Der Weg zur Entscheidung: Verfahren oder Verhandlung?

How to Come up for a Decision: Procedure or Negotiation? The Disputations in Cities in the 1520s The disputations held in imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire during the 1520 s, facing the turmoils caused by the reformation, served – like a stage play – to showcase and communicate the decision to implement Reformation that had already been made in advance. Usually, this is the judgement on the so called “Religionsgespräche”. Although this view shows up even in contemporary statements, the article argues, that a differentiated analysis of the various actors, their interests and possibilities to influence the events opens up a clearer perspective on what happened and why it happened. Using the sociological distinction of procedure and negotiation, this article shows, that the disputation had to keep the balance between reglemented procedure and more liberal negotiation to produce an accepted and also binding result for their community. Examples from the disputations of Zürich (1523), Kaufbeuren, Memmingen, Nürnberg (1525) and Bern (1528) allow this article to illustrate different ways of how this balancing on a razor’s edge could be done. The conclusion develops a general model of how the cities used disputations to try to deal with the religious turmoil while facing stiff opposition from local clerics and scholars, the papal church and the emperor.