In the Dano-Norwegian Reformation years 1536–7, the catechism was not yet well known. Translations into Danish did exist, although as the results of chance and haste. When Peder Palladius, bishop of Zealand, i.e. the head of clergy, had his own authoritative Danish version printed, he more or less copied the text of one of the translators who had forestalled him.
1 M. S. Lausten, Peder Palladius: Sjællands første lutherske biskop (Copenhagen, 2006), p. 44. The Church Ordinance of 1537, the legal foundation of the reformed state, actually presupposed the existence of such a text, assigning it for daily use in church, in households and in grammar schools. The king thus relied on the
Small Catechism in his endeavour to convert a people of habitual Catholics into zealous evangelical Christians. Pastors were supposed to explain the five parts of the catechism in daily sermons, lasting for at least half an hour. They should also take care, the king insisted, to do so ‘slowly, so that both young and old may be able to understand’.
2 Kirkeordinansen av 1537: Reformasjonens kirkelov (the Church Order of 1537), trans. T. Ellingsen (Oslo, 1990), p. 49, cf. p. 53. In the countryside, where some 90 per cent of the population resided, the dean or, if necessary, the pastor himself, should summon both girls and boys, once a week, to teach them the catechism. In his preface Luther had already given his instructions for the method to be used. The teacher (pastor, dean or substitute) was supposed to read the text aloud to the children and then repeat it until each one of them knew it by heart, the original texts as well as the reformer’s expositions of them.
The king appointed Palladius head of the clergy straight from Wittenberg. His version of Luther’s
Small Catechism appeared in 1537 and then again, in 1538 in an improved translation that held sway for almost one hundred years. A couple of years later the bishop also found time to compose the first Danish exposition of the Lutheran text, fulfilling the requirement of the Church Ordinance in that respect, too. He wrote his book in Latin and specifically addressed it to ‘Norwegian pastors’. To some extent, it seems to have succeeded in reaching its readership in both main parts of the kingdom. We know that by 1550 more than half of the pastors in the bishopric of Aarhus had acquired a copy.
3 A.V. Heffermehl, Folkeundervisningen i Norge indtil omkring Aar 1700 (Christiania, 1913), p. 59.As one might expect, the initial decades of the promotion of the Dano-Norwegian catechism lacked effectiveness. Popular as well as ecclesiastical resistance, poorly educated teachers (pastors, deans or sextons) and vast distances, especially in the Far North, contributed to what must have been a meagre result of the teaching efforts. Visitation reports suggest that the king’s ambitious initiative remained rather ineffectual in some regions.
4 Only a few episcopal visitation reports have been preserved. The most prominent one, Jens Nilssøn’s diary written in the 1590s (Biskop Jens Nilssøns Visitatsbøger og Reiseoptegnelser 1574–1597, ed. Y. Nielsen (Kristiania, 1885)), does not give us much to go on regarding the children’s level of learning. The miserable results seem to correspond well with those in Germany, according to the findings of the American historian Gerald Strauss. His wide-ranging study of the ‘indoctrination of the young in the German Reformation’ (1978) does not leave much room for doubt. Despite the prodigious proliferation of catechisms, both printed and handwritten, and the obligatory catechism lessons that had been prescribed as early as 1531, no apparent advance had been made by the end of the century.
5 G. Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, MD, 1978), p. 293.Despite this, various Dano-Norwegian kings did not give up. On the contrary, they did what they could to intensify their efforts. In 1607 Christian IV issued a special Norwegian version of the original Church Ordinance, and in 1687 Norway received its own adapted version of the new Danish law, reiterating or tightening the provisions pertaining to the catechism.
6 En Kircke Ordinantz (the Church Ordinance of 1607), [1], 2v, 8v, 12, 13, 44v, 63, 65, 92v; Kong Christian Den Femtes Norske Lov 1687 §§ 2.4.1, 2.4.16, 2.6.1–2. In an attempt to improve the standard of the weekly catechism classes, the king decreed that all pastors should have at least two years of theological training at Copenhagen University (1621) and that the deans (
klokkere, or ‘ringers’, as they were called in Norway), should preferably be students of theology (1687).
7 University studies: Novellae Constitutiones, 1621, in H. Rørdam (ed.), ‘Aktstykker til Universitetets historie’, Danske Magazin, 5:I (1887–9), 37–47; deans as students of theology: Kong Christian Den Femtes Norske Lov 1687 § 2.15.1. The most compelling decree was probably the one that made the mastering of the catechism a requirement for conducting betrothals (1645).
8 Missive 22 April 1645 (V.A. Secher, (ed.), Forordninger, Recesser og andre kongelige Breve, Danmarks Lovgivning vedkommende 1558–1660, vol. 5 (Copenhagen, 1903), p. 445.) A solid knowledge of the catechism, then, marked the threshold between life as a minor and life as an adult subject. A more convincing motivation for acquiring religious instruction must have been hard to find.
The bishop of Zealand – Hans Poulsen Resen from 1615 to 1638 – was instrumental in the king’s strengthened stratagem for the catechism. He issued new translations of Luther’s text (1608 and 1616) and subsequently published manuals addressed to pastors and deans (1627, 1628 and 1636) on how to teach the catechism, that is the method they should use: drilling pupils by means of questions and answers. The first of these manuals, Om Børnelærdoms Visitatz (On the Inspection of Catechism), was often and for more than a century published as an appendix to the Small Catechism.
In principle, the official policy remained the same until the early eighteenth century. The king strove to teach all his subjects the catechism, also known as ‘the little Bible’, not only with an eschatological goal in mind, but also in order to avoid the wrath of the heavenly God on this terrestrial world. Church and school historians generally regard the onset of German pietism around 1730 as a milestone in the history of the catechism in Denmark–Norway. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Reformation, the ‘state pietist’ king instituted three new enterprises: (1) confirmation (1736), (2) a new exposition-type textbook (1737) and (3) board-school in the countryside (1739). However, instituting these measures did not mean that the king had broken with tradition; rather, it meant another turn of the same screw.
The German reformers of the sixteenth century had decided to skip the old church sacrament of confirmation. Its reintroduction certainly did not imply any concession to popery, the king simply wished to strengthen catechism training, which by now was well established. Confirmation was made obligatory for both sexes, involving a binding handshake with the pastor and an oath to remain a child of God until death, and taking Holy Communion also became a requirement.
9 See the Confirmation Order of 1736: Kong Christian den Siettes II. Forordning, Angaaende den tilvoxende Ungdoms Confirmation. Similarly, a proper knowledge of the catechism had been a requirement for participation in Holy Communion since 1629. The training should last for at least three months. Confirmation, then, meant acquiring full rights as a subject of the king: the right to marry, serve as a soldier, or receive the privileges necessary to work as a tradesman and so forth.
The new exposition-type textbook was to be the set text for both school and confirmation classes, and the king commissioned his young court pastor, Erik Pontoppidan, to write it. On closer inspection, readers have pointed out that he actually took a shortcut, abridging or partly rewriting Philipp Jacob Spener’s catechism from 1677.
10 See M. Neiiendam, Erik Pontoppidan, vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1933), pp. 82–4. This book,
Den Christelige Lærdoms Eenfoldige Udleggelse (Simple Exposition of the Christian Doctrine), had been translated into Danish by followers of the renowned ‘father of pietism’ only a few years earlier (1728). Nonetheless, the name of Pontoppidan has gone down in history as a metonymy for his book:
Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed (Truth Leading to Piety).
11 Pontoppidan’s title contains a covert allusion to Titus 1. 1: ‘the truth which is after godliness’ (Authorised Version).Before 1737 each bishop had seen to it that a suitable exposition of Luther’s
Small Catechism was available for catechetical use in his own bishopric, often taking care of the matter himself. Accordingly, Pontoppidan’s book represented a marked change: a royal will for standardisation.
12 Rescript 22 August 1738. Each child in the kingdom should be answerable to the same syllabus, although the requirements varied according to the pupils’ abilities. In his preface addressed to teachers, Pontoppidan explains that the ‘dim-witted’ should be allowed to read and learn less than the competent pupil, having bracketed expendable questions, approximately one third. All in all, Pontoppidan’s
Truth Leading to Piety comprises 759 questions and answers which, ideally, should be learnt by heart, not only ‘understood’. No doubt, memorising dogmatic definitions of concepts like ‘justification’ and ‘sanctification’ would be a heavy burden on anyone. This is how the book earned its dubious reputation among parroting youngsters.
The third innovation of the 1730s was board-schools (almueskoler). Up until then the term school had been reserved for grammar schools in the cities, the dean’s catechism classes had not counted as such, although the purpose of the training was exactly the same: the religious indoctrination of the children of the common people. However, the decree of 1739 also introduced reading classes for the first time as a standard element of the syllabus. From now on pupils were supposed to learn to read, ideally also write and do simple arithmetic. Deans had given sporadic reading classes for over a hundred years, but such classes had never been a prescribed part of the training. At school children were taught to read in order to understand the catechism better. Luther’s Small Catechism still served as a primer and Pontoppidan’s exposition as a reader for advanced pupils.
This regime proved to be fairly stable for more than a hundred years, only Pontoppidan’s exposition was gradually (from 1771 onwards) replaced by less ambitious abridgements and adaptations of it.
13 The first abridgement was performed by Peder Saxtorph in 1771, reducing the number of questions and answers from 759 to 541. On the introduction of the Norwegian Education Acts of 1860 and 1889, secularisation manifested itself more strongly, transforming the old board schools into primary schools (
folkeskoler) and subjects into citizens. Religious instruction had to yield to secular subjects such as reading, writing and arithmetic.
In spite of the liberal Norwegian Constitution of 1814, which paved the way for a steady democratisation of society throughout the nineteenth century, and in spite of the Church’s loss of control over schools in 1889, the catechism continued to be an integral part of primary education until 1969. From 1911 onwards confirmation was no longer obligatory, yet almost sixty years passed before parliament formally instructed the minister of church and education that the Church should no longer count on schools to take care of its baptismal training. The last print of the current school edition of Luther’s
Small Catechism appeared in 1976.
14 M. Luther, Dr. Martin Luthers lille katekisme, ed. A. Chr. Bang, 38th printing (Oslo, 1976). The extensive educational reform of 1997 was the last even to mention the old
Kinderlehre, proclaiming that in religious instruction ‘pupils should learn the basics of the Christian faith and ethics in the light of Luther’s
Small Catechism’.
15 Læreplanverket for den 10-årige grunnskolen 1996, p. 98. The book itself was hardly in use at that time. Catechism thus formed the basis of Norwegian children’s schooling for more than 400 years, from 1537 to 1969. A similar, although less persistent, catechetical tradition manifested itself in the other Scandinavian countries.