In The Reformation of Suffering, Ronald Rittgers bridges the gap between doctrine and practice in the realm of suffering and mortality. As in his earlier work on penitential piety, in this detailed study Rittgers draws from pastoral and devotional sources, in many cases bringing to light long-neglected texts. In the interest of thematic unity, Rittgers focuses more on suffering and pain in everyday life than on abstract conceptions of the damaged human condition or large-scale events like earthquakes or outbreaks of plague.
Rittgers describes a “pastoral revolution” that began with the identification of the cura animarum as a priority at Lateran IV but not evident at the parish level, where the sacraments remained the principal sources of comfort before the fifteenth century. Evidence from confessors' manuals and devotional works places the experience of pain within the theology of the sacraments, extreme unction in particular. Late-medieval consolation literature, with classical origins, emphasizes both the superiority of the next world to this one (a trope meant to make present adversities bearable) and the meritorious value of suffering. Works by Johann von Dombach and Jean Gerson represent the harvest of the consolation genre, both of them striving to “Christianize Boethius” (58). In addition to this practical or ascetic tradition, works by authors like Heinrich Suso offered a mystical approach to suffering: Rittgers states that these devotional works see suffering as a form of union with God, a view supported by the popularity of Lives of Christ by writers like Ludolf of Saxony and Jordan of Quedlinburg, and by the Passion mysticism of Mechtild of Magdeburg and others, including Suso whose Life of the Servant gave narrative form and support to a life of patient endurance.
Rittgers argues correctly that “suffering took on an importance in Luther's theology that is unique among the leading theologians of the Protestant Reformation” (86). For the early Luther, suffering is the means by which one becomes aware of one's wretchedness, tribulation and consolation being a recurring alternation in the believer's life. But it also allows for the growth and strengthening of the Christian's soul. Luther's understanding of his own tribulations is a component of a framework of experience: in some form or another, pain is a necessary part of the believer's life.
In an original interpretive move, Rittgers binds Luther's theology of the cross, developed as part of the controversy over indulgences, to his view of physical suffering. As Rittgers presents it, the theology of the cross, in which God is revealed through physical suffering, means that human pain is the condition for becoming an instrument of Christ. Thus the experience of pain, for Luther, is the human element in the operation of divine agency upon human passivity. Christ's sacrifice, says Luther, is a sacrament that serves as an example. Suffering thus becomes a divine gift (understandable only through faith), with Christians accepting suffering rather than either attempting to avert it or imagining it as meritorious. Rittgers notes that not all reformers fit the same pattern. Zwingli's consolatory prose, for example, notes the value of suffering in a life of faith, but he seems to have been less concerned with the theology of the cross: as Rittgers puts it, “suffering simply does not play a decisive role in his theology” (127).
In Rittgers's genealogy of the discourse of suffering, Johann Staupitz appears as an influence on figures like Lazarus Spengler. For both Staupitz and Spengler, suffering held a meritorious value as a form of penance. A more eclectic position was that of Katherine Schütz Zell, author of a consolation piece exhorting women to bear their sufferings as a gift from God, specifically as an opportunity to endure persecution for Christ's sake. There was little doubt during these decades that the suffering of the faithful was from God, but the meaning attached to it was crystallized for some in what Rittgers calls a theology-of-the-cross “school,” made up of Caspar Huber, Johannes Brenz, Michael Keller, and Wenceslas Linck. At the same time, radicals like Grebel, Karlstadt, and Müntzer saw pain as a form of purification: an important but elsewhere unrecognized point of difference.
The new religious ideas were to be applied in the pastoral setting according to guidelines given official form in the various church ordinances of the time. As Rittgers describes it, the importance given to suffering and consolation in these documents reflects a shift in pastoral care beyond the sacramental formalities of the medieval church. In ministering to the sick, Rittgers notes, the familiar theme of sin was held in tension with the words of promise. Veit Dietrich's 1543 pastoral manual, for example, counsels the pastor to accentuate divine mercy when ministering to the dying, though not without calling for an awareness of the afflicted person's sinful life. Andreas Osiander accentuated suffering in a 1533 church ordinance by claiming that Satan was persecuting the church out of rage toward the gospel. Melanchthon, by contrast, held that suffering was God's way of breaking down sinful human nature in advance of the healing effect of forgiveness.
Over the course of time, “suffering became confessionalized” (191): the discourse of consolation mirrored the divisions within protestantism and, in Rittgers's view, contributed to them, with each confession interpreting suffering in its own way. In its evolution the theology of suffering absorbed aspects of Passion spirituality and gave important roles to angels as comforters of the afflicted. Rittgers's attention to urban lay piety (“burgher religion”) is especially welcome as a bridge between the theologians' conceptions of pain and the spiritual needs of those in their care. Marked by thorough and careful work with recondite sources as well as insightful readings of canonical writings, with this exhaustive study Rittgers has laudably extended our knowledge of a subject too long ignored.
