ABSTRACT
During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, some villages in the southwestern German lands established new parishes. In these, and often in older parishes, they claimed the right to approve or depose their priests. They acted just as abbeys, nobles, and princes had in earlier times, endowing parishes and holding the right to nominate the local priests. This movement illustrates, therefore, how the power of communal village governments had grown in these lands since the fourteenth century. This document is a statement by the mayor and court of the Franconian village of Wendelstein, which lies south of Nuremberg and near the town of Schwabach. It concerns a new parish priest, Kaspar Krantz, who was installed on 19 October 1524. Every term, every phrase, every demand can be found in earlier documents, but their consistency and combination are not traditional. This is most strikingly true of the village officers’ condemnation of charging fees for access to sacramental grace.
