ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the theological debates led to the expectation of marriage for all clergy in evangelical areas. Legal marriage also changed the social position of the pastor and other members of his household. In the late 1520s, bishops renewed their fight to eliminate married clergy and gain clerical compliance. Bishops' reactions were two-fold as they developed concrete practices for reacting to clerical marriage. First, church authorities insisted on a disciplined, moral clergy to prevent local conflicts, as has been seen in their efforts against concubinage. During Bayreuth pastor Georg Schmaltzing's three-year imprisonment, Weigand, Bishop of Bamberg, forced the married Schmaltzing to renounce his wife, and issue statements describing his marriage as "against God's order". Schmaltzing explained to evangelical examiners how his long suffering in prison led him to believe that marriage was a worldly estate and that all other sins would be easier to forgive than his marriage.
