"Bauernfubrer" Michael Gaismair e l'utopia di un repubblicanesimo popolare & Valentin Weigel (1533-1588). German Religious Dissenter, Speculative Theorist, and Advocate of Tolerance.

Aldo Stella, II "Bauernfubrer" Michael Gaismair e l'utopia di un repubblicanesimo popolare

(Annali dell'istituto storico italo-germanico in Trenro, Monografie 33.) Bologna: II Mulino, 1999. 340pp. IL 44,000. ISBN: 88-15-07191-1.

Andrew Weeks, Valentin Weigel (1533-1588). German Religious Dissenter, Speculative Theorist, and Advocate of Tolerance

Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 2000. xvi + 227 pp. n.p. ISBN: 0-7914-4440-6.

The sixteenth century was an age of undoubted creativity, a good deal of which escapes the notice of those who fasten on the iconic figures of Erasumus or Luther. These works introduce two lesser known actors, whose works are often overlooked because they were further ahead of their times than the more conservative giants.

Much less in/famous than his contemporary Thomas Muntzer, Michael Gaismair (ca. 1490-1532) the military and political leader of the Tirolean peasant insurgents, was far less Quixotic. Born into a family that had in two generations climbed from the silver mines to the lower rungs of the Habsburg service nobility, Gaismair climbed the bureaucratic ladder, serving as a valued Unterhauptmann in the Tirol and trusted secretary to the Bishop of Brixen. With the Tirolean uprising of 1525, however, Gaismair placed himself on the side of the insurgents and was promptly elected one of their leaders. Although initially sharing the traditional trust in the distant ruler -- in this case the young Archduke Ferdinand, later king and emperor -- repeated Habsburg treachery made him into their most dangerous and uncompromising enemy. He also proved to be the most gifted military leader of his age, showing both tactical genius and strategic brilliance. His struggle with the Habsburgs led to into an alliance with Ulrich Zwingli and produced two works that mark Gaismair as one of the most gifted political and military thinkers of the sixteenth century. His "Feldzugplan" (1526) outlined a concerted attack upon the Habsburg realms by an alliance of their enemies, a plan that failed to be put into execution because his allies lacked both his vision and his boldness. The so-called "Tiroler Landesordnung" (1526) prescribed a new egalitarian society, in effect a popular Republic, in which the nobility, the wealthy Church, the proto-capitalist merchant monopolies, and the cities would be stripped of their privileges (and in the case of the cities, of their walls) in order construct a new society based on the autonomous village community (the Gemeinde), that would be regional in its scope and Christian in its fundamental values. Driven from the Tirol by overwhelming Habsburg military power, he took service first with the Venetians as part of the League of Cognac and then with Florentine anti-Medicean Republican exiles. Habsburg assassins, p robably with the connivance of his erstwhile hosts the Serene Republic of Venice, eventually murdered him.

That Gaismair is not as well known as Muntzer is due to the latter's good fortune in having incurred the hatred of Martin Luther. This undoubtedly preserved his memory, even if as an arch-heretic and blood prophet. It is also due to the failure of urbanocentric Marxist historiography to properly value the agrarian vision of Gaismair. But Gaismair was universally credited, even by his enemies, as a born organizer and leader of men with great practical intelligence. And, unlike other revolutionary schemes of the period, his "Landesordnung" built upon the social and economic realities of the period and of the Tirol. As a result, his peasant Utopia was well within the realm of possibility. The Habsburgs were well advised to see in him the greatest threat to their absolutist dreams.

Aldo Stella's monograph is a valuable introduction to Gaismair and to current historiography on the sixteenth century. The volume contains both the German text of the "Landesordnung" and an Italian translation. For some reason the "Feldzugsplan" was not included. For English speaking readers without Italian, Klaassen's, Michael Gaismair Revolutionary and Reformer (Leiden 1978) remains the best treatment.

Born in the year after Gaismair's assassination, Valentin Weigel (1533-1588) could not be more different from the heroic resistance leader. Strangely, however, Weigel has also been obscured by the shadow of Thomas Muntzer. Born, raised, educated, and employed in Lutheran Saxony, Weigel concealed a startlingly heterodox speculative intellect under the outwardly conforming guise of the dutiful and devoted pastor of Saxon Zschopau. Only after his death, with the publication of his manuscript writings, did Weigel earn the raging enmity of Lutheran Orthodoxy. Weeks makes clear that Weigel was well-advised to keep a low profile, since the confessionalization of Lutheranism entailed an effective, oppressive, and often brutal repression of dissent, an unpleasant reality often given too little recognition by historians of the Reformation. Against the renewed union of Church and State under the control of the secular ruler, Weigel preached the virtues of toleration and Christian charity. Such impertinence would have ea rned Weigel official censure and perhaps worse. But he went far beyond those simple claims. Weigel was an important link in the chain connecting late medieval mysticism with Reformation Spiritualism and German Romanticism. He combined the inward looking subjectivity of Spiritualists like Sebastian Franck with a fascination for the outward objective pantheism of Paracelsus. The resulting melange of epistemology; cosmology; anthropology (both philosophical and theological), Christology; Spiritualism, and Protestant theology, has perplexed modern scholars who have recognized Weigel's importance, but disagreed concerning his significance. Was he a radical Lutheran or a heretic? Was he a homo religiosus or a critical philosopher? Was he a mystic or a skeptic? Siegfried Wollgast has argued that as an idealist pantheist Weigel is the linchpin of German philosophy between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Martin Brecht situates him with Johannes Arndt at the roots of Lutheran Pietism. Steven Ozment includes him with Muntzer, Franck, and others who drew upon late medieval mysticism to justify dissent from the political and religious hegemony of inchoate Protestant confessionalism.

Weeks does not offer to resolve these antinomies, though he does have some thoughts. The most important source of difficulty for students of Weigel is the lack of a critical edition of his works. An earlier, abortive attempt has now been succeeded by an ambitious long-term project that will eventually make more informed judgments possible. There are serious questions concerning the authenticity of works that appeared under his name but which may be the work of friends, colleagues, relatives, or publishers. Some of the most influential pieces, e.g. the Postille, seem to be collections of authentic fragments promiscuously mixed with the contributions of various epigones. The hunt for sources will be particularly difficult since it is clear that Weigel was exceptionally well read. He was, for example, one of the few people in Europe who explicitly praised Muntzer, even though their theologies were quite at odds.

On the evidence presented, I would have to disagree with Weeks concerning Weigel's Lutheran credentials. Weigel undoubtedly drew upon Luther, but selectively. He owes too much to Platonism, concerns himself too much with ontology, and devotes too much attention to cosmology to be a faithful interpreter or disciple of the master. On the other hand, Weigel's debt to Sebastian Franck is obvious. I would, however, qualify Week's dismissal of Schwenckfeld's influence upon Weigel. Weigel's Christology is very close to Schwenckfeld's (something that Jakob Boehme noticed). Weigel's insistence on the possibility of profound knowledge going far beyond what Lutheran Orthodoxy would allow itself is very similar to Schwenckfeld's disagreements with Luther himself. By contrast, Franck's thought followed an ever more skeptical trajectory. Week's knowledgeable assessment of Weigel's extensive Paracelsian debt, however, is an exceptionally important contribution.

We are far from any definitive assessment of Weigel, but as an interim report, Week's book is valuable. When combined with Ozment, it gives the best overview of this puzzling but influential thinker.