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Abstract
This dissertation is a microhistory that looks at the Protestant Reformation from the perspective of a traditional Catholic priest and tells the story of the Reformation from the losing end. Based on extensive German and Latin archival research, it is the only monograph-length treatment of the Frankfurt Reformation in English and one of the few to explore the turbulent religious upheavals of sixteenth-century Germany through the lens of individual experience.
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther inadvertently launched the Protestant Reformation with his famous 95 Theses. Largely an urban movement, the Reformation began to take hold of German cities, especially free imperial ones like Frankfurt am Main, which were run by functionally autonomous town councils though they were legally under the jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire's weak central government. When Charles V was elected German king and future emperor at Frankfurt in 1519, the city was wholly Catholic. By 1533 it would officially change religion and greatly strain its relationship with the empire.
The effect of the change on the faithful Catholic minority was devastating. The mass was abolished, churches locked, baptisms in the old rite forbidden. In the years leading up to and through this watershed event, a local priest and chapter canon at one of the city's churches kept a journal in which he recorded not only business transactions but also personal and newsworthy events. Although it is the most important descriptive source for the early Reformation in Frankfurt, the diary is largely unknown to scholars outside a small circle of local historians. Its author, Wolfgang Königstein, who was a member of a wealthy family, watched as his social status eroded along with that of his religion. The evangelical movement made inroads into his own personal network as colleagues converted and even his own niece married a Lutheran. Through all of the changes Königstein held to his traditional Catholic beliefs, remained in his chapter, and eventually rose to the rank of dean after the town council and the Catholic Church worked out a detente in the wake of Protestant defeat in the mid-century Schmalkaldic War.
