Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism in Saxony, 1555-1675

Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism in Saxony, I555-I675 The popular resentment of clerical abuse as a factor assisting in the positive reception of Protestanism is a commonplace. If the Reformation succeeded in righting moral, as well as some perceived theological, wrongs, why should acute anticlerical feeling have endured beyond the first two Reformation generations? That such feeling did persist is evident. To distinguish it from the pre-Reformation Catholic belief that priests occupied a more elevated plane than nonclerics, Scribner called it neoclericalism. The Lutheran clergy reasserted, after the mid-sixteenth century, their profession's superior position in at least the earthly hierarchy, as pastors attempted to compel the laity to accept new standards of behavior and belief.1 That parishioners should have reacted against this authoritarian behavior is hardly surprising. The intensification of anticlerical fervor in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries occurred in tandem with the efforts of

Political science · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

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