PRUSSIA
■24
PRUSSIA
time, deprived the electorate of some of its original do- mains— as, for instance, the margravate of Ans] ich which passed, on the death of the elector Albert Achilles, in 1 186, as in ii d< | i ndenl state to his younger sons and tln-ir descendant-, i Mr mosl considerable addition to the electorate was the one to which reference lias already been made, and whii h fell to the elector John Sigismund throiiuli liis niai-: iji iii ii.'".' with Anne, daughter and heiress of A linn i Insane, duke of Prussia.
jn consequence of this alliance, the duchy ofCleves, the conntsbips of Baveusherg, the Mark, and Limhurg, and she duchy of Prussia, now known as East Prns- me incorporated with the Brandenburg territo- rii-. which were thus more than doubled in area.
" Phe reign of John Sigismund's buco — r, Georg w il- i e in (1619 I11,., was distracted by the miseries of the Thirty Years' war, and the country was alternately the prey ofSwedish and imperial armies; and on the acces- I org \\ ilhelm'e son, the greal elector Frederick William, in nun, the electorate was sunk in the lowest depths of social misery and financial embarrassment. But so wise, prudent, and vigorous was the govt rumenl ofthis prince that at his death, in 1688, be left a well-tilled exchequer and a fairly equipped army of 88,000 men; while the electorate, which now possessed a population
of one and a half million, and an ana of •)'.'. square
miles, had been raised by his genius to the rank ofa great European power" (Chambers . Ilis successors, Frederick in L68S 1713) and Frederick William l (1718-40 . each in his own way increased the power and credit of Prussia, which had been in 1701 raised to the rank ofa kingdom - a most significant change not only in the secular, but also in the ecclesiastical history of that country. Sweden had sunk down from the eminence which it had held for a time as the leading Protestant power ill the North : Prus- sia now rose to take the place from which Sweden was
receding, and the apparently insignificant event of 1701 at Kdiiigsberg was followed by very grave consequences, both for Germany and Europe.
.'!. Reformation Period.- The religious history ofthis early period of Prussia's aggrandizement is as full of in- terest as the secular. Its people, at g whom, even in
the Kith century, heathenish customs maintained their place side by side with Christian usage S, were among the tirst to look favorably upon the new Gospel movement.
The German order they had learned to despise, and. looking upon Christianity and knighthood as synony- mous, tiny had steadfastly opposed conversion. But now. when a gospel was preached discarding and op- posing the papacy and all its agencies, the people be- came reads converts; and the princes, accepting this una! popular movement as insurmountable, suffered themselves to be borne along with the tide. In Prussia the priests even favored the new departure. "From the success of the Reformation the princes expected the | forfeited property of the Church, the priests expected wives, and the people freedom." So says .Marx (Ur- sackt a '!< rschm lit n I \ rbri itung d. Ref. ; Maw nee, 183 1 | I. In Prussia, even the bishop of Sanilainl. I ieorge of Po-
lentz i q. v.), and soon afterwards Queis, bishop of Pom- erania, favored the movement; and the former linally placed himself at the bead of it. and proclaimed on Christmas-day, 1523, in the cathedral of Konigsberg, with great joy, thai the Saviour had been horn once more for his people. In 1525 the progress of the new opinions was so great that when the country was con- verted into a secular dukedom the entire populace sig- nified their cordial acquiescence, and rejoiced to rank themselves among the followers of Luther. A i ierman liturgy was soon afterwards introduced, adhering as closely as might lie to the ancient forms; the convents were changed into hospitals; and by the help of postils (q. v.), or expository discourses on the epistles and gos- pels, regularly sent from Wittenberg, the doctrines of
thi cli rgj w ere kepi iii general harmony with each oth- er, and also with the tenets advocated in the Lutheran metropolis. The two bishops, together with three evan- gelical preachers Luther had sent Briesmann, Spe- rat. and Poliander— had prepared a Church discipline (Agenda), and caused its adoption, under the title "Ar- tikel der (Vreinonieii u. anderer Kirchenordniine;." by
Parliament i Landtag') in December, 1525. In 1540 the
discipline was enlarged, and in loll still further aug- mented. In 1530 a confession of faith, consisting of eleven articles, was promulgated, under the title " \s- ticuli Ceremoniarum e Germanico in Latinum Wr-i el
nonnihil Locupletati," by a general synod at Kiinigs- berg. This was the tirst corpus doctrince. When the Augsburg Confession was published (1530-31), Albert sent for a copy and caused it to be introduced into the Prussian Church by episcopal decree, lint in 1544 Al- bert determined upon the future independence of the Prussian Church from Wittenberg, and to this end en- dowed the University of Konigsberg - a high school which was destined not only to play a greal pari in the history Of Prussia and of < iermany. but of Poland also; for from this university much Scriptural knowledge spread to Poland, and gave rise to a strong reformatory movement there (comp. Krasinski, Hist, ofth Ref. in Poland, i. 158). Bui this university also became the source ofa very serious theological controversy, which came very near destroying the Protestant Church of Prussia and seriously damaging the evangelical cause in all (iermany. We refer to the Osiander (q.v.) con- troversy. It began in 1549. Osiander was thai year lecturing at ELonigsberg d< legt et evangelio, and next year dt justificatione. He died in 1562, bul his Bon- in-L-iw, Funk, continued to espouse ( (slander's views. and in the controversy which ensued so much bad