The Unterricht der Visitatoren (1528). Origin, significance and historical impact of the first normative group text of the Wittenberg circle

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The project applied for aims in the first step at producing a critical-genetic edition of the Unterricht der Visitatoren on the basis of pre-existing prints from the 16th century and newly accessible primary sources in the Main Thuringian State Archive in Weimar and in other archives and libraries. They make it possible for the first time to reconstruct the emergence of this central document of the Wittenberg Reformation in detail. The widely debated question of authorship of the Unterricht der Visitatoren can now be clearly answered: neither Philipp Melanchthon nor Martin Luther was the sole creator of the text. Rather, it must be presumed that it was a collective work which for example Johannes Bugenhagen or Hieronymus Schurff also contributed to and that their practical experiences in the visitations between 1525 and 1527 influenced the text. In order to shed more light upon the historical origins, letters from correspondences of electoral advisors from the summer and autumn of 1527 will be selected for publication in the planned edition. The newly discovered primary sources will be made accessible in digital form (scans) by the Gotha Research Library at the site of the Digital Library. The second step of the projects builds on the first and aims at elucidating the historical background, the significance and the historical reception of this normative document of the 16th century circle of Wittenberg theologians in the form of an introductory commentary. It will not be simply assumed that Luthers theology or Melanchthons integrative intentions permeate this manual for the introduction of the Reformation, but rather that the Wittenberg theologians consciously attempted in close cooperation with legal scholars and court advisors to establish a consensus which they tried to hold to in the following years. Such a consensus would, however, not have been conceivable without the territorial prince assuming episcopal functions.