This attempt at formulating some preliminary remarks can - and should be - no definite conclusion to the topic. Rather, they seek to summarize a number of points that emerged during the various discussions on our topic. In doing so, they demonstrate a number of points on methodological agreement for further research, and, most important, try to pinpoint were new areas of inquiry were opened up. For on one point all agreed - debate moved on during the conference forward and established a number of issues that need to be looked at and are highly important for further inquiry.
A: Confirmation of issues already debated and assumed elsewhere
1. The conference reenforced the notion that no Lutheran Calvinist dichotomy with regard to the issue of resistance to lawfully instituted magistrates is any more feasible. Both within Lutheran and Calvinist societies, the variety of arguments within English, Scottish and German society prevents any straightforward argument along a Calvinist/Lutheran dichotomy. In particular the papers of Luise Schorn-Schütte, Wolfgang Sommer, Martin Peters and Glenn Burgess effectivly ruled out any such dichotomy by stressing the potential of anti-magisterial rhetoric within the scope of Lutheran accounts of the three estates within the church, changes of Lutheran criticism of magistrates within the development of Lutheran piety (Wolfgang Sommer) and in particular the intense efforts at avoiding the term and notion of resistance in England, not least among the Puritans (Glenn Burgess).
2. Given the highly problematic nature of the term and meaning of the "early modern state", all agreed that not any action that was allegedly directed against another person or group of a higher status or degree could be understood as resistance, let alone be taken as a basis to understand arguments about the legitimacy of resistance. All participants agreed that all arguments that allowed to argue that disobedience to or even the exertion of organised violence against a legally instituted magistrate was legitimate could be understood as arguments in favour of resistance.
3. As debate about the meaning of Kett's rebellion showed, mere actions cannot any more be evaluated as having a specific religious and political intent and meaning unless that interpretation is supported by specific statements of the actors in question. With regard to Ketts rebellion and the subsequent reflection of the rebellion and the German Peasant's war by Bucer in his De Regno, both the status of the rebellion and of his work remained controversial. While the rebellion could be understood as "violent petitioning" to the king without any reflection on the problem of resistance, Bucer's De Regno could be understood as a reform - program for monarchy aimed at eliminating all intermediate powers and thus effectivly aiming at the perfect - Christian - state, not at the possibility to resist.
B: Arguments on the legitimacy of resistance
All participants demonstrated that the term resistance was almost always eschewed. However, all papers were able to focus on arguments dealing with the possible legitimacy of organised and collective or individual violence against a legally instituted magistrate. Further, papers did not focus on systematic attempts at providing alternatives to monarchy or blueprints of constitutional resettlement, but examples of arguments that had been specifically developed during and for actual conflict. This methodological focus stemmed not least from the fact that authors of works of otherwise widely differing theological and legally accounts and adherents of such accounts, such as Lutherans and Calvinists and allegedly pro Absolutist Arnisaeus and constitutionalist Althusius could indeed substantially differ among each other or argue very similiarly with members of the other camp. Against this background and a general high preference for order, the following incidents in political and religious language appeared to be important to allow to argue in favor of resistance:
1. - The appropriation or assumption of office. Papers on the Lutheran Clergy by Schorn-Schütte, by Horst Carl on the Swabian and by Gabriele Haug-Moritz on the Schmalcaldic League all demonstrated that the assumption of the property of magisterial office was meant to give the office holders the right to violent action against other magistrates. This strategy was by no means restricted to accounts of "lower magistrates", for it appeared in a much greater variety of circumstances and could even end up given the common man as head of household an office.
2. - The inflation and conflation, definition and redefinition of terms that denoted the legitimate exertion of organised violence without pinpointing that such action was directed against a higher magistrate. Such terms were, among others, "self defence", "defence" and "war" (see for instance Haug-Moritz and Horst Carl). The capacity of wage such "defence", however, was generally understood to be only the property of office-holders. Therefore, argument about the possibility of defence remained necessarily linked with the assumption and appropriation of office.
3. - A third important incident was the creation of communities as ordered political bodies and legal persons that could be understood to act in defense or that needed to be defended. Papers about "German liberties" and the "German Nation" (Georg Schmidt) demonstrated the extent to which such entities directed the willingness to resist the successful implementation of the Peace of Prague in 1635 by constituting an alternative political ideal.
4. - Further, the assumption of a momentous transformation of fallen men into responsible, rational and virtuous citizens could lead into quite farreaching assumptions about the degree of popular mobilisation against a lawfully instituted magistrate.
5. The political everyday life of representation, self government and contractual agreements - even at a higher magistrate's command - could lead into the blurring of otherwise clearcut distinctions about the difference between the people as populus and the representation of the people as representing the body politic. Both Glenn Burgess and Conal Condren the ever present possibility of such blurring of theoretically clear cut distinctions during the English Civil War, although both insisted that such developments were not caused by the theoretical design of individual pamphletists, but rather by the interaction of circumstance and everyday participation. Horst Carl demonstrated that the assumption of contractual agreements among the various levels of society led, within the development of the Swabian league, into the re interpretation of the nature of the office of Emperor as a member of the league.
6. - The ability of a political system to provide legal remedy against alleged instances of injustice proved to be one of the most important circumstances to integrate the problem of resistance into the constitution of the body politic. Georg Schmidt demonstrated that with respect to the Empire.
7. - Within such a framework, the careful design and defence of precedents as reservoir of argument for the next conflict could be understood as part of a resistance strategy. Arno Strohmeyer demonstrated that the estates in the Eastern Austrian lands not only defended their Ancient Privileges by such attempts but even tried to substantially improve their lot by appropriating "ancient rights" they had clearly not had by the beginning of the sixteenth century.
C: An emerging research agenda
From what has been demonstrated above, a new platform for inquiry emerged, still taking accounts of legitimate resistance as a core source, but in a substantially shifted framework of interpretation. All participants demonstrated that the term resistance was almost always eschewed. However, all papers were able to focus on arguments dealing with the possible legitimacy of organised and collective or individual violence against a legally instituted magistrate. However, rather then taking those texts and incidents as evidence for a struggle of "the people" or "the estates" against princes and states, let alone in favor of a more generalised idea of freedom, they were rather understood as part of a reconfiguration of community, mainly monarchical community, in the face of increasing demands for order and a decreasing sui generis consensus about the nature of that order. That is, they were not meant to provide blueprints for a alternative to order and monarchy, but to elaborate the true nature of order and monarchy.
1. It appeared that the boundary between criticism of legally instituted magistrates and resistance was sometimes much more difficult to draw then hitherto thought. With respect to the Lutheran clergy, it remained problematic whether the new kind of severe criticism of magistrates by pious Lutherans during the seventeenth century should be called resistance (Martin Brecht). Georg Schmidt pointed out, that even before the conclusion of the Peace of Osnabruck an increasing legal protection of the Lutheran churches even against their princes could be discerned during the first half of the seventeenth century. Thus, apparent discrepancies between the political function of theological concepts such as that of a covenant of men with god and the role of the pious magistrate within them between, e.g. Scotland and some German territories, must be measured against the possibility of legal remedy that would a priori shape any account of the possibility and legitimacy of violence against legally instituted magistrates. Thus, the development and reception of accounts of resistance under specific constitutional and political circumstances is still particulary pressing.
2. Among the core concepts that were used and change under such specific pressure appears to be the concept of property. Georg Schmidt described the constitution of the Empire as not least developing around the notion of property and security of property, that was granted even for the common men. Most agreed that an extensive definition of property as assortment of righs and goods did serve, right from the early sixteenth century, as one of the most decisive incrediments for an account of the legitimate defence of such property.
3. Another core concept appeared to be the concept of duty, as against God, nature, the fatherland or other communities that could be used to re-configurate the social and political position of a group or an individual and allow him - or her - in fulfilling that duty to actually exert violence against a legally instituted magistrate.
4. Arguments from the defence of property by a specifically constructed community and the duty against such a community appeared to be core ways to argue in favor of the legitimacy of actions that were described by their opponents as outright breaches of law, resistance or, indeed, rebellion.
5. While a clear cut conclusion about the specific development of this line of argument in a German-British comparison would be premature, it seemed that more detailed research looking at the way in which, within specific conflicts, new communities were invented or made use of and the concepts of property within those communities and duty against them were used, expanded, or conflated, seemed to be a way forward.
5. While the dramatic character of confessionalisation and religious strife and the arguments produced in that context remain a prime area to study these changes, the focus seems thus to have decidedly shifted away from the issue of a confrontation of people and/or estates and princes and monarchs, but to the configuration of communities within European monarchies, such as leagues, fatherlands, nations, estates, and covenants, that would less be understood as a stable part of the constitution of a given society, but much more as varying concepts used to shape new consensus about how to live together in a world of religous strife, that would defend the property of their members and provide the duties that would allow, indeed order them, to fight for the true faith. Programm
Quelle = Email <H-Soz-u-Kult>
From: Robert.Friedeburg@Geschichte.Uni-Bielefeld.DE
Subject: Widerstandsrecht und Gemeiner Mann
Date: 16.9.1999
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