A Liturgy of Lament for a Broken House-Church: The Pious Meditations (1619) of Johann Christoph Oelhafen

This article explores the evolving nature of affectivity in the long Reformation, focusing especially on the place of lament in the ‘emotion script’ of early modern Lutheranism. It examines this script by introducing readers to an extremely rich and previously unknown ego-document or ‘Selbstzeugnis’ from early seventeenth-century Nürnberg: Johann Christoph Oelhafen's ‘Pious Meditations on the, Alas, Most Sorrowful Bereavement’. The article argues that the ‘Pious Meditations’ was shaped by the liturgical life of the early modern Lutheran house-church, even as it contributed a new and important ‘setting’ to this liturgy that allowed greater room for biblical lament in times of overwhelming grief. This new ‘setting’, in turn, constituted a revision of the early modern Lutheran ‘emotion script’.

Duke Scholars

Author Ronald K. Rittgers Divinity School