Johann Sleidan and the Protestant Vision of History

Abstract

The Church Reformation, provoked in the early sixteenth century by criticism of the papacy from Martin Luther, Jean Calvin and others, started out as a theological movement. After it had slowly turned into a political issue—along with its widespread diffusion in Europe—Protestants all over Europe began to form their own social groups, deliberately distinguishing themselves from Catholics through theological dogma and conviction as well as liturgical habits. Especially in some parts of the Holy Roman Empire, they benefited from the support of a political ruler. One of the instruments of group formation was the writing of history aimed at collective self-stabilization. By the mid-1540s, Protestants in almost all regions of Europe felt the need to write their history, not least to defend themselves against various attacks and denunciations by the Catholics. This ‘historical turn’—crucial for the Reformation movement itself—is indeed exciting, because one would not naturally assume a genuine relationship between religion and history. This relationship has never been really ignored, but up to the 1980s we were used to reading in the history of historiography that the historians of the Reformation and the confessional era were polemical (and therefore would not have crested the level of serious historical study).