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Doctrinal squabbles intensified in the sixteenth century not simply for their own
sake, but also because the marking-out of confessional boundaries became the
cornerstone of the state-building process, where the interrelation of Church and State
functioned as the “Schlüsselmonopol [key monopoly] within early modern statebuilding.”
70 One crucial tool to achieve this was a new kind of document—the
confessional document. The structure of the confessional documents served both to
generate cohesion within the confession, and also to delimit one confession from another.
For instance, the articles in the chief Lutheran confessional document, the Formula
Concordiae (1577), begin by affirming, in the first person plural, what Lutherans believe
and confess (“Wir gläuben und bekennen”) and then by rejecting and condemning what
other confessions believe (“Dagegen verwerfen und verdammen wir einhellig alle
nachfolgende irrige Artikel”). 71 This Formula Concordiae marked the high point in the
drive towards confessionalization during Weigel’s lifetime. A product of the cooperation
of many Lutheran territories, the Formula Concordiae was meant to unify Lutherans by
providing an ultimate authority in matters of doctrine, backed by the authority of secular
rulers. Duke August of Saxony, for instance, had the document circulated throughout his
domain, pressuring all theologians and pastors to subscribe to it. Refusing to sign, it was
70 Schilling, Konfessionalisierung, 514. Schreiner and Schilling both note that the basis for this belief that
political unity and societal harmony could be best achieved through religious unity, as summed up in the
phrase religio vinculum societas (religion is the bond of society). On the development of the first
confessional statements in the early Church, and particularly on the Emperor Constantine’s involvement in
the Nicean Council, see Gunther Gottlieb, "Confessio in der alten Kirche: Entstehung, Funktion, Inhalte,"
in Bekenntnis und Geschichte: Die Confessio Augustana im historischen Zusammenhang, 11-30 (München:
Verlag Ernst Vögel, 1980). An overview of these disputes can be found in Irene Dingel, "The Culture of
Conflict in the Controversies Leading to the Formula of Concord (1548-1580)," in Lutheran Ecclesiastical
Culture, 1550-1675, 15-64 (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
71 Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1979), 740ff.
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