Introduction

One of the great challenges of the new Protestant faith was to establish itself in a hitherto Catholic world. Protestantism was faced with an urgent need to create a common identity, a key element of which involved a repossession of the past: history had to be rewritten to underline the Protestant Church’s claim for legitimacy and authority, and to give believers a sense of belonging.1 Theologically, history was to provide a continuation of salvation history; politically, it served to consolidate state and religion. Furthermore, history was a prominent weapon of propagandists and polemicists. There were few who were more aware of this particular situation than Strasbourg’s intellectual ‘triumvirate’: the theologian Martin Bucer and the politician Jakob Sturm, the intellectual figureheads of the Schmalkaldic League, as well as the pedagogue Johann Sturm. At their instigation the League, under the leadership of Philip von Hessen and Johann Friedrich von Sachsen, employed their fellow Alsacian Johann Philippson von Schleiden (1506-56), or Sleidanus in the Latinised form, to write the official history of the Protestant movement. Sleidan was not the most obvious choice; one would expect that a more central figure, somebody with the stature of Philip Melanchthon, would have been entrusted with such an important task. But it was Bucer and Jakob Sturm who had made this choice, and they had their reasons. Sleidan had advantages of his own: he had been close friends with Strasbourg’s Johann Sturm since their early childhood. Moreover, Sleidan had filled Sturm’s position as a secretary and diplomat at the court of the Parisian Cardinal Jean Du Bellay. In this intellectual milieu Sleidan had developed a keen interest in politics and history and had published his first historical works. More importantly, he had become a key player in the network of European intellectuals from both sides of the confessional divide who were working towards an alternative, moderate policy. Sleidan’s qualifications and connections made him the perfect choice to be the official historian of the German Protestants – ‘historiographus protestantium’, as he signed a letter to Henry VIII – at least in the eyes of the two Sturms and Bucer, who in turn made Sleidan their project. Sleidan did not write a purely

confessional history, his Commentaries reflected the more tolerant strands of thought that were emerging from Bucer’s Strasbourg at the time.