CATECHISMS.
Rationalistic Catechisms of Eighteenth Century (§ 5).
Modern German Lutheran chisms (§ 6).
Modern German Reformed chisms (§7).
Switzerland (§ 8).
Austria-Hungary (§ 9).
Slavic Countries (§ 10).
Scandinavian Countries (§ 11).
Holland (§ 12).
the Italy (§ 15).
American Lutheran Catechisms Cate- (§ 16).
The Moravians and Bohemipn Cate- Brethren (§ 17).
Methodist Catechisms (§ IS). Baptist and Irvingite Catechisms
(§ IS). Unitarian Catechisms (§ 20). Roman Catholic and Old Catholic
Catechisms (§ 21). The Greek Church (§ 22).
young. These formal aids to systematic instruction are of comparatively modern growth. For the system of the primitive Church, see Catechumenate.
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Catechesis Catechisms
I. The Middle Ages: The beginnings of modern catechetical instruction, as to the development of which see Catechesis, Catechetics, are found principally in the Germanic Churches. Here, as in primitive days and for the same reason, it originally addressed itself chiefly to adults. Sometimes whole tribes had been converted to Christianity in which the individuals did not possess the most elementary knowledge of the Christian faith, and it was necessary to impart by further teaching what had been neglected at the time of baptism. The Anglo-Saxon Church, and afterward Charlemagne, under the influence of his Anglo-Saxon adviser Alcuin, decreed that every baptized person should know by heart the Creed and the Lord's Prayer. But the rising generation was not left altogether out of view. There was from the beginning an indefinite feeling among the Teutonic Churches that the Church, by its acceptance of infant baptism, was bound to care for the instruction of the children thus brought into 1. Need of j^s f0l(j. It was naturally impossible, Cateehe in view of the widely scattered parishes
. .. and the necessity of instruction being
almost exclusively oral, to undertake the actual teaching; but the need was to some extent indirectly met by the requirement that no sponsor should present a child for baptism without being able to recite the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and that sponsors should teach the same articles to their godchildren.
Another influence that helped to enforce a certain amount of Christian knowledge was the system of regular confession, especially after an annual confession was made obligatory by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. With the act of confession was usually connected a recitation of the articles which the sponsors were supposed to have impressed upon their godchildren. The system further led to an enlargement of the scope of regular instruction. As the Creed and the Lord's Prayer 2" of Con"106 hardly formed a suitable basis for the
fession" confession of sins, there originated lists of the sins which required .ecclesiastical penance; and these, with corresponding lists of virtues, were often ordered to be learned by heart; in this connection the decalogue was redeemed from oblivion. It became a regular practise to preach sermons on the Ten Commandments in Lent, the most usual time for confession; and thus catechetical preaching developed. The reformers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, such as Gerson and Geiler von Kaisersberg, were strong advocates of these sermons on the foundations of Christian doctrine. The Ave Maria was included among the articles to be learned, and came to take equal rank with the Creed and the Lord's Prayer. The tendency was to enlarge the material, though some attempts were made, on the other hand, to condense it; thus Johann Wolf of Frankfort showed that all the articles used in confession could be traced to the decalogue. He also laid special emphasis upon the religious instruction of youth in a period when the councils of the Church paid no particular attention to it as a distinct branch of church work. The beginning of a refor-
mation in this respect was the work of humanists like Jakob Wimpheling and Erasmus. Colet in England drew up a manual of religious instruction under the title of Catechyzon for the boys of St.
Paul's School, which Erasmus put
3. Pre-Ref- into Latin hexameters, thereby per-
ormation haps giving the impulse to Petrus
Catechisms. Tritonius to produce a similar work.
Outside, however, of such efforts, which were rather scholastic than ecclesiastical, catechisms in the modern sense, or compilations of the principal articles of faith for children, were practically unknown to the medieval Church.
There were, indeed, such compilations for the clergy, which with the invention of printing began to circulate widely among the laity. The Tafel des christlichen Lebens (c. 1480) is in more ways than one a direct predecessor of Luther's smaller catechism, but a comparison shows the characteristic difference between the medieval and the Evangelical Church. In the Catholic table are found numerous pieces without any explanatory word, sacred formulas that were frequently repeated without comprehension; in Luther's catechism appear the five main articles, with the emphasis laid upon the explanation. Great importance was attached to the religious instruction of youth by the Bohemian Brethren and the Waldenses. The Interrogacions menors of the Waldenses date from the end of the fifteenth, or at least from the beginning of the sixteenth, century. The Kinderfragen of the Bohemian Brethren are still older, since they served as a model for the Interrogacions.
II. The Post-Reformation Period: From the beginning of the Reformation care was taken to provide for the religious instruction of youth. Almost simultaneously the two places where the movement had its origin established institutions which were followed as models; in 1521 Johann Agricola was appointed catechist at Wittenberg, and in 1522 systematic instruction of youth in the Christian faith was established in Zurich in place of the Roman confirmation.
Luther's popular expositions of the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, especially his Kurze Form and his Betbiichlein, are not catechisms in the proper sense of the word,
but rather prepared the way for them.
1. Early Several adaptations of the Kinder-
Iiutheran fragen of the Bohemian Brethren,
Catechisms. German translations of Melanchthon's
Enchiridion and Scholia, and numerous other compilations of the Christian truth adapted for children show the demand for an Evangelical text-book. Toward the end of 1524 Justus Jonas and Agricola were ordered to write such a book; they did not execute their commission, but toward the end of 1525 there was published the Buchlein jiir die Laien und Kinder (possibly by Bugenhagen), which provisionally at least supplied the want. About the same time Luther urged, in his Deutsche Messe, the introduction of religious instruction for children. His appeal called forth numerous expositions of the articles of faith, and in many places systematic teaching was begun. In 1529 Luther published his Smaller Cateehism
Catechisms