ABSTRACT
Up to this point, we have addressed only indirectly the question of what, precisely, motivated Magdeburg’s decision not to capitulate to the victorious Imperial forces in spring 1547, and similarly, what motivated her continuing resistance against the execution effort and siege over the course of the next four years. To quote Oliver Olson, Magdeburg’s decision to resist reveals ‘something more than ordinary political calculation’.1 The identity of this ‘something’, the motivating force behind this policy choice, is at once both easy and difficult to determine. Easy, because we can simply point to the evident strength of the city dwellers’ religious commitments as an explanation for their courage and determination; but also difficult, because this then begs the much more complex question: what, exactly, were they committed to? In what follows, I will sketch several alternative ways of putting this question, and offer a way we might answer it, given our sources. Namely, what were Magdeburg’s defenders actually defending, and what did they primarily ask their readers to believe in? If we analyse the statements made in defence of Magdeburg’s position between 1547 and 1551, we find the skeleton of a coherent worldview, one that draws theological and political claims to authority together with moral principles and mental habits for daily living. This analysis, I argue, allows us to glimpse something of the ‘lived religion’ that the Magdeburg pamphleteers wished to promote and defend in the world around them. But, at the same time, this ‘lived religion’ is really a total way of life, extending beyond the limits of what we typically think of as ‘the religious’ to encompass political structures, the cultivation of particular moods and habits, and group identity.2
