Crypto-Calvinism

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Crypto-Calvinism is a term for intra-Protestant, indeed intra-Lutheran, theological fights during the decades just after the death of Martin Luther. It denotes what was seen as a hidden ("crypto" from "kryptein", Greek for "to hide") belief in Calvinism, i.e. the doctrines of John Calvin, by members of the Lutheran church, which - since the Marburg Religious Disputation of 1529--had split, still under Luther himself, from the Swiss Reformed Church then headed by Ulrich Zwingli.

When Luther died in 1546, he left the legacy of Protestantism, and the leadership of the church, to his closest friend and ally Philipp Melanchthon. Melanchthon, however, had always been accused to be not Lutheran enough, but "too soft" (he was by training not a theologian but rather a classics scholar), both toward Catholicism and toward Calvinism, by some Lutherans who saw themselves as the defenders of the true faith and who were called "Gnesio-Lutherans." A famous Gnesio-Lutheran was Matthias Flacius. Luther himself had distanced himself from those, but to no avail. The Gnesio-Lutherans' word for those allegedly close to Calvinism within the Lutheran-Protestant church was Crypto-Calvinist.

In the 1570s, after the death of Melanchthon in 1560, the Gnesio-Lutherans, especially those in Saxony, started several persecutions of alleged Crypto-Calvinists, although one should point out that many Lutherans actually were heavily inclined toward Calvinism, some of them for doctrinal reasons, others more because they felt that a rapprochement of the main wings of Protestantism was necessary to combat the mutual enemy, Catholicism (and also the more Christian path to take). In 1574, the famous medical scholar and often Rector of the University of Wittenberg, Caspar Peucer, not incidentally Melanchthon's son-in-law, was captured and jailed in the Königstein fortress for Crypto-Calvinism for 12 years; the Saxon Chancellor, Nikolaus Krell, was even executed for the same "crime." Other Crypto-Calvinists fled to openly Calvinist or Calvinist-friendly German states such as Hesse-Kassel.

The legacy of Crypto-Calvinism lives today on in the German Protestant church that is called "Reformed" (rather than "Lutheran"); both Reformed and Lutheran churches form German Protestantism, which is one of the State Churches. In the United States, Crypto-Calvinism has also occasionally been an issue in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

[edit] Bibliography

Bouman, Herbert J.A. (1977). "Retrospect and Prospect." Sixteenth-Century Studies 8(4), 84-104.
Brandes, Friedrich (1873). Der Kanzler Krell, ein Opfer des Orthodoxismus.
Froner, Hans v. (1919). "Der Kryptocalvinismus Wittenbergs", in Bernhard Weißenborn, ed. Die Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Berlin: Furche.
Hasse, Hans-Peter (2004), ed. Caspar Peucer (1525-1602): Wissenschaft, Glaube und Politik im konfessionellen Zeitalter. Leipzig: EVA.
Koch, Uwe (2002), ed. Zwischen Katheder, Thron und Kerker: Leben und Werk des Humanisten Caspar Peucer. Bautzen: Domowina.
Richard, August Victor (1859). Der kurfürstlich sächsische Kanzler Dr. Nikolas Crell. 2 vols.
Roebel, Marin (2005). Humanistische Medizin und Kryptocalvinismus. Leben und Werk ... Caspar Peucers. MD/PhD thesis, University of Heidelberg. [1]
Saran, G. (1879) "Der Kryptocalvinismus in Kursachsen und Dr. Nikolaus Krell", DEBI, 596-614.
Henke, Ernst Ludwig Theodor (1865). Caspar Peuker und Nikolaus Krell, Marburg: Elwert.