Page 428 - Stati inu obstati, revija za vprašanja protestantizma, letnik X (2014), številka 19-20, ISSN 1408-8363
P. 428
SYNOPSES, ZUSAMMENFASSUNGEN
fession, 2) the internal religious uniformity of individual provincial-law entities, and
3) provincial peace. The above-mentioned main maxim of the Augsburg Confession
meant: everyone under his provincial prince remaining in that one’s faith and
from then on no-one should extend his power, territory, dominions or rights at
the expense of another religious creed. The latter was also a binding political
framework within which the origin and initial reception (the provincial prince’s
prohibition) of Trubar’s Cerkovna ordninga in Inner Austria is placed, although
Trubar’s work, due to its Slovene language, applied primarily to Carniola and
parts of Styria, Carinthia, the coastal region and the Pazin margraviate with its
Slovene speaking inhabitants.
Before writing the Cerkovna ordninga, Trubar already had experience in struc-
turing church organization (Kempten, 1553), nor was he without a feeling for
the current political use of “the Turkish fear” and arguments connected with it
(e.g. in letters to King Maximilian, 1560, where Trubar convinces the monarch
to assist printing in Slovene and Croatian). But the project of publishing and
thus legally establishing Trubar’s church order in Inner Austria encountered:
1) the Catholic provincial prince Charles, who was very much aware of his pre-
rogatives as provincial prince regarding the religious rights of Protestants and
as a convinced Catholic had no intention of giving such official legal concessions,
2) the provincial nobility, who in their endeavours to increase their political
power against the provincial prince did not dare/wish to adopt such a decisive
stance as had their aristocratic counterparts in the Reich in paving the way for
provincial Reformed churches, and 3) the “time trap”, when with regard to con-
firming the old and granting the new provincial privileges, the most favourable
opportunity was missed – the homage to the provincial prince – in April 1564
(the Cerkovna ordninga was completed at the end of summer that year). The Cer-
kovna ordninga was thus banned, and its author exiled to Germany, to what Trubar
called his nigdirdom. So his short career in the position of superintendent, the
first provincial preacher, came to an end. Yet the Cerkovna ordninga after this
inauspicious initial setback later had a positive reception, since all the copies of
this work were not destroyed (the two known copies today testify to this – the
Vatican copy, which belonged to Trubar’s successor in the position of superinten-
dent of “the church of the Slovene language”, the German M. Kristof Spindler,
and the Memmingen copy, which belonged to Bernard Steiner), and in addition,
part of Trubar’s text from the Ordninga apparently passed in the mid 1580s into
Dalmatin’s Agenda (1585), against which the provincial prince Charles took no
steps. For this latter work, due to its exclusively ceremonial religious content did
not encroach on his regalia, which within the articles of the Peace of Augsburg
the Cerkovna ordninga most certainly did, with its admittedly unidentified pub-
lisher (none of the extant copies of the Cerkovna ordninga has a title page or
prefaces, from which the publisher’s “adherence” and consequent responsibility
could be established), but - as it seems from Trubar’s letter to the provincial
426
fession, 2) the internal religious uniformity of individual provincial-law entities, and
3) provincial peace. The above-mentioned main maxim of the Augsburg Confession
meant: everyone under his provincial prince remaining in that one’s faith and
from then on no-one should extend his power, territory, dominions or rights at
the expense of another religious creed. The latter was also a binding political
framework within which the origin and initial reception (the provincial prince’s
prohibition) of Trubar’s Cerkovna ordninga in Inner Austria is placed, although
Trubar’s work, due to its Slovene language, applied primarily to Carniola and
parts of Styria, Carinthia, the coastal region and the Pazin margraviate with its
Slovene speaking inhabitants.
Before writing the Cerkovna ordninga, Trubar already had experience in struc-
turing church organization (Kempten, 1553), nor was he without a feeling for
the current political use of “the Turkish fear” and arguments connected with it
(e.g. in letters to King Maximilian, 1560, where Trubar convinces the monarch
to assist printing in Slovene and Croatian). But the project of publishing and
thus legally establishing Trubar’s church order in Inner Austria encountered:
1) the Catholic provincial prince Charles, who was very much aware of his pre-
rogatives as provincial prince regarding the religious rights of Protestants and
as a convinced Catholic had no intention of giving such official legal concessions,
2) the provincial nobility, who in their endeavours to increase their political
power against the provincial prince did not dare/wish to adopt such a decisive
stance as had their aristocratic counterparts in the Reich in paving the way for
provincial Reformed churches, and 3) the “time trap”, when with regard to con-
firming the old and granting the new provincial privileges, the most favourable
opportunity was missed – the homage to the provincial prince – in April 1564
(the Cerkovna ordninga was completed at the end of summer that year). The Cer-
kovna ordninga was thus banned, and its author exiled to Germany, to what Trubar
called his nigdirdom. So his short career in the position of superintendent, the
first provincial preacher, came to an end. Yet the Cerkovna ordninga after this
inauspicious initial setback later had a positive reception, since all the copies of
this work were not destroyed (the two known copies today testify to this – the
Vatican copy, which belonged to Trubar’s successor in the position of superinten-
dent of “the church of the Slovene language”, the German M. Kristof Spindler,
and the Memmingen copy, which belonged to Bernard Steiner), and in addition,
part of Trubar’s text from the Ordninga apparently passed in the mid 1580s into
Dalmatin’s Agenda (1585), against which the provincial prince Charles took no
steps. For this latter work, due to its exclusively ceremonial religious content did
not encroach on his regalia, which within the articles of the Peace of Augsburg
the Cerkovna ordninga most certainly did, with its admittedly unidentified pub-
lisher (none of the extant copies of the Cerkovna ordninga has a title page or
prefaces, from which the publisher’s “adherence” and consequent responsibility
could be established), but - as it seems from Trubar’s letter to the provincial
426
