Author Description

The Eichsfeld is the area around the cities of Heiligenstadt in today’s Thüringia and Dudenstadt in Lower Saxony. The Eichsfeld belonged to the Electorate-Archbishopric of Mainz from the 9th c. to secularization in 1803. The author, a Catholic theologian, begins his book of 1997 with the development of the Electorate of Mainz itself and its enclave Eichsfeld pre-Reformation (maps p. 17 and 22). The rise and consolidation of Protestanism in Eichsfeld (1520 – 1574) is then described in the first section. This includes the actions of the Archbishop-Elector Prince Albrecht von Brandenburg, the monk Martin Luther, the farmer’s uprising of 1525, the city councils, and the pivital local nobility. Eichsfeld became Lutheran. The author uses many sources to paint a lively picture of what this meant for priests and laity. The second section (1574 – 1648) explains the Catholic Reform within the old church and the Counter-Reformation in which the Mainz Archbishops played the key role. The re-Catholicization of the Eichsfeld took place before the Thirty Years War began in 1618. The destruction caused by that war in the Eichsfeld, surrounded by Protestants, is described. The return of the Eichsfeld to the Catholic faith was due above all, though, to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which had given the power to the territorical lords to determine religion, in this case the Mainz Archbishop-Elector, and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which established the base year of 1624 to determine religion. An index of parishes, villages and towns ends this impressive book.