07070 - Brandenburg Confessions

§70. The Brandenburg Confessions.

(Confessiones Marchicæ. )

Literature.

Hartknoch: Preussische Kirchenhistorie. Frankf. 1686.

Zorn: Historia derer zwischen den Lutherischen und Reformirten Theologis gehaltenen Colloquiorum. Hamburg, 1705.

D. H. Hering: Historische Nachricht von dem ersten Anfang der evang.-reformirten Kirche in Brandenburg und Preussen unter dem gottseligen Churfürsten Johann Sigismund, nebst den drei Bekenntniss-Schriften dieser Kirche. Halle, 1778. The same: Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der evangel.-reform. Kirche in den Preuss. Brandenburg. Ländern. Berlin, 1787.

C. W. Hering: Geschichte der kirchlichen Unionsversuche seit der Reformation. Leipzig, 1836, 1837.

Beck: Symbol. Bücher der ev.-reform. Kirche, Vol. 1. pp. 472 sqq.; Vol. II. pp. 110 sqq., 130 sqq.

Niemeyer: Collectio, Proleg. pp. 73. sqq. and 642-689.

Böckel: Die Bekenntniss-Schriften, etc., pp. 425 sqq.

Möller: Joh. Sigismund’s Uebertritt zum reform. Bekenntniss, in the Deutsche Zeitschrift. Berlin, 1858, pp. 189 sqq.

Alex. Schweizer: Die Protest. Centraldogmen, Vol. II. pp. 6 sqq., 525 sqq., 531 sqq.

Comp. Herzog’s Encyklop. articles: Leipziger Colloquium, Vol. VIII. p. 286; Joh. Sigismund, Vol. XIV. p. 364; and Thorn (by Henke), Vol. XVI. p. 101.

Brandenburg, the central province of Prussia, with Berlin as its capital, ruled since 1415 by princes of the house of Hohenzollern, at first embraced the Lutheran Reformation, but at the beginning of the seventeenth century the Elector became Calvinistic, drawing with him a few influential ministers and congregations. This Reformed diaspora received an accession of about twenty thousand exiled Huguenots under the liberal policy of the great Elector Frederick William (1620-1688), the proper founder of the Prussian monarchy, who secured the legal recognition of the Reformed Church in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648).

There are three Reformed Confessions of Brandenburg-namely, the Confession of the Elector Sigismund (1614), the Leipzig Colloquy (1631), and the Declaration of Thorn (1645). They bear a moderately Calvinistic, we may say a Unionistic, type, and had a certain symbolical authority in Brandenburg till the introduction of the union of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in 1817. The great Elector mentions them together in 1664. The Canons of Dort were respectfully received but never adopted by the Brandenburg divines.