Centum gravamina teutonicae nationis

The grievances of the German nation (Latin Gravamina Nationis Germanicae ), often with the addition resists the papal court, were late medieval and early modern complaints from German speaking against the Pope and curia in Rome. They had been able to build considerable importance for the creation of an anti-papal sentiment to which Martin Luther and the Reformers. The Gravaminabewegung had a significant influence on the development of a German self-image as a forerunner of the national consciousness.

Prehistory

Part of history, that in 1448 a concordat between Pope Nicholas V and Emperor Frederick III. had been completed for the national germanica. This agreement is made ​​until the end of the Holy Roman Empire, one of the foundations for the Church in the empire. The Concordat was only come against the will of the states between Emperor and Pope concluded. It regulated the papal rights as in the awarding of benefices, in filling ecclesiastical offices or the payment of funds to the Curia. In the Concordat had not been complied with all the results of the reform councils of Constance and Basel.

As a result, it came to the diets to numerous complaints against the Pope and the Curia. Author were high priests, princes and free cities in the Holy Roman Empire. Initially the focus was on the high clergy, it was also about to prevent the country church trends in the field of large secular territories.

Pre-Reformation period

A precursor were the Mainz libel of 1451 of an unknown priest and proposals of the Elector of Trier James I of Sierck from the year 1451st This resulted after a Provincial Synod of the Ecclesiastical Province of Mainz in 1455, the first actual compilation. There were 13 articles adopted and should be submitted to the Pope. Greater range had the Frankfurter Avisamenta of 1456. In this specification the term grievances Nationis Germanicae appeared first on. This is followed emissaries of the electors, with the exception of Trier, the archbishops of Salzburg and Bremen, and several cathedral chapters were involved. At the Diet of 1458 similar writs were sent to Pope Pius II of electors and bishops. There followed in 1479 the 26 Koblenz Article 31 and Article 1456 of a provincial synod of Mainz.

Under Maximilian I in 1497 and 1500 grievances were discussed with antikurialem tenor on the diets. After the Pope caused by rupture of the League of Cambrai took advantage of Maximilian and his chancellor for the grievances anti-papal policy objectives. He instructed Jacob Wimpheling 1510 with a church Reformation opinion. Thus, the emperor wanted to exert political pressure on the Pope. In the main Wimpheling referred to the material injury to the German lands by the Pope. He reached back on grievances that had been expressed in 1457 compared to Enea Silvio Piccolomini. The estates of the Empire used the grievances during the Diet of Augsburg in 1518 to in order to justify the refusal of a tendered by the Pope Turks tax. A list of grievances that arose in Liege, was admitted to the capitulation of Charles V. 1519.

Reformation

Martin Luther had the grievances at least since the Diet of Augsburg in 1518 knowledge. In his essay " To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation" in 1520, he reached many it back. He was not content only with their play, but also made concrete reformist proposals. Thus, the debate took on a new quality.

At the Diet of Worms of 1521 flowed together Gravaminabewegung and Lutheran Reformation movement. A Committee of the States under the chairmanship of George of Saxony, in which the representatives of the ecclesiastical states participated only briefly, collected 102 grievances. This was the largest collection of its kind has been the Gravaminabewegung been driven primarily by the high clergy, it was now only a matter of worldly objects. In terms of content, there were changes. Of course, the criticism of the Pope and the Curia was not missing. But in addition came the criticism of the clergy and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the kingdom itself However, this probably had no direct influence the Nobility Luther as a model or source.

At the Diet of 1523 in Nuremberg, the grievances were reconstituted in 74 articles and now officially sent by the imperial government to the Pope. A year later, the complaints were added to the demand for a national council.

The Mainz Provincial Synod of 1524 has attempted to refute the various items. The clergy now began, as 1523 against Austria to write Gegengravamina where encroachments of the secular state were criticized at the church.

For the last time in 1526, it came at the Diet of Speyer in an agreement on anti-papal grievances. At the Diet of Augsburg of 1530, the confessionalisation apparently was already so far advanced that the Protestant states not participating in the debate on the grievances. In contrast, remained Catholic estates have continued to debate the matter. The conflicts between secular and spiritual stalls were largely resolved. It came to the compilation of 71 articles in an imperial constitution. Charles V. promised them to submit to the Pope. The constitution was never put into effect. But it has helped to reduce the conflicts within the Catholic camp. As a result, even within the Catholic camp lost the cause of grievances in importance, even if they were approached once more at diets and on another occasion.

With the reform process as a result of the Council of Trent, the complaints also for Catholic camps were largely obsolete.

Content

Content included the grievances of both ecclesiastical and secular issues. In the center, however, the complaints of ecclesiastical abuses and in particular on the papacy stood. The criticism of the papacy was part of the late medieval church criticism and was directed against the influence of the Pope and curia in filling ecclesiastical offices and benefices in the kingdom, for cash payments for church acts in the form of indulgences, fees for ordination actions and the like. They wanted to prevent that so the Germans financed the splendor of the Renaissance popes. Next you criticized the arbitrariness of ecclesiastical process method. Taken together meant the grievances which call for a fundamental reform of the Church and its return to the religious sources.

Importance

The grievances were part of the development of the late medieval and early modern special German self- consciousness. For this particular Wimpheling Jacob and Ulrich von Hutten contributed in the first decades of the 16th century. Hutten has about 1518/19 identifies the Pope as an opponent of " Teutonic freedom " instead of the Turks or France. Pope and Church were usually classified in the " Romandie ". In ethnic, a contrast was constructed to " Teutschland " as well as in Luther's Nobility.

A central role of grievances for the history of the Reformation was that she had created a climate romfeindliches before the appearance of Luther. Joseph Lortz ruled pointedly: "Without the grievances of the German nation, the nation would have first call those not replied Luther, Luther would not have become a reformer, would not have been the Reformation. "

The grievances were never quite forgotten in the Kingdom and were re- used since 1673 and in the 18th century to criticize the Roman Church and to the Febronianism.