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The Priest, the Sexton, and the Weaver: Rhetorician Plays as Ritualisations of Emerging Protestantism in the Low Countries
In my paper I deal with a Dutch dinner play, entitled The Priest, the Sexton and the Weaver, probably dating back to the years 1538-40. Probably in the context of a rhetoricians’ banquet, the three personages are discussing the Lutheran doctrine, which is summarized in fifteen points[: the Lutherans do not go to confession, they turn against the Church’s lawful authorities and rebuke their neighbour in public, they do not trust in good works, they seldom if ever go to church to attend worship, they do not honour the saints, they compare priests with the scribes and the Pharisees, they do not adhere to the laws of the pope, they do not respect days of fast and abstinence, they do not rest on Sundays, they instruct one another in the Scriptures and the faith of the gospel, they refuse to venerate images, they are prepared to accept martyrdom, they don’t have much respect for the mass, they think priests should be allowed to marry, and they claim that purgatory does not exist].Argument back and forth in defence or denial of each of the fifteen points constitutes the primary corpus of the trialogue. The priest and the sexton are defending the old, Catholic faith. The weaver for his part is supporting the evangelical doctrines, enjoying the full sympathy of the author of the play.
From the very beginning of the piece, the priest and the sexton complain that lay people are discussing the Scriptures freely and, as a consequence, call into question the traditional doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church that are obviously not to be found in the bible. As a reaction, the priest and the sexton are re-emphasising the Catholic rule of Faith and the value of good works and the listed devotional practices,which are considered necessary conditions in order to be saved. At the beginning of the discussion the priest and the sexton brought some scholasticauthoritiesto the fore, as Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, and bible commentatorsas Nicolas of Lyra and Hughof St-Cher. It is striking however that, in the course of the discussion,they particularly appeal to the Scriptures to substantiate their arguments.The author has themmake aquite large number of references to Old Testament Law,in order to reinforce the contrast with the weaver who emphasises Pauline freedom as we shall see. It should be clear nonetheless that familiarity with the Scriptures in the first half of the sixteenth century was considerable and that such knowledge was certainly not the monopoly of the reformers and their followers. The argumentation of the priest and the sexton is constantly alternated with threats to have the weaver handed over to the authorities, have him tortured and put to death.
The weaver for his part endeavours to prove that the ‘Lutherans’ do not uphold heresies with respect to the points under discussion, but adhere correctly to the Word of the Scriptures and in particular the Letters of Paul. In his opinion, everyone has the right to read the Scriptures. In so doing, the weaver is making true his surname, given at the beginning of the play: ‘Evangelical insight’. Evangelical faith implied the immediate rejection of all sorts of pious practicesand good works whereby a person might try to ‘deserve’ justification. According to him, men and women are only justified by entrusting themselves to the grace of God conferred on them ‘for nothing’ in Christ’s redemptory death on the cross.Luther’ssola scriptura, sola gratiaandsola fideserve to bind the entire discussion together. The text also explicitly characterises these statements of faith as ‘Lutheran’. Although the term frequently designated heresy in general in the first half of the sixteenth century, it is clearly employed in the present instance in the strict sense and to be interpreted as doctrines inspired by Martin Luther.
Building on the Pauline idea that humanity no longer lives under the Law of the Old Testament but must worship God in the spirit, the weaver frequently underlines the value of the interior life of faith, free from every external religious obligation. The latter religious practices – including indulgences, masses for the souls of the departed, and the veneration of saints – were little more than a source of income for the Church and occasioned a loathsome pursuit of profit. Erasmus was particularly well known for his fundamental distrust of ceremonies and rituals and for his insistence on an interior life of faith and an ethical Christianity. He opted for a religion in the spirit, in contrast to a religion according to the flesh. His spiritualism was extremely influential in the Low Countries and left its mark on the emerging ideas of the reformation in the region. The weaver’s claim that external observation of the Sunday rest, for example, or the performance of ceremonies in combination with the celebration of the mass (the sacrificial character of which was likewise denied) do not matter, is particularly Erasmian. The inner attitude of the believer who took part in the Eucharist was more important. Fasting was also considered pointless if it was not accompanied by an interior love for God and for one’s neighbour. The fact that Erasmus’ ideas evidently had their influence on our play is also apparent from the prologue in whichhe is explicitly named as an authority who permitted every man and woman to follow his or her own fundamental life option.
Faith based exclusively on the Scriptures in combination with Erasmian/Lutheran ideas was particularly characteristic of the early years of the reformation in the Low Countries. It grafted itself to a popular anti-clericalism, which had been a distinguishing feature of rhetorician plays since the late Middle Ages, mocking the clergy’s objectionable traits such as ignorance, sensuality, gluttony and greed. It goes without saying that the weaver in our dinner play does not spare the clergy.
Once the three protagonists have debated the final point – the existence of purgatory – in considerable detail, it becomes clear that the weaver has succeeded in winning the sexton over to his ‘evangelical’ standpoint, certainly after it had earlier become apparent that the weaver was not an Anabaptist. As a matter of fact, all three parties agreed in their rejection of Anabaptism. While the rhetoricians’ goal was religious emancipation, they often belonged to groups of civic tradesmen and merchants who favoured social stability. This was necessary for the further development of their ‘business’ (and also for the performance of their rhetorician drama). As we know, the Anabaptists were seen as a threat to the social order as a whole. After discussing the fifteenth point, therefore, the sexton decides to abandon the priest, to learn how to weave and to earn his living by the work of his hands (in contrast thus to the multitude of work-shy priests and monks).
While the piece clearly rejects Roman ritual in several places, it becomes in its turn a ritual of the new faith in the Low Countries. It was probably performed in the privacy of a rhetoricians’ banquet, which had acquired for this reason the character of a secret Protestant gathering or conventicle. Given the dinner play’s predominantly spoken character, it clearly fitted hand in glove with the new liturgy of the reformers. Speaking, moreover, was understood as ‘performative’: those involved in the discussion endeavoured to convince one another of the validity of their own position and thus convert one another. The party that adhered to the old faith – the priest and his right hand man the sexton –initially enjoys a numerical majority: two against one. The weaver, however, is presented in the discussion as the strongest of the three and he is ultimately able to win over the sexton. The two against one situation is thus reversed. Although the sexton’s conversion only comes at the very end of the piece, the author prepares for it well in advance. The priest, for his part, refuses to change and hold firm to the certainties offered by the old faith, financial security being far from the least of them. In so doing, he is true to his name: ‘Easy does it’.
The rhetorician play, in brief, can rightly be considered a ‘ritual’ characteristic of emergent Protestantism in the Low Countries, whether it was performed on stage for a larger audience or in the intimacy of a private dinner, as is probably the case here. Indeed, by combining the table community with evangelical ‘preaching’, the play included the essential elements of Christian Eucharistic liturgy. The question remains, of course, whether those who participated in the performance of the play also experienced it this way...