Bi±Bii; Johannes Gratianus Cyrillus, Prognosticon perpetuum . . .
(1599), p. Dii.

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windows out of the church, it was the `singing, dancing, and great
clamour' in the alehouse which had blinded the people's eyes to the
weather. A similar event in Mecheln, though much larger in scale, saw
the locus of immorality, an alehouse termed `The Cross', destroyed by
®re from the sky. The card players were found the next day, dead with the
cards still in their hands.61 Where the causal nexus was not immediately
apparent, Lutheran morality provided the key. And as the faithful could
not make sense of the signs, or ward o€ the signs, they were told the
same thing they had been told for decades in Lutheran sermons: there
can be but one reaction to God's judgement and that is blind trust, blind
faith. In June of 1548, the parishioners of Holzhausen looked to the sky
and saw an image of Martin Luther dressed as a theologian.62 At the
century's end, almanac writers had this image at the back of their minds
every time they described the stars.
Once 1588 had passed without incident (at least in the German lands),
astrologers set to work calculating the next year of expectation: 1600,
1604, 1623, there was no shortage of candidates; nor did the miscarriage
of eighty-eight lose the almanac-makers much face. Some praised God
for sparing them, warning of future calamity; some claimed that it had
been a year of wonder, cataloguing events; a very few reacted like the
Englishman John Chamber, who urged that the astrologers should
have `88' branded on their foreheads.63 For the deep current of anxiety
running through the almanacs was less the result of astronomical
reckoning than a continuation, and an intensi®cation, of the pessimism
and apocalypticism prevalent during the age of Lutheran orthodoxy. It
drew on the inherited sense of expectation, and it found expression in a
tradition of astrological speculation dating back to the middle ages. But
it found a unique focus in the latter decades of the century and unique
circumstances for its dissemination. By the 1580s Lutheran clergymen
recognized that the Reformation movement had not succeeded in its
essential task, that of winning hearts and minds to the new faith. Parish-
ioners paid little heed to the preaching of the word and even less to the
moral imperatives of the Lutheran church. Recognizing this, with an
increasing sense of anxiety, Lutheran authors preached the faith through
a di€erent medium to a wider audience: hence the ¯ood of prognostica-
tions. Although many Protestant ordinances and sermons raged against
the run of popular literature, few institutions used it to better e€ect than

61
Ein erschregliche Newezeitung, von einem grausamen Ungewitter, So sich au€ S. Marcus tag zu
Heidelberg, inn diesem XXXVII jar, erhoben hat (Wittenberg, 1537), p. Aiii; Beschreibung der
grausamen, erschrockenlichen Geschicht (1546), pp. Aiiv±Aiii. The disaster in Mecheln was a much-
chronicled event which gave rise to a ¯ood of pamphlet literature. As late as 1578, Christoph
Ireneus was referring to it in his Prognosticon, Aus Gottes Wort noÈtige Erinnerung, und Christliche
Buûpredigt zu dieser Letzten boÈsen Zeit (1578).
62 Etliche gesichte so zu Holtzhausen unther Wasserburg, im Lande Du
Èring gelegen, am Donnerstag
nach Trinitatis, und zu Pretin, den 20. Junij. Disses 48. Jars, am Himmel von glaubwirdigen Leuten
seint gesehen worden (Magdeburg, 1548).
63
Camden, `Elizabethan Almanacs', 200; Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, pp. 165±7.

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the Lutheran church. With reference to speci®c conjunctions and astral

events, and with more subtle metaphors and moral correspondences, the
authors were able to invest the natural world ± in this instance, the
heavenly bodies ± with the essentials of the Lutheran religion. With this
in mind, perhaps historians should pay less attention to the directives
aimed to eradicate popular culture than the character of the culture itself.
For if the Lutheran almanacs are anything to go by, the popular medium
and the reforming message were the same.

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