Andreas Carlstadt

Luther’s Colleague and Critic, 1486–1541

Andreas Bodenstein, called Carlstadt after his birthplace in Franconia, was Luther’s senior colleague at Wittenberg, his second at the Leipzig Debate, and then his most painful opponent within the evangelical camp. His story is a warning as well as a witness: a learned and zealous man who sacrificed much for his convictions, and who showed how quickly reform can turn into a new legalism.

Wittenberg and Leipzig

Born in 1486, he taught in both the arts and theology faculties at Wittenberg and began as a defender of scholasticism. In 1516 he opposed Luther’s theses against the scholastic doctrine of free will, but by 1517 he had renounced scholasticism and come over to Luther’s side.1 He was a professor, canon, and archdeacon at Wittenberg, and it was Carlstadt who presided when Luther received his doctorate in 1512.2 In 1519 he rode with Luther to the debate at Leipzig. As the Wittenbergers entered the city a wheel of his carriage broke and the archdeacon was tipped into the mud, which the townspeople took for an omen.3 An eyewitness at the debate compared him with Luther:

He is smaller than Luther, with a complexion of smoked herring. His voice is thick and unpleasant. He is slower in memory and quicker in anger.4 An eyewitnessat Leipzig, 1519

For a week he and Eck debated the depravity of man before Luther took up the question of the papacy.5

The Wittenberg Movement

While Luther was hidden at the Wartburg, Carlstadt pressed the reform forward. He wrote that priests might marry, and indeed should, and himself married Anna Mochau, becoming, as Whitford notes, the first priest to marry on Reformation convictions. He told the elector, “I observe that in Scripture no estate is so highly lauded as marriage.” Luther approved: “I am very pleased over Carlstadt’s marriage. … I know the girl.”6 On Christmas Day 1521, before some two thousand people in the Castle Church, he celebrated an evangelical communion, without vestments, in German at the words of institution, and with both bread and wine for the people. His sermon was pure gospel:

See how Christ makes you a sharer in his blessedness if you believe. See how he has cleansed and hallowed you through his promise. Still better, see that Christ stands before you. He takes from you all your struggle and doubt, that you may know that through his word you are blessed.7 Andreas CarlstadtChristmas Day, 1521

But under his leading the reform outran the people. The town council ordered images removed from the churches, Gabriel Zwilling led an iconoclastic riot, and Carlstadt turned on church music too: “Relegate organs, trumpets, and flutes to the theater.” In February 1522 the elector called a halt, instructing that “Carlstadt should not preach any more,” and soon afterward Luther came home from the Wartburg to restore order.8

Orlamünde and Exile

Carlstadt withdrew to the parish of Orlamünde. There he laid aside his doctorates and his academic gown, asked to be called “Brother Andreas,” and worked the land like his parishioners.9 He denied the bodily presence of Christ in the Supper, rejected infant baptism, and pressed a Sabbatarian discipline; Bainton notes that outward water, to Carlstadt, was “of no efficacy.”10 At Jena, Carlstadt confronted Luther at dinner over a sermon. Luther offered him a gold florin as a pledge to write against him openly; Carlstadt bent the coin, put it in his purse, and said, “this is my earnest-money, a warrant that I have authority to write against Doctor Luther.”11 The elector then banished him from Saxony. His farewell letter to Orlamünde was signed, “Andrew Bodenstein, expelled by Luther, unheard and unconvicted.”12

He had written to Thomas Müntzer that he would have nothing to do with his covenant or with bloodshed, and Bainton judges that linking the two men was “both unjust and unfortunate.”13 The ministers of Strasbourg wrote to Luther: “We are not yet persuaded by Carlstadt, but many of his arguments are weighty. We are disturbed because you have driven out your old colleague with such inhumanity.”14 Luther answered in Against the Heavenly Prophets, mocking “a felt hat and a gray garb, not wanting to be called doctor, but Brother Andrew and dear neighbor.”15 Yet in 1525, fleeing the Peasants’ War, Carlstadt appeared at Luther’s door on his wedding night, and Luther, “who had done so much to put him out of Saxony, took him into his own home.”16

Last Years

The rest of his life was a wandering one. After Orlamünde he preached at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Oldersum, Zurich, Altstätten, and Basel, and in these years he took several positions against Luther: pacifism, a memorial view of the Supper, and the rejection of infant baptism.17 In 1529, poor enough to have sold his Hebrew Bible for bread, he begged the Landgrave of Hesse for a place at the Colloquy of Marburg: “We are but one body, one house, one people, one sacerdotal race; we live and die by one and the same Saviour.” He did not come.18 At last, on Bullinger’s recommendation, he became professor of Old Testament at Basel and pastor of the university church, and there he died in 1541.19 D’Aubigné’s epitaph is generous and just: “Endowed with an elevated mind, he sacrificed his reputation, his rank, his home, his very bread, to his convictions.”20

Other Reformers   Martin Luther

Notes

  1. David M. Whitford, ed., T&T Clark Companion to Reformation Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), pt. 2, “A Reformation ABC”, s.v. “Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von (1486–1541).” The same dates are given in W. Bradford Littlejohn and Jonathan Roberts, eds., Reformation Theology: A Reader of Primary Sources with Introductions (Moscow, ID: Davenant Press, 2017), introduction to the Schleitheim Articles, and in Timothy J. Wengert, ed., The Roots of Reform, The Annotated Luther, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), introduction. ↩
  2. J. H. Merle d’Aubigné, History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, vol. 1 (Glasgow: William Collins, 1845), bk. 2; Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, rev. ed. (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013), chap. on Martin Luther, n. 98. ↩
  3. D’Aubigné, Sixteenth Century, vol. 2 (Glasgow: William Collins, 1846), bk. 5. ↩
  4. An eyewitness quoted in Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1950), chap. 6, “The Saxon Hus.” ↩
  5. Bainton, Here I Stand, chap. 6. ↩
  6. Bainton, Here I Stand, chap. 11, “My Patmos”; Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Karlstadt.” ↩
  7. Ibid. ↩
  8. Ibid., chaps. 11–12. ↩
  9. George, Theology of the Reformers, chap. on Martin Luther, n. 98; Bainton, Here I Stand, chap. 15, “The Middle Way.” ↩
  10. Bainton, Here I Stand, chap. 15. ↩
  11. D’Aubigné, Sixteenth Century, vol. 3 (New York: American Tract Society, 1848), bk. 10. ↩
  12. Ibid. ↩
  13. Bainton, Here I Stand, chap. 15. ↩
  14. Ibid. ↩
  15. George, Theology of the Reformers, chap. on Martin Luther, n. 98, quoting LW 40:117. ↩
  16. Bainton, Here I Stand, chap. 17, “The School for Character.” ↩
  17. Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Karlstadt.” ↩
  18. D’Aubigné, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Carter, 1846), bk. 13. ↩
  19. Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Karlstadt.” ↩
  20. D’Aubigné, Sixteenth Century, 3: bk. 10. ↩
  21. George, Theology of the Reformers, chap. on Zwingli. ↩
  22. Bainton, Here I Stand, chap. 15. ↩