Eucharistisches Handeln und Wissen an der St. Blasii Gemeinde Nordhausen in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts

Abstract

This article examines the connection between religious knowledge and religious action using the example of communion attendance at the Lutheran parish of St. Blasii in the imperial city of Nordhausen in Thuringia during the second half of the seventeenth century. The parish’s account book between 1649 and 1696 is used to reconstruct communion frequency among the parishioners. One striking feature is a phase of increased communion frequency between 1663 and 1673, during which the calculated average number of parishioners who took communion almost doubled. Thereafter, the figures drop down to the levels common before 1663. These developments cannot be explained by demographic changes alone. Rather, this change was influenced by the transformation of religious knowledge in the Nordhausen parish (pastoral theology, early Pietist literature) on the one hand and by official interventions (the promulgation and enforcement of a Policeyordnung) on the other.