Abstract
This chapter demonstrates how the pastor and parishioners of an early modern Swiss village negotiated privacy and exposure in their shared mission to create a Christian community. The chapter describes how, after witnessing the suicide of the school teacher of his parish in 1631, village pastor Hans Rudolf Fischer decided to keep a diary of the personal encounters with his parishioners, as well as minutes of the monthly local moral court sessions over which he presided. His notes, which span a period of ten years, present Fischer as a pastor eager to listen to and alleviate the sorrows of his parishioners, yet by no means shy to reprimand privately and publicly those he considered to lead a sinful life. The contribution shows how villagers established their own informal networks through private conversations and how parishioners and pastors were able to access, distribute, or control private information within the confines of their roles within the village.
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On 20 October 1631, the village of Brütten was left in shock by the suicide of the local schoolmaster, Lienhart Weber. The village pastor, Hans Rudolf Fischer (1601–85), in particular, was stunned to hear that Weber—a man he held for a pious Christian—had been drawn to kill himself. After the villagers had burned the schoolmaster’s body, the pastor began to inquire among his parishioners, seeking explanations for Weber’s tragic fate.Footnote 1 Much of what he was told was the kind of slander bound to surface about a man who had disgraced himself in the eyes of his community by the manner of his death. The dead schoolmaster’s best friend told Fischer that Weber had been “lewd and obscene in his speech like no one else” and had been chasing after the young girls of the village.Footnote 2 Two village officials even suggested that Weber had been secretly involved in Anabaptist circles and implied that he had engaged in bestiality. However, the statement of Weber’s wife was disconcerting to the pastor in a wholly different way. Her husband, the woman told Fischer, had long been seen as a loner and oddball among the villagers and had increasingly withdrawn himself, praying alone and haunting the forest where he eventually killed himself.Footnote 3 Completely unbeknownst to Fischer, Weber appeared to have suffered from a deep and long-lasting crisis in both his social life and in his faith.Footnote 4 About any of this, Fischer confided to his notes, he had been “wholly unaware and unknowing”, despite the relatively small size of his parish—only around two hundred parishioners lived in the village and surrounding hamlets—and despite having had a long and pleasant conversation with Lienhart Weber merely a few days before his death.Footnote 5
Pastor Fischer’s investigations among his parishioners reveal much of his ignorance of the most mundane realities of life in his community—an impression frequently reiterated in scholarship on early modern rural pastors. The relation between Protestant pastors and their rural parishioners, historians have argued, was largely characterised by mutual incomprehension, if not outright hostility, with some even claiming that the end of the sixteenth century witnessed a new wave of anticlericalism rising up across Protestant Europe.Footnote 6 While such a grim view has been countered with examples of a lively culture of dialogue, adaptation, and compromise between pastors and villagers, pastors certainly did struggle with the task of reconciling a host of different—and sometimes contradicting—demands: from religious authorities’ calls for order and confessional adherence, to their parishioners’ desire for spiritual services and advocacy for their concerns, to their own need for self- and familial sustenance.Footnote 7 How did this complex blend of demands impact the pastor’s relationships with his parishioners? How did it impact his life and work in the village?
The records of pastor Hans Rudolf Fischer offer a fresh perspective on the dynamics of pastoral care in early modern rural Europe. After the death of Lienhart Weber, Fischer began to chronicle a large part of his daily interactions and conversations with the members of his parish.Footnote 8 Beginning in late 1631 and ending a decade later in 1641, Fischer chronicled his life and work in brief but succinct monthly entries, offering a unique insight into early modern parish life. Largely, historians have approached the early modern parish with the help of visitation reports and—for Reformed territories—consistory protocols. Available over long stretches of the early modern period for a host of Lutheran, Reformed, and some Catholic territories, such records have enabled scholars to reconstruct post-Reformation pastor-parishioner relations to remarkably complex degrees.Footnote 9 At the same time, a narrow reliance on visitation and consistory records threatens to exaggerate the significance of institutional and disciplinary encounters between pastors and parishioners at the expense of informal modes of interaction.Footnote 10 As Judith Pollmann has argued, using personal diaries, journals, and chronicles alongside visitation and consistory protocols offers a more encompassing view of the activities of local church representatives, providing valuable insight into the variety and importance of their daily, informal encounters with parishioners.Footnote 11
Specifically, Hans Rudolf Fischer’s notes enable an exploration of the various negotiations between pastors and parishioners taking place through private conversation. Talking in private, this chapter argues, was a crucial tool within the repertoire of pastoral care in the early modern village. It was essential to the pastor’s role as guardian of souls since private talk allowed Fischer to discreetly identify and address concerns which touched on such sensitive matters as honour, reputation, and social status. Furthermore, talking in private was key to fulfilling his duties as guardian of laws and morals and head of Brütten’s consistory. The consistory required active participation of its lay members to function as the central institution for moral oversight in the parish. However, local hierarchies and dynamics often prevented it from working in this way.Footnote 12 Private appeals, in turn, allowed the pastor to address and negotiate the collective handling of issues which the consistory and village community were divided on.
Hans Rudolf Fischer’s record-keeping was situated within greater trends towards increased regulation of rural religious culture within the Zurich Reformed Church. In 1628, the Zurich synod replaced the disparate set of rules and regulations which had accumulated over the previous century with a comprehensive framework for rural church life.Footnote 13 In the first place, these regulations contained a detailed catalogue of pastoral responsibilities. The pastor was to preach the word of God, administer the sacraments, oversee the local school, and visit the sick. He was also to act as guardian of divine law and “admonish every day and night, seeking in particular and by all means that his teaching bears fruit and that it is followed obediently by all people”.Footnote 14 Matthew 18:15–17 provided the foremost model for pursuing this latter task.Footnote 15 First, the pastor was to reprimand offenders “fatherly, friendly, virtuously, diligently, earnestly” in person and, where this was impossible or unsuccessful, the pastor was to ask a relative or friend of the offender for assistance.Footnote 16 If all these measures had failed, the pastor was supposed to turn to the parish consistory. The synod’s directive from 1628 specified that once a month, parish elders, officials, and the so-called Ehegaumer (literally, “moral guardians”) were to meet with the pastor after church service. This so-called Stillstand (for the fact that its members “stood still” while the other parishioners left the church) was to discuss moral transgressions, reproach offenders, and, if necessary, report delinquents to higher authorities. In another mandate from 1636, the synod further required pastors to keep written protocols of these Stillstand sessions.Footnote 17 Although these measures were adopted only slowly and reluctantly in many places, a growing number of parishes introduced consistories and kept written records of their sessions in the course of the following years.
Situated within these larger transformations in seventeenth-century Zurich Reformed culture, Fischer’s turn to writing also arose out of a state of deep personal and communal crisis. Fischer had already served the parish for five years at the time of the schoolmaster’s suicide. Before this incident, the pastor explained in one of his earliest entries, he had considered it unnecessary to keep a record: “I and the sworn jurors decided all occurring incidents in such a way that we could hope to have given our best, followed the laws of our gracious lords, and defeated evil and planted good”.Footnote 18 Lienhart Weber’s death robbed him of this confidence. The pastor hoped that keeping a written memory of his activities would push him to remain vigilant and assertive in his future work “so that I never fail to warn and admonish”.Footnote 19 Philip Benedict writes that for pious men such as Fischer, “maintaining such documents served at once as an instrument of self-monitoring and self-improvement, as a way of sharing with others one’s personal experience of grace, and as a means of establishing a personal record of God’s graces and mercies that could be reread in times of ebbing faith to revive one’s assurance of one’s own election and to prompt a more ardent service of God”.Footnote 20 In Fischer’s case, furthermore, this exercise was of an essentially communal nature—the tribulations suffered by Brütten’s inhabitants inevitably constituted the pastor’s very own moments of divine temptation and grace.
Fischer’s records, meanwhile, not only predated but also surpassed the Zurich synod’s regulations in breadth and detail. After all, the synod’s writ from 1636 only asked pastors to protocol consistory sessions—an order already hard enough to enforce in most parishes.Footnote 21 Fischer’s records, in turn, move seamlessly between documenting official sessions and public acts and revealing deeply personal observations and intimate encounters. The pastor divided his records into two volumes, entitled “Acta Brüttensia Publica” and “Acta Brüttensia Privata”. Fischer subtitled the former as “a written inventory of what I said and did with my trusted parishioners of Brütten during the monthly Stillstand in church and parsonage in the presence of the village bailiff, the Ehegaumer, and elders of the parish”, while he called the latter a “short inventory of what I said and did at times with my parishioners in the parsonage and other places”.Footnote 22 “Public” and “private”, in Fischer’s understanding, thus constituted different realms of pastoral activity—one being the “public” institution of the Stillstand, the other being the practice of individual, “private” talk with his parishioners.Footnote 23 Both Fischer’s “public” and “private” interactions were inherently part of his responsibility of “diligently overseeing his whole flock daily and tirelessly”, and his decision to distinguish between them in his writings seems to have been first and foremost a means to provide an orderly account to prospective readers.Footnote 24 In all likelihood, Fischer intended his account to also serve as testimony of his activities to his successors in office and as proof of his diligence and thoroughness at a time when the death of Lienhart Weber had called those very qualities into question.Footnote 25 This is underscored by Fischer’s readiness to abandon his categorisation for the sake of comprehensibility—if an issue arose within one volume, Fischer would often document further steps in this matter within the same volume, no matter the place and mode of interaction. Thus, notes on consistory meetings found their way into the “Acta Privata” while intimate conversations between pastors and parishioners, in turn, spilled over into the “Acta Publica”.
Not much is known about Hans Rudolf Fischer before he arrived in Brütten. Born in 1601, the Zurich citizen was ordained in 1622 and became deacon in the city of Winterthur in 1623 before taking over the parish of Brütten in 1626.Footnote 26 To his great advantage, Fischer had his own house in Brütten and held some property in a nearby village, thus rendering him less dependent on contributions from his parishioners than many of his colleagues. The parish he had been allocated comprised around 200 parishioners in the village itself and surrounding hamlets. Households in Brütten seemed to have been relatively well-off—one villager told Fischer how no one had ever heard of a household forced into bankruptcy—yet the threat of dearth and poverty still remained tangible.
Although dominion over Brütten was shared in a complex arrangement between the Catholic abbey of Einsiedeln and the Reformed city of Zurich, religious life was strictly organised along the terms of the Zurich Reformed Church.Footnote 27 The Zurich city council passed the mandates and doctrines binding for the community and claimed jurisdiction over all disputes and offences. Although integrated into these larger worldly and spiritual hierarchies, power relations in 1630s Brütten retained a strong communal aspect. The village was governed by officials put forward by the village assembly itself who were then confirmed in a process of negotiation with the village’s rulers.Footnote 28 Local jurisdiction as well as the administration of village finances and commons lay in the hands of the Untervogt (usually referred to by Fischer as simply Vogt or “bailiff”) and two elders or Dorffmeyer, who reported to the bailiwick’s highest official, the Landvogt of Kyburg. Pastoral care and moral oversight in the village needed to factor in this division of powers and its occasionally conflicting understandings of order.Footnote 29
This chapter will approach Fischer’s conversations with his parishioners from two perspectives. In the first section, the focus will be on Fischer’s pastoral care in the sense of Seelsorge—cure of souls. Tracing Fischer’s effort to aid people afflicted by grave spiritual doubts, this section reconstructs a shared concern with sin and salvation expressed in a vocabulary that drew on tenets of Reformed belief on both the pastor’s and the parishioner’s side. However, it also shows how the pastor’s attempts at accessing people’s concerns were hampered by his position within the village and towards higher authorities. In the second section, this chapter then seeks to relate Fischer’s account to questions of moral oversight and discipline in early modern rural life. Looking at Fischer’s attempts to moderate Brütten’s drinking culture, this section argues that local power relations turned the local consistory into a relatively minor vehicle for the enforcement of Reformed norms. Fischer’s campaign against drinking was founded upon personal initiative and an occasionally successful, occasionally tenuous combination of private admonition and public reproach.
Pastoral Care and the Threat of Melancholy
The threat of melancholy—which had struck Brütten so violently with the suicide of the schoolmaster—never quite dissipated during the following years.Footnote 30 In his efforts to prevent another such tragedy, Hans Rudolf Fischer was constantly on the lookout for any signs of crisis among his parishioners. His conversations with parishioners struggling with spiritual doubts make up a large part of his records and confront us with a side of early modern rural pastoral care we are hardly familiar with.Footnote 31 Seeking to counter the spread of melancholy, Fischer needed to find ways to access a community that was partially indifferent or even hostile to his aims. Wielded the right way, community networks could aid his cause, yet they could just as easily turn against Fischer. Furthermore, the pastor also needed to balance his roles as caretaker of sick bodies and souls with his role as agent of discipline and order. This task required establishing different modes of address as well as different modes of confidentiality in his conversations with parishioners.Footnote 32
Fear for the salvation of the soul was a common affliction in 1630s Brütten. The pastor’s conversations reveal a widespread concern among his parishioners about the severity of their sinfulness and the limits of God’s grace—fears that were intimately connected to experiences of deprivation and social exclusion. Parishioners traced back their state of poverty and strife to God having abandoned them due to their sinful way of living—an abandonment perceived, despite Fischer’s frequent reminders of God’s grace, as permanent and absolute. One parishioner once told Fischer about being struck in broad daylight by a sudden vision of evil spirits on horses chasing him, shouting that “he has gorged and boozed all his life, sworn to do right so often yet done nothing; his belief is void, and he must come away with them”.Footnote 33
Faced with such existential sorrows, Fischer often liked to sit down with parishioners and explain to them the conditions of God’s grace and the extent of Christ’s sacrifice. “Two and a half hours” he spent with two widows on one occasion, as he noted, “comforting them and teaching them on a number of issues”.Footnote 34 Often, Fischer simply marked extended personal lectures by adding an “etc., with amply more words” (mit wytgloüffigen worten) at the end of an account.Footnote 35 In these conversations, the pastor presented divine grace as the defining factor in the relationship of believers with God. Fischer insisted in one such conversation that a “heartfelt trust in God the Almighty” was necessary so “that He in His pure grace and by Christ’s merit forgives our sins”.Footnote 36 Furthermore, faith in God was not just the path to salvation but also the most useful remedy against worldly concerns, for even though “God often withholds His help for long” (as the pastor conceded), He “still lives and His helping hand has not been withdrawn”.Footnote 37 At the same time, Fischer assured those shaken in their faith that moments of doubt were not only common, but could even be a mark of piety. “Even the most pious children of God”, the pastor consoled one parishioner, “yes, most of them indeed, often sink into grave doubts and great temptations”.Footnote 38 To underscore his points, Fischer drew extensively on scripture, bringing a Bible, prayer books, or works by leaders of the Zurich Reformed Church along with him on his visits and littering his lectures with citations from the Old and New Testament.Footnote 39 Although his parishioners certainly fashioned these biblical and catechetical examples to their own understandings, they formed a shared source of solace and edification for both parties.Footnote 40
Female parishioners, particularly those at the fringes of Brütten’s family networks, showed little hesitation in sharing their sorrows with the pastor. The village midwife repeatedly turned to the pastor when the death of a newborn threatened to bring her into disrepute.Footnote 41 Several of Brütten’s widows also sought the advice and help of the pastor in disputes with neighbours and relatives, with one Margretha Wäber complaining to Fischer that “she is abandoned by everyone, has much debt and barely manages to sustain herself”.Footnote 42 To those women whose material welfare and standing in the village was—either by occupation or by misfortune—tenuous and dependent on the goodwill of family and neighbours, the pastor represented both a kind spirit to turn to as well as someone able to put his weight behind their cause.Footnote 43 An outsider to the village’s family networks and yet a man conferred with the authority of his pastoral office and his position as head of a household, Fischer could act as an advocate for concerns which had a difficult standing within the village’s family networks.
Fischer’s spiritual care was thus tangled up with parish hierarchies and dynamics, a fact which became most evident in his ambiguous relationship with the male parish elite. On the one hand, male heads of households—or housefathers —shared and supported Fischer’s mission of strengthening faith in Brütten, not least by actively partaking in the Stillstand. Housefathers also informed Fischer of neighbours and friends struggling with their faith, even if they insisted on doing so in secret.Footnote 44 Furthermore, even if they denied the allegation, housefathers suspected of being afflicted with melancholy were open to discussing their doubts and temptations to some degree and—as Fischer liked to stress—often expressed gratitude for his edifying words.Footnote 45 Yet, at the same time, housefathers clearly viewed the pastor’s intervention with suspicion or even outright hostility.
The case of Ulrich Morff is illustrative in this case. In February 1633, “a good friend” informed Fischer that “Morff has been seized by severe melancholy concerning his salvation”.Footnote 46 While Morff himself stubbornly denied suffering from spiritual afflictions and attributed his occasional outbursts to either anger with his sons, too much drink, or bodily ailments, Fischer kept watch. Over the following weeks, the pastor gathered clues from different sources and questioned acquaintances and relatives of Morff until it finally became clear that Morff was indeed involved in several lawsuits and afflicted by crippling fears of death and damnation.Footnote 47
Useful information often reached Fischer through confidential and convoluted channels. While looking for clues on Morff’s case, Fischer once travelled to nearby Oberwinterthur to confer with Morff’s sister, who professed to have heard nothing. Overhearing their conversation, her daughter-in-law, however, told the pastor how some days earlier, Morff had drunkenly lamented to a neighbour that “he has great sorrow in his house”.Footnote 48 Afterwards, Fischer confronted Untervogt Jakob Steffen, who told the pastor that Morff’s wife had confided in his own wife, disclosing that Morff had indeed said that “praying is futile, he is lost”. Morff’s wife, the bailiff told Fischer, had explicitly demanded that “one shall not tell the pastor about this”.Footnote 49
In response, Fischer was intent on establishing a reputation of discreetness and secrecy, even withholding the identity of some of his sources from his own notes. Fischer emphatically assured distressed parishioners that he would keep their conversations private and took care to present himself as a spiritual advisor rather than a spiritual authority. “And if he reads something in the Holy Gospel which he does not understand”, Fischer once noted telling Ulrich Morff, “or if anything else is on his mind, he shall visit me in secret in the parsonage. There I will help him repent with God’s aid and keep to myself what he says and laments”.Footnote 50
Despite such assurances, no male parishioner ever actively sought out Fischer’s advice and some fiercely resisted the notion that they suffered from melancholy. Housefathers did communicate their grief to friends and neighbours in more or less subtle ways (for instance, by refusing to eat or staying awake all night) and yet sought to keep such information from reaching Fischer.Footnote 51 Bringing in the pastor in such situations always held the risk of incurring the wrath of one’s friends and neighbours. One Dorffmeyer complained to Fischer in 1632 how “it is said about him that he tells the pastor everything that goes on in the parish. If somebody says something, the people hate him”.Footnote 52
For the early modern rural pastor, spiritual care was hardly a straightforward affair.Footnote 53 Pastor and parishioners clearly drew on a shared vocabulary to express fears and concerns which placed questions of grace and salvation at the centre of individual and communal life. Based on these shared concerns, the pastor also managed to establish intimate relationships with many of his parishioners, in many cases women, becoming privy to fears which went to the core to their social and spiritual existence. However, parishioners could also stubbornly refuse the pastor’s offers of spiritual aid, particularly when matters of patriarchal honour, authority, and autonomy were at stake. Pastoral care in the seventeenth-century village necessitated a combination of zeal and restraint, an awareness of power relations within the community and its households, as well as persistence in repeating one’s message over and over. Talking in private formed a crucial part of these efforts as it allowed pastors to cut through the tight bonds of family and village communities, to build a wide-ranging network of informants and supporters within the village and beyond, and to bypass the conventions of honour and reputation which required that so many concerns remained unspoken.
Pastoral Care and the Threat of Drink
If the private discussion of spiritual doubts and melancholy could already put a strain on the relationship between pastor and parishioners, what about the public reproach of sin? In theory, the Stillstand was in charge of calling to order “perpetrators of both tablets of the Ten Commandments […] and all statutes of our gracious lords concerning common piety, discipline, and honour”.Footnote 54 As outlined above, biblical precedence provided a model for this process which proposed private reproach first, admonishment in the presence of one or two witnesses second, and finally, admonishment before the consistory or even the whole parish.Footnote 55 Yet how did such a model square up against reality?
One persistent topic in 1630s Brütten seems especially suited to discuss this question—village drinking culture. After the Reformation, drinking habits had been increasingly subjected to official regulation, particularly in Reformed territories where authorities sought to curtail the occasions, places, and times in which their subjects got drunk with increasing detail.Footnote 56 Fischer also liked to remind his parishioners that the drunken spirit could not pray but was instead prone to swearing and cursing, to neglecting his Christian duties towards his family and neighbours, and committing other offences against the divine order. “First”, Fischer explained, “he and other such fellows will reject the call of God, then they will neglect Christian prayer for themselves and their wives and children. But where there is no right prayer, what does the evil spirit not do?”Footnote 57 While Fischer worked hard to convince people of the dangers of drinking, collective boozing did remain a key practice of early modern sociability, in Brütten as elsewhere—as a parishioner once cheekily retorted to Fischer, “if all drunkards go to hell, it sure must be mighty large”.Footnote 58
Communal conviviality in Brütten centred on the house of Untervogt Jakob Steffen.Footnote 59 As bailiff, Steffen occupied the highest-ranking office in the village and was charged with various judicial and administrative duties. At the same time, Steffen also held the only licence in the village to serve food and alcohol in his house—a business which, for want of extensive property, was crucial to sustain his household. His inn provided the central stage for Brütten’s adult male villagers to make merry and indulge in drink.
Jakob Steffen was therefore a key figure in Fischer’s attempts to turn Brütten into a more sober and pious community in more than one way. As bailiff, Steffen was an important aide of the pastor, repeatedly supplying Fischer with the latest village rumours, denouncing his co-parishioners during Stillstand meetings, or accompanying the pastor on visits to troublesome parishioners. However, Fischer and Steffen were also frequently at odds with one another, particularly when it came to the role of the Stillstand in controlling drinking culture. During Stillstand sessions, Fischer would often lament the drinking bouts in the bailiff’s inn, while Steffen, in turn, would strike back when the pastor became too domineering.Footnote 60 Early in 1644, after being reproached repeatedly by Fischer, Steffen once retorted in front of the whole consistory: “[H]e does not care about me, does not fear me, wants to host people, wants to go to heaven as much as me, knows the way as well as I do”.Footnote 61
Like the other Stillstand members, Steffen too clearly struggled with reconciling the established traditions of communal life with his oath to divine and worldly authorities. Meanwhile, Fischer’s own approach to the Stillstand was beset with inconsistencies. On the one hand, the pastor sought to portray the consistory as a place for the parish community to resolve its own conflicts. Repeatedly, the pastor insisted that it was not him, but the other consistory members who needed to lodge and decide on accusations.Footnote 62 A number of times, the pastor even experimented with convening the Stillstand in front of all parishioners “so that the whole village may hear what one does in the meetings and it is deplored all the less if a juror brings something forward”.Footnote 63 On the other hand, Fischer stressed that the consistory ultimately remained accountable to the Zurich authorities. During consistory sessions, Fischer frequently reminded deviant parishioners of the oaths that they had sworn to their rulers, referred to recently proclaimed mandates and prohibitions, and invoked the harrowing measures of punishment at the disposal of the Zurich council.
Reconciling the different understandings of order and authority that came to collide in the Stillstand remained a notoriously thorny issue, and the consistory retained an ambiguous position within Brütten’s conflict culture. Certainly, the Stillstand did not figure as a measure of last resort or as a definite turn to formal processes when all informal means had been exhausted without improvement. Most of the ‘usual suspects’ instead found themselves cited before the Stillstand one month, admonished by the pastor in private the next, and cited to the parsonage and reproached by the pastor again the following month. One short period in the convoluted conflict between bailiff and pastor may serve to underline this dynamic. In November and December 1634, the pastor privately reprimanded Jakob Steffen several times for his impropriety in hosting gatherings at his tavern, addressing the topic anew the following month in a Stillstand session. An altercation between Steffen and a Dorffmeyer landed both in front of the regional court the following February, after which they were admonished before the Stillstand yet another time in May. For a couple of months, things were quiet until, one Sunday in September 1635, the pastor again admonished Steffen in private for cursing at his family.Footnote 64 Stillstand proceedings were thus much less dependent on any abstract model than on village politics re-negotiated on a case-by-case basis.
A crucial part of Fischer’s efforts at creating a more pious community involved the use of informal village networks. In this effort, private talk was essential. For one, private talk allowed the pastor to get a sense of the disruptions caused by boozing culture within the community itself. Fischer occasionally mentioned “rumours going round in the whole village” that bailiff Steffen sometimes reached into the community’s coffers to settle his personal accounts.Footnote 65 Even some of the regular patrons of the bailiff’s inn, Fischer noted, seemed to be rather uncomfortable with the pull that Brütten’s drinking culture exerted on them. The pastor learned as much when he confronted the newly elected Dorffmeyer, Hans Balthensperg who, despite having once been an exceptionally sober fellow, had developed a habit of spending his days in Steffen’s inn after he had taken office. The regretful Balthensperg professed to “know well his mistake” but declared that “if he did not drink like the others, they would despise him”.Footnote 66
Brütten’s drinking fellows, furthermore, incurred significant expenses at Steffen’s inn while simultaneously neglecting their household duties, leaving their wives behind with scarce funds and mounting work.Footnote 67 “One after the other, wives go to the bailiff’s house, crying and wailing in the morning and afternoon to fetch their husbands”, Fischer wrote in 1638, “and they complain that their men are being taken away and made as licentious as the bailiff himself”.Footnote 68 Some of these women actively addressed Fischer, imploring him to make their husbands amend their ways. Anna Rösch, the pregnant wife of Jagli Trindler, turned to the pastor in April 1638, stricken by grief over the drunkenness of her husband to such degree that “she could not properly pray anymore and […] is robbed of her wits and senses”.Footnote 69 Fischer sought to harness this current of despair and discontent among Brütten’s female parishioners by appealing to the bailiff’s wife Barbara Bachmann instead of the bailiff himself. Fischer visited Bachmann personally and also sent his own wife Dorothea over to talk to her, “hoping something might be accomplished this way”.Footnote 70
At other times, Fischer turned to friends and relatives of offenders for advice and assistance. Communal work ostensibly offered the most innocuous environment for such inquiries. In May 1632, while clearing the local forest with the other villagers, Fischer approached Jagli Trindler, the son of the drunkard Joseph Trindler, for advice on his father. Fischer and Trindler agreed to let the family try to deal with the problem themselves for another month, after which Fischer would bring the matter before the Stillstand.Footnote 71 The following year, Fischer used the communal cutting of the hay to talk to another parishioner called Jörg Balthensperg about the case of a neglected elder widow among Balthensperg’s relatives. Balthensperg promised to fulfil Fischer’s assignment “to inquire into the matter diligently and earnestly, but in secret, and as if he was merely asking for no reason at all”.Footnote 72
Talking in private also gave Fischer the opportunity to deploy a vocabulary that differed distinctly from his appeals in the Stillstand. While his lectures in the consistory were dominated by appeals to oaths and mandates, the menace of God’s punishment loomed large in Fischer’s more intimate reprimands. The threat of boozing and its accompanying sins to the salvation of the soul in the afterlife were one thing. “This I wanted to tell him as guardian of his soul”, Fischer implored one notorious drunkard, “that it is burning, that the sword of divine punishment will certainly come over his soul and body if he does not turn his life around”.Footnote 73 The pastor extensively played to his parishioners’ fear of divine punishment in both the afterlife and in the present. The unrepentant, he insisted, were never safe from divine wrath and were particularly vulnerable when their mind was weakened by drink. “He sees well how our Lord can come so suddenly at times when we would not suspect it”, Fischer warned another parishioner, adding that “if God would strike out at him at such a time when he lies there in all drunkenness like a dead man, think how bad could it turn out”.Footnote 74 Notorious drunkards, Fischer suggested, effectively revoked their covenant with the Lord and excluded themselves from God’s protecting hand.Footnote 75
The divine community Fischer invoked with such words was certainly meaningful to his parishioners as well, and yet it was only one of several that they found themselves a part of. Although the Brütten Stillstand charged villagers—including its own members—with drunken swearing, cursing and adultery, excessive drinking on feast days, or missing church service while drunk plenty of times, it never acted to curb the practice of drinking itself. Contrary to Fischer’s demands, the Brütten Stillstand only enforced those rules that Brütten’s boozing fellowship itself considered integral to their cherished practice. Nevertheless, the pastor’s efforts were hardly a lonely crusade. Fischer took up concerns related to him by villagers—particularly by those afflicted by the consequences of drinking culture without playing much part in it—and tried to act on them according to the possibilities available to him. Although official responsibilities as well as spiritual convictions could provide strong motives to support the pastor in his mission, they could hardly override material needs and the mutual dependencies upon which the village community was founded. Like the pastor himself, villagers too needed to manoeuvre between different communities of belonging as well as the value systems attached to them. Private talk allowed a negotiation between these systems and their competing demands without openly calling into question the integrity of the village community.
Conclusion
Hans Rudolf Fischer was part of a movement seeking to impose Christian order on all aspects of rural life. To achieve this end, the pastor needed to navigate Brütten’s intricate web of conflicting concerns and agendas without causing further strife. For this task, the consistory often turned out to be too harsh an instrument, however crucial the pastor doubtlessly considered it. The Stillstand demanded its members to publicly break with their relatives, drinking fellows, and neighbours—an act many were unwilling to perform. Abetting his initiatives in the Stillstand with the help of informal networks built through private talk could ease this process. Yet, private talk also constituted an entirely separate realm of interaction—one which allowed the pastor to identify and address individual concerns in more subtle ways and to invoke different registers of Reformed orthodoxy. At the same time, private conversation and public condemnation could never be neatly discerned from each other despite Fischer’s best efforts. Fischer’s embeddedness within village circles encouraged restraint in his handling of the consistory while the shadow of his institutional role as an agent of disciplinary control loomed over his intimate interactions.
Hans Rudolf Fischer’s “Acta Publica” and “Acta Privata” provide testimony of the multiple practices, occasions, and sites of pastor-parishioner interaction in the early modern parish. A magnified view of the social fabric of the early modern rural parish opens up in between the lines of Hans Rudolf Fischer’s diaries, revealing a village where questions of gender and status determined the division of work, property, and authority, the organisation of sociability, as well as the understanding of emotional and spiritual affliction. Not just the pastor, but each of his parishioners also needed to conform to conflicting demands: Bailiff Jakob Steffen needed to fulfil his role as the secular guardian of order in his community while supporting his family through the proceeds of his inn; widows needed to maintain the outward veneer of familiar harmony while fighting their own children for a liveable allowance; the village midwife needed to figure out how to avoid becoming the scapegoat after a newborn’s death. While Fischer—like many of his fellow pastors—could often see himself on a lonely mission against a parish which was at best indifferent and at worst hostile, his notes reveal him and his parishioners as firmly placed in a common pursuit for a Christian community. In private conversations in the parsonage, on the streets and fields, and in people’s homes, Fischer deeply shaped his community in intimate interaction with his parishioners.
Notes
- 1.
Staatsarchiv Zurich TAI 1.562, ERKGA Brütten IV A 1 a, Teil 1, S. I-VIII, 1631: Titel und Vorrede: “Uff fleißiges erkundigen unnd erforschen hab ich volgende sachen von imm vernommen unnd erfahren, die mir aber gantz unbewust unnd unbekant gsein sind”. Fischer’s records, along with those from other seventeenth-century parishes in the domain of the city-state of Zurich, have been transcribed and published digitally by the Staatsarchiv Zurich. See https://www.archives-quickaccess.ch/search/stazh/stpzh, accessed 2 February 2022. Fischer’s records can be accessed at https://suche.staatsarchiv.djiktzh.ch/detail.aspx?ID=660736, accessed 2 February 2022. Fischer’s notes, as I will explain below, are subdivided into two different bundles called “Acta Brüttensia Publica” and “Acta Brüttensia Privata”. In the following discussion, I will refer to the “Acta Publica” as AbPu and to the “Acta Privata” as AbPr.
- 2.
ABPu Vorrede und Titel: “In reden unnd wortten über die maßen unfletig unnd unzüchtig gsein sein, das man kum seins glichen funden”.
- 3.
On suicide and dishonour, see David Lederer, “The Dishonorable Dead: Perceptions of Suicide in Early Modern Germany”, in Ehrkonzepte in der frühen Neuzeit. Identitäten und Abgrenzungen, ed. by Sibylle Backmann et al. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998), 349–365.
- 4.
Staatsarchiv Zurich TAI 1.562, ERKGA Brütten IV A 1 a, Teil 1, S. I-VIII, 1631: Titel und Vorrede, pp. 1–7. Fischer’s records, along with those from other seventeenth-century parishes in the domain of the city-state of Zurich, have been transcribed and published digitally by the Staatsarchiv Zurich, https://www.archives-quickaccess.ch/search/stazh/stpzh, accessed 2 January 2022. Fischer’s records can be accessed at https://suche.staatsarchiv.djiktzh.ch/detail.aspx?ID=660736, accessed 2 January 2022. Fischer’s notes, as I will explain below, are subdivided into two parts. In the following, I will refer to the “Acta Publica” as AbPu, and to the “Acta Privata” as AbPr.
- 5.
ABPu, Titel und Vorrede: “Uff fleißiges erkundigen unnd erforschen hab ich volgende sachen von imm vernommen unnd erfahren, die mir aber gantz unbewust unnd unbekant gsein sind”.
- 6.
James Goodale, “Pfarrer als Aussenseiter. Landpfarrer und religiöses Leben in Sachsen zur Reformationszeit”, Historische Anthropologie 7:2 (1999), 191–211; James Goodale, “Pastors, Privation, and the Process of Reformation in Saxony”, Sixteenth Century Journal 33:1 (2002), 71–92; Robert W. Scribner, “Wie wird man Aussenseiter? Ein- und Ausgrenzung im frühneuzeitlichen Deutschland”, in Aussenseiter zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. by Norbert Fischer and Marion Kobelt-Groch (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 21–46; Susan C. Karant-Nunn, “Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism in Saxony, 1555–1675”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 24:4 (1994), 615–637.
- 7.
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550–1750 (London–New York: Routledge 1989); Bruce Tolley, Pastors and Parishioners in Württemberg during the Late Reformation, 1581–1621 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); Scott C. Dixon, Contesting the Reformation (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). On Catholic clericalism and anti-clericalism, see Marc R. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
- 8.
ABPu 1631 Titel und Vorrede, 1. See also Nicole Zellweger, “Wächter der Seele und Hüter des Gesetzes. Zürcher Pfarrer als Seelsorger”, in Gelebte Reformation. Zürich 1500–1800, ed. by Francisca Loetz (Zürich: TVZ, 2022), 410–432.
- 9.
Research on visitations and consistories goes back decades and is consequently vast. For an overview of first-wave research, see the contributions in Ernst Walter Zeeden and Peter Thaddäus Lang, eds., Kirche und Visitation. Beiträge zur Erforschung des frühneuzeitlichen Visitationswesens in Europa (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984). For an extended discussion of newer research, see Dixon, Contesting the Reformation, as well as the overview by Päivi Räisanen-Schröder, “Improving the Christian Community: Agents and Objects of Control in Early Modern Church Visitations”, in Morality, Crime and Social Control in Europe 1500–1900, ed. by Olli Matikainen and Satu Lidman (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2014), 127–156. For the Swiss Confederacy, see esp. Heinrich R. Schmidt, Dorf und Religion. Reformierte Sittenzucht in Berner Landgemeinden der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich–Vienna: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 1995). For Zurich, see Hans Ulrich Bächtold, Heinrich Bullinger vor dem Rat. Zur Gestaltung und Verwaltung des Zürcher Staatswesens in den Jahren 1531 bis 1575 (Bern: Lang, 1982). For the history of the Zurich consistories, see Daniel Pünter, “Der Stillstand als gemeindliche Verwaltungsbehörde und Wächter über Sitte und Moral”, in Memorial und Stäfner Handel 1794/1795, ed. by Christoph Mörgeli (Stäfa: Gemeinde Lesegesellschaft, 1995).
- 10.
On consistories, see esp. Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven–London: Yale University Press, 2002); Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003).
- 11.
Judith Pollmann, “Off the Record: Problems in the Quantification of Calvinist Church Discipline”, The Sixteenth Century Journal 33:2 (2002), 423–438.
- 12.
On the discussion on state-centric versus community-centric approaches to social disciplining, see Heinrich Richard Schmidt, “Sozialdisziplinierung? Ein Plädoyer für das Ende des Etatismus in der Konfessionalisierungsforschung”, Historische Zeitschrift, 265 (1997), 639–682 and Schmidt, Dorf und Religion.
- 13.
Ordnung der Dieneren der Kilchen in der Statt unnd uff der Landschafft Zürich, ernüweret und inn Truck verfertiget, [Zurich] 1628, ZB Zurich, https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-9896, accessed 2 January 2022. See also Zürcher Kirchenordnungen 1520–1675 (Zurich: TVZ, 2011), ed. by Emidio Campi and Philipp Wälchli, 672–692; Bruce Gordon, Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zurich, 1532–1580 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1992); and Wilhelm Baltischweiler, Die Institutionen der evangelisch-reformierten Landeskirche des Kantons Zürich (Ph.D. diss., University of Zurich, 1904).
- 14.
Ordnung der Dieneren der Kilchen in der Statt unnd uff der Landschafft Zürich, ernüweret und inn Truck verfertiget, 23: “einen jetlichen tag unnd nacht ermanen/besonder/und in allweg trachten/daß syn lehr ihr frucht trage/unnd derselben von allem volck gehorsamlich gevolget werde”.
- 15.
On the biblical foundation of church discipline, see Scott M. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–1609 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 184, 188–189.
- 16.
Ordnung der Dieneren der Kilchen in der Statt unnd uff der Landschafft Zürich, 1628, 24: “die fählbaren personen zum ersten verwarnet/un vom unrechten abzustahn/vätterlich/fründtlich/tugenlich/yferig/ernstlich/allwegen nach gstalt der sachen gmanet werden söllend”.
- 17.
Hedwig Strehler, Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte der Zürcher Landschaft. Kirche und Schule im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Lachen: Buchdruckerei Gutenberg, 1934), 42. Fischer attested this change to a high-profile trial against a peasant suspected of magical healing practices. See ABPu April 1636.
- 18.
ABPu 1631 Titel und Vorrede: “Schrifftliche verzeichnus unnd b'schrybung aller der fählen unnd sachen, so sich in meiner vertruwten pfarr Brütten alhie vom 1626. jar […] zugetragt unnd begäben habend bis uff das 1631. jar, hab ich unnöttig sein geachtet, wyl ich mit sampt den gschwornen unnd ehegaumren die fürgfallnen fähl jederzeit alßo decidiert, das wir verhoffen wir unser bestes gethon, den satzungen u. gnedigen herren g'folget unnd das böß abgwert unnd das gutt pflanzet habind”.
- 19.
ABPu 1631 Titel und Vorrede: “als hab ich von derselbigen zeitt an umb gewüßer ursachen wëgen, das ich nüt versumpt mit wahrnen unnd vermannen etc., angfangen schrifftlich verzeichnen”.
- 20.
Philip Benedict, “Some Uses of Autobiographical Documents in the Reformed Tradition”, in Von der dargestellten Person zum erinnerten Ich. Europäische Selbstzeugnisse als historische Quellen, ed. by Kaspar von Greyerz, Hans Medick, and Patrice Veit (Cologne: Böhlau 2001), 366. See also Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. chapter 12. Lorenz Heiligensetzer makes a similar point about a Reformed pastor in nearby Toggenburg in chapter 5 of his work Getreue Kirchendiener—Gefährdete Pfarrherren. Deutschschweizer Prädikanten des 17. Jh. In ihren Lebensbeschreibungen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006).
- 21.
In many—if not most—parishes, pastors would disobey the synod’s order altogether. See, for instance, the Stillstandsprotokoll from Kyburg in 1675, https://suche.staatsarchiv.djiktzh.ch/detail.aspx?ID=2136864. In other parishes, Stillstand records would be destroyed by pastors or parishioners. See, for instance, Hedingen 1695–1727, https://suche.staatsarchiv.djiktzh.ch/detail.aspx?ID=1496937. See also Baltischweiler, Institutionen der evangelisch-reformierten Landeskirche, 25–26.
- 22.
ABPu 1631 Titel und Vorrede, VII; ABPr 1631 Titel und Vorrede, S.I.
- 23.
On early modern conceptions of public and private, see Erica Longfellow, “Public, Private and the Household in Early Seventeenth-Century England”, Journal of British Studies 45:2 (2006), 313–334. On varying definitions of privacy more generally, see Jeff Weintraub, “The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction”, in Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, ed. by Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar (Chicago–London: Chicago University Press, 1997), 1–42 and Peter von Moos, “Das Öffentliche und das Private im Mittelalter. Für einen kontrollierten Anachronismus”, in Das Öffentliche und Private in der Vormoderne, ed. by Gert Melville and Peter von Moos (Cologne: Böhlau, 1998), 3–86.
- 24.
Ordnung der Dieneren der Kilchen in der Statt unnd uff der Landschafft Zürich, 1628, 24. On privacy and moral discipline, see Rudolf Schlögl, “Bedingungen dörflicher Kommunikation. Gemeindliche Öffentlichkeit und Visitation im 16. Jahrhundert”, in Kommunikation in der ländlichen Gesellschaft vom Mittelalter bis zur Moderne, ed. by Werner Rösener (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 241–262.
- 25.
While Fischer never states such an intention openly, his notes sometimes feature cross-references and explanatory statements clearly designed to help readers navigate his account and comprehend his chosen course of action. On the practice of self-narrative among Swiss Reformed pastors, see Heiligensetzer, Getreue Kirchendiener. On the demands placed on pastors in the Zurich Reformed Church, see Bruce Gordon, “The Protestant Ministry and the Cultures of Rule: The Reformed Zurich Clergy of the Sixteenth Century”, in The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe, ed. by C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 137–155.
- 26.
Emanuel Dejung and Willy Wuhrmann (eds.), Zürcher Pfarrerbuch 1519–1952 (Zürich: Schulthess, 1953), 273.
- 27.
On the Zwinglian church, see Emidio Campi, “The Reformation in Zurich”, in A Companion to the Swiss Reformation, ed. by Amy Nelson Burnett and Emidio Campi (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 59–125.
- 28.
Gottfried Morf and Hans Kläui, Geschichte der Gemeinde Brütten (Brütten 1972).
- 29.
Keith Wrightson, “Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England”, in An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. by John Brewer and John Styles (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1980), 21–46.
- 30.
On melancholy and suicide, see Vera Lind, “The Suicidal Mind and Body: Examples from Northern Germany”, in From Sin to Insanity: Suicide in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Jeffrey Watt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 64–80. On melancholy as a spiritual condition, see Jeremy Schmidt, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Angus Gowland, “The Problem of Early Modern Melancholy”, Past and Present 191 (2006), 77–120; Alexander Kästner, Tödliche Geschichte(n). Selbsttötungen in Kursachsen im Spannungsfeld von Normen und Praktiken (1547–1815) (Konstanz: UVK, 2012). On Schwermut and suicide in early modern Zurich, see Markus Schär, Seelennöte der Untertanen. Selbstmord, Melancholie und Religion im Alten Zürich, 1500–1800 (Zürich: Chronos, 1985).
- 31.
On doctrinal and legal frameworks for pastoral approaches to melancholy and suffering, see Ronald Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
- 32.
On early modern patient-healer confidentiality, see Natacha Klein Käfer, “Dynamics of Patient-Healer Confidentiality in Early Modern Witch Trials”, in Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches, ed. by Michaël Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, and Mette Birkedal Bruun (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 281–296.
- 33.
ABPr March 1639: “Als den 20. martii Ulrich Morff in ein bi seim hauß nechst glëgne matten gangen, seigs imme (also zeigt er selbst an) einsmolls also worden, ja wie er meine heig er es gsëhen, das alls voll böse geister mit spießen uff pferden so kheine köpf ghan uff ihn zuritind, hinnen unnd vornen uff ihn stächind unnd imm fürhaltind alle seine sünden, mit vermëlden, was er wölle machen. Habe sein lëbtag gfräßen unnd gsoffen, sich villmohl erbotten rëcht zthun unnd seig doch nit beschëhen, sein glaub seig nüt, müß mit ihnen fort”. On visions and dreams in Protestant culture, see Andreas Bähr, “Furcht, divinatorischer Traum und autobiographisches Schreiben in der Frühen Neuzeit”, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 34:1 (2007), 1–32, and Alec Ryrie, “Sleeping, Waking and Dreaming in Protestant Piety”, in Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain, ed. by Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie (London: Routledge, 2012), 73–92.
- 34.
ABPr March 1632.
- 35.
See, for instance, ABPu June 1632, March 1633, December 1634, January 1636, January 1637.
- 36.
ABPr April 1632: “zu sölicher erkantnus unßrer sünden wie auch zum roüwen derselbigen ghöre ein herzliches vertrouwen zu gott dem allmächtigen, das er uns die selbigen uß luthrer seiner gnad wie auch umb Christi verdienst willen gnedigklich nachlaßen unnd verzihen werde”. On Zurich Reformed theology, see Gottfried W. Locher, Die Zwinglianische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1979).
- 37.
ABPr April 1632; ABPu February 1632: “Wer der seig, so ihnne nun in die 70 jar so vätterlich erhalten, das imm an zeitlicher narung nüt gmanglet. Ob es nit gsein der eewig allmechtig gott? etc. Nun, der lebi noch unnd seig sein hand zhälffen nit verkürtzt […]”.
- 38.
ABPr February 1633: “Auch die aller frömbsten kinder gotts, ja die selbigen mehrtheils alle, fallind offt in schwere gedancken unnd große anfëchtungen”. On religious doubts as a mark of Protestant piety, see Ryrie, Being Protestant. See also the discussion in Schmidt, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul, chapter 3.
- 39.
On the Zurich clergy, see Gordon, Clerical Discipline. On the Bible as the basis of Reformed pastoral care, see Andreas Mühling, “Die Bibel als Trostquelle bei Heinrich Bullinger. Vom Umgang mit der Bibel in Bullingers Trostschriften”, in Auslegung und Hermeneutik der Bibel in der Reformationszeit, ed. by Christine Christ-von Wedel and Sven Grosse (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 265–280.
- 40.
For example, one woman once asked Fischer for some holy water, meaning to add it to a soup she was preparing as a remedy against the bed-wetting of her son. Appalled, Fischer denied the request and contacted his superior for advice in such an embarrassing affair. See ABPu September 1641. Generally, however, Fischer was well-content with his parishioners’ doctrinal knowledge. Most of Brütten’s young parishioners, for example, could recite not only the Articles of Faith and the Lord’s Prayer, but also large parts of the Catechism. See StaZH E II 700.13, Verzeichnis aller Ehen, Hushaltungen, Kindren, Knächten und Diensten der Pfarr zu Brütten, 1634 as well as ABPu March 1638, January 1639, March 1640.
- 41.
ABPr April 1632, June 1636.
- 42.
ABPr December 1633: “Als ich Margretha Wäber Jagli Rüdimans s[elig] hinderlaßne wittfrau bsucht unnd sie tröst, klagte sie s[onde]rlich, sie seig von jederman jetz verlaßen, heig vill schulden unnd mög sich kum erhalten”. See also ABPr April 1632.
- 43.
On widowhood, see Ulrich Pfister, “Haushalt und Familie auf der Zürcher Landschaft des Ancien Régime”, in Schweiz im Wandel: Studien zur neueren Gesellschaftsgeschichte, ed. by Sebastian Brändli, David Gugerli, Jaun Rudolf, and Ulrich Pfister (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1990). For consistories as vehicles for female agency, see Schmidt, Dorf und Religion.
- 44.
On housefathers, see Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). On patriarchalism turned against housefathers, see Heinrich R. Schmidt, “Hausväter vor Gericht. Der Patriarchalismus als zweischneidiges Schwert”, in Hausväter, Priester, Kastraten. Zur Konstruktion von Männlichkeit in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. by Martin Dinges (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 213–236. On manhood, honour, and credit, see Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2006). On economic failure and suicide, see Jeffrey R. Watt, Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001).
- 45.
This accords roughly to the different modes of emotional restraint and openness described by Bernard Capp in his essay “‘Jesus Wept’ But Did the Englishman? Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern England”, Past and Present 224:1 (2014), 75–108.
- 46.
ABPr February 1633: “Den 11. tag diß ist mir von einem guten fründ z'wüßen gmacht worden, wie Ulrich Morff ein zimlicher schwermutt gfaßet seiner selligkeit halben etc”.
- 47.
On the historiography of early modern fear, see Andreas Bähr, “Die Furcht der Frühen Neuzeit. Paradigmen, Hintergründe und Perspektiven einer Kontroverse”, Historische Anthropologie 16:2 (2008), 291–309.
- 48.
ABPr February 1633: “Morndeß gieng ich zu seiner schwöster der alten undervögtin zu Oberwinterthur (uß befelch vogts, die wüß was imm seig) unnd fragte sie ernstlich. Aber sie wolt auch nüt wüßen ohne allein, es bekümbre ihn, das er sölt die schwer krancheit überkommen. […] In allem gsprech sagte der undervögtin sohnsfrauw, Ulrich Morff habe am frytag, wie er vom meister Jacoben kommen (deme er das Waßer z'bschauwen gebrocht hatt) unnd mit ihrem brüder Hans Rudli Stäffen heimgritten, trunckner wyß gredt zu ihnen also: O Hans Rudli bätt, bätt weidlich unnd thu rächt, ich han ein große nott in meim huß. Unnd als Hans Rudli gfraget, öb dan etwar in seim huß kranch seig, heig er gsagt nein. Doruff habe er Hans Rudli nit wyters ihnne Ulrichen Morffen dörffen fragen”.
- 49.
ABPr February 1633: “Vogt Stäffen zeigt den 4. martii an, dises mans frauw habe zu siner frauwen gsagt unnd darbi hoch verbotten, das sie es sonst niemandts sägen sölle, ir man Ulrich habe gredt, bätten seig vergëbens, er seig verlohren, das sie 4 tag lang kum gnug mögen sorg han. Doch söll man dem pfarer nüt von dem ding sagen”.
- 50.
ABPu April 1633: “Unnd da er etwan in h. schrifft etwas läse unnd nit verstande oder sonst imme etwas anglëgen, sölle er heimlich zu mir ins pfarhus kommen. Da wölle ich ihme mit gottes hilff fein z'ruwen hälffen unnd was er klage unnd sage bi mir selber bhalten etc”.
- 51.
For instance, the case of Schwiderus Balthensperg in ABPu February 1632.
- 52.
ABPr August 1632: “Den 19. augusti fragte ich Felix Balthensperg den küffer einen dorffmeyer, ob er nüt ghöri von des Schwideris (der sich entlibt) volck, wie sie mit ein andren lëbind etc. Er antwortet, er ghöre gar nüt. Er klagte sich aber gegen mir, man gëb von ihm uß, er sage dem pfarer sonst alles, was in der gmeind fürgang. Wën einer etwas sag, so haßind d'lüt ihn etc”.
- 53.
See also Warren Sabean, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Hans-Christoph Rublack, “Der wohlgeplagte Priester. Vom Selbstverständnis lutheranischer Geistlichkeit im Zeitalter der Orthodoxie”, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 16:1 (1989), 1–30.
- 54.
Stillstandsordnung von 1656, Staatsarchiv Zürich E II 2, 431–441, cit. Pünter, “Der Stillstand als gemeindliche Verwaltungsbehörde und Wächter über Sitte und Moral”, 77f.
- 55.
Helga Schnabel-Schüle, “Calvinistische Kirchenzucht in Württemberg? Zur Theorie und Praxis der württembergischen Kirchenkonvente”, Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte 49 (1990), 170–223.
- 56.
On drinking in early modern society, see Beat Kümin, Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); B. Ann Tlusty, Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001); Mark Hailwood, Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014). On Zurich specifically, see also Fritz Blanke, “Reformation und Alkoholismus”, Zwingliana 9:2 (1949), 75–89 and Gordon, Clerical Discipline, 129–130.
- 57.
ABPr December 1634: “Anfangs so schrittind er unnd andre sölche gsellen uß dem bruff gotts, darzu sie gott brüfft. Demnach versuminds durch sölch ding ihr christl. gebätt für sich unnd ir wib unnd kind. Wo aber khein rächt bätten seig, sölle er bedëncken, was der böß fiendt nit thüge?”
- 58.
ABPr May 1634: “Den 3. diß gieng ich zu Felix Balthensperg ihnne ernstlich von seim vertruncknen wäsen abmannende. Empfieng aber spröden bscheid: Gäb imm niemand nüt dran, wen die vertruncknen all in d'hell kömmind, so müß sie groß sein”. See also Lyndal Roper, “Drinking, Whoring and Gorging: Brutish Indiscipline and the Formation of Protestant Identity”, in Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Lyndal Roper (London: Routledge, 1994), 145–170; Johannes Wahl, “Kulturelle Distanz und alltägliches Handeln. Ökonomie und Predigt im Spannungsfeld von Pfarrfamilie und Laien”, in Ländliche Frömmigkeit. Konfessionskulturen und Lebenswelten 1500–1850, ed. by Norbert Haag et al. (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002), 43–58.
- 59.
Another tavern existed for some years in the household of Jagli Trindler, but Trindler seems to have stopped hosting gatherings around 1633.
- 60.
For appeals to denounce Steffen, see ABPu April 1640.
- 61.
ABPu April 1634: “Er ward trutzig, frag mir nüt nach, förcht mich nit, wöll wirtten, begär so wol in himmel als ich, wüß den wëg so woll als ich etc. Ich antwortete, mög woll wirtten, aber den sazungen gmeß. Nit der den wäg zum himmel wüße, der denselbigen auch gange unnd wandle, werd inn himmel kommen”.
- 62.
E.g. ABPr May 1632.
- 63.
ABPu October 1633: “hab ich die fürgsezten imm biwëßen der gantzen gmeind gfraget, was sie wüßind, das in diser monatsfrist fürgangen were wider die satzungen unßrer gnedigen herren, das sie ihres eids yndënck sein unnd trülich ohn forcht anzeigen wöllind unnd söllind, damit grad die gantz gmeind höre, was man in denen stillstënden handle unnd verrichte unnd man es desto minder zürne, wan ein geeideter etwas anzeigt, das wider die satzungen begangen worden. Hieruff die umbfrag ghalten worden unnd wolt mit namen keiner der fürgsezten etwas anzeigen unnd wüßen”. Tellingly, this only made members of the Stillstand even less willing to accuse their fellow parishioners of any wrongdoing. See also ABPu December 1634, January 1637.
- 64.
ABPu January—May 1635; ABPr November 1634—September 1635.
- 65.
ABPr August 1634.
- 66.
ABPr March 1638: “Unnd wën nun des vogts hauß nit weri, so were es gut handlen. Thüge er nit wie andre, so verachte man ihn”. See also the statement by Joseph Trindler in April 1638: “Könt woll erkënnen, er wüße woll wies ein gstalt, wölle best seins vermögens sich gaumen. Unnd seit, man sölt eben ins vogthauß nit also wirtten. Man müßts nit lyden, wenn man sonst wölt”.
- 67.
Beat Kümin, “Wirtshäuser auf dem Prüfstand. Zur sozialen Ambivalenz öffentlicher Trinkkulturen in der Frühen Neuzeit”, Historische Anthropologie 28:2 (2020), 229–249.
- 68.
ABPr January 1638: “Jetz gang ins vogtshauß, jetz das, bald ein anders wib mit hülen unnd weynen vor unnd nach mittag ihrere männer abzehollen unnd klagind sich, […], man zühe ihnen ihre mënner yn unnd mache sie so liederlich er der vogt selber”. See also Patricia Fumerton, “Not Home. Alehouses, Ballads, and the Vagrant Husband in Early Modern England”, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32:3 (2002), 493–518.
- 69.
ABPr April 1638: “So könne sie nit mehr rëcht bätten unnd werde glichsamm durch solichen kumber braubet ihres verstands unnd sinnen etc”.
- 70.
ABPr January 1638: “Das aber nit ich sonder mein haußfrouw auff mein begären mit vogt Stäffen unnd seiner haußfr[auwen] also gret, ist uß der ursach beschëhen, wyl ich von gedochtem wirtten unnd übermachtem trincken den vogt schon villmollen auch imm monatlichen stillstand in der kilchen abgmannet, beides mit früntligkeit unnd rühi unnd doch nüt verfangen, ja etwan von imm nur mit unguten worten überfahren worden. Hoffende, es möchte etwan uff die form etwas ußzbringen sein”. See also ABPr December 1639.
- 71.
ABPr May 1632.
- 72.
ABPr July 1633: “Disem hab ich imm befelch gëben, er sölle doch durch ihre vertruwte leüt der sach yfrig unnd ernstlich nachfragen, doch heimlich unnd als wën er sonst ungfart so fragte, unnd mich dan wyter brichten, was er erfahren, werde gott ein angnemm werck sein”.
- 73.
ABPr December 1634: “Deß wölle ich als ein wächter seiner seel imm gseit han, das es brünne, das das schwert göttlicher straffen über seel unnd sein lib gwüß kommen werd, wo er nit anderst sein lëben anfahe”.
- 74.
ABPr April 1638: “Er gsëhi woll, wie unßer herrgott so unversëhenlich daher komme zu zeit unnd stunden, da wirs nit wüßind unnd nit meinind. Söll sich nit so voll trincken, wenn ihn gott angriffen wurde zu sölicher zeit, da er so ligge in der trunckenheit wie ein todtner, wies so übel könt fehlen”.
- 75.
ABPr December 1634.
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Bardenheuer, M. (2024). “So that I Never Fail to Warn and Admonish”: Pastoral Care and Private Conversation in a Seventeenth-century Reformed Village. In: Ljungberg, J., Klein Käfer, N. (eds) Tracing Private Conversations in Early Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46630-4_7
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