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The Case of the Norwegian Catechism
Jon Haarberg
Do books have it in their power to change the world? Or do they simply provide an account of what is already changing? Questions like these persistently resist an answer, being, most probably, versions of the causality dilemma of the chicken and the egg. Nevertheless, it seems fairly obvious that some books that influence not only individual readers but also, indirectly, the structure of society as such have a much greater impact than others. In Norwegian history one easily negligible candidate seems to eclipse the rest: Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. It is my intention here to demonstrate why I think this must be so. Imported from Wittenberg in the 1530s, this booklet formed the religious practice of the king’s subjects for centuries to come, giving rise to a specifically Norwegian literary citizenship.
Luther composed both his catechisms, the small as well as the large one, in 1529, twelve years after his first protest against Rome, at a time when he had long known that his only option was to establish a new – Protestant – church. According to the preface to the
Small Catechism, his ambition was to create a tool to teach basic Christianity to simple folk, particularly children. Having visited some parishes in the Saxon countryside, he realised that something had to be done: ‘How pitiable, so help me God, were the things I saw: the common man, especially in the villages, knows practically nothing of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are almost entirely incompetent and unable to teach.’
1 M. Luther, Small Catechism, anon. trans. (Saint Louis, MO, 1986), <https://catechism.cph.org>. Luther decided that a catechism, a printed primer originating in the oral instruction of the Primitive Church, would be the appropriate remedy. His booklet contained what he considered to be the basic Christian texts: the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the biblical foundations of the two sacraments (Baptism and Holy Communion), with the addition of his own succinct expositions of these texts, plus the Table of Duties: some forty pages in all.
2 Facsimile of the Marburg edition in Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel: <www.zvdd.de/dms/load/met/?PPN=oai%3Adiglib.hab.de%3Appn_664786359>.In the course of only a few years, his book spread all over the German-speaking area in innumerable editions,
3 A. Pettegree, Brand Luther: 1517, Printing and the Making of the Reformation (New York, 2016 [2015]), p. 267. and it was translated into a number of European languages, including Danish. Thus, when the king of Denmark–Norway decided to adopt the Evangelical-Lutheran religion in what later came to be known as the 1537 Reformation in Norway (1536 in Denmark), the
Small Catechism soon became the key text of religious indoctrination. It maintained this position for the next four hundred years.
The history of the Lutheran catechism or
Kinderlehre in Norway has been written several times in the past, but, until recently, only as a success story and from an ecclesiastical point of view, teleology masquerading as theology.
4 The most prominent historians are (on the Danish side) bishop Jacob Peter Mynster (Om de danske Udgaver af Luthers lille Katechismus (Copenhagen, 1835)) and (on the Norwegian side) pastor Oscar Moe (Katechismus og Katechismusundervisningen fra Reformationen, især i Danmark og Norge (Kristiania, 1889)). School historians, too, tend to take the church perspective in this matter. Today, what immediately strikes a student of the catechism is the rise-and-fall structure of the story: it is the story of a failed strategy leading to secularisation rather than the kingdom of God. As a historic phenomenon, the catechism now seems almost forgotten. An average Norwegian university student has only a very vague idea, if any at all, about the book and its traditional use.
A book historical version of its history must necessarily take a completely different stance. In a secular perspective Christianity has no prerogative, and so the changing dogmatics of catechetical theology, which have been the main concern of historians in the past, is of secondary interest. The essential characteristic of the book is its remarkable constancy, not change and instability.
We should, however, take into account that the political state of affairs in Scandinavia has undergone considerable changes over the centuries. In 1536 all Norwegian sovereignty was transferred to the Danish crown when the Lutheran king, Christian III, declared that the old and independent Norwegian kingdom should ‘for ever’ be a part of Denmark. ‘For ever’ turned out to be 278 years. In 1814 the kingdom of Denmark–Norway was split in two, the Norwegians having found an opportunity to establish a new national constitution while simultaneously being forced into a personal union with Sweden, lasting until 1905. Denmark had been on the losing side of the Napoleonic Wars and thus had to relinquish Norway. This means that the history of the catechism in Norway forms a part of Danish history up until 1814. After that, the Norwegian politics of church and state took their own, national course. Due to these political circumstances, we should also take into account that the written language of Norway was Danish, more or less, until 1907, in spite of considerable differences between the spoken versions of the two neighbouring languages.
In reviewing the Dano-Norwegian use of the Lutheran primer, I aim to examine (1) how it was employed as a means of religious indoctrination for more than four hundred years, (2) what part it came to play in the early phases of national print culture and (3) popular literacy, and (4) how the teaching of Kinderlehre was hampered by the catechetical use of the Danish language. My ambition is not to challenge the state of research on any of these points but rather to explore the adaptation of the original print phenomenon. The impact of the Lutheran catechism, I argue, can hardly be overestimated. This is the German book that made Norway into a Protestant state. Although it never succeeded in fulfilling its purpose, it not only affected the life of every Norwegian subject, it also altered the structure of society as such. Thus, the case of the Norwegian catechism may help us better understand the workings of literary citizenship, historically as well as transnationally.