The religious upheaval that caused so many throughout Germany to desert their vocations was not without effect among the brethren of St John. The chaplain Johannes Stumpf became a friend of Zwingli in 1522 and handed over the commanderies of Bubikon, Wadenswil and Kiisnacht to the city of Zurich. Although the Order recovered the three properties it was not until after their conventual life, including that of the priestly community of Kiisnacht, had been irretrievably destroyed by Protestant intrusion. Miinchenbuchsee and the priests’ convent of Biel were confiscated by the government of Berne in 1529.
In Strasbourg an attempt to close the church to Catholic worship was resisted in 1526, but the atmosphere in the city was so hostile that the priests and students — for the house was the novitiate for the chaplains of the Priory - moved for a time to Selestat, while six members of the community sought secularisation. At Duisburg the church was given over to Protestant worship t>y 1554 and the commandery was administered
From Herrenstrunden, for here too the once-flourishing community was in rapid decline. A
Statue of St John, 1547, and commandery church of Fribourg.
Comparison of the strength of the German priory in 1495 and 1540 shows what blows it had been struck even in the first stages of the Reformation. The number of knights had fallen from 40 to 26, while the loss among the chaplains was catastrophic: from 322, they were now reduced to 132. The case of Steinfurt, which had exactly the same number of knights and chaplains at the two dates, shows that in Catholic territories houses could maintain their strength, but the respite ended when the Counts of Bentheim became Protestant; in 1564 the church of Steinfurt was confiscated, and after two successive commanders had apostatised and been deposed the community transferred to Munster about 1615.
In Friesland all but three of the houses were confiscated around 1530; ten years later there were still sixteen aged sisters to be found there, half of them at Diinebroek, but the Reformation soon made a clean sweep. A lawsuit enabled the Order to recover Hasselt and Langholt in 1609, and these two commanderies remained a unique survival of Catholic institutions in East Friesland.
As it bled from these wounds, the German priory was at least given prestige in the middle years of the century by one of its most distinguished heads, Georg Schilling von Cannstadt (1546-54), who had commanded the Order’s forces when Charles V took Tunis and had served as Governor of Tripoli. To strengthen Catholic representation in the College of Princes Charles V raised the Prior of Heitersheim to princely rank, and Schilling’s personal standing justified and gained acceptance for the act. Schilling made efforts to retrieve the Priory’s material losses, but the Order still had many blows to sustain before circumstances improved.
In Scandinavia a chaplain of Antvorskov returned from Wittenberg a Protestant in 1521 and was expelled from the Order; in 1530 the King of Sweden began giving the commandery of Eskilstuna to laymen, Vaerne in Norway was confiscated two years later, and the Danish commanderies suffered the same fate in 1536, though the brethren were not ejected. In 1552 a Prior still ruled at Antvorskov and was expected to give hospitality to travellers, but in 1580 the castle was appropriated by the Crown.
The Grand Bailiff of Brandenburg, whose seat had been at Sonnenburg since 1428, found himself a subject of the Margrave of Neumark during the separation of that territory from the Electorate (1535-71). When the Margrave became a Protestant in 1538 he could not remain indifferent to the allegiance of a dignitary who was in fact the richest vassal of the reduced principality. He soon imposed his authority, while leaving the structure of the Bailiwick outwardly intact; some commanders married, knowing that their Protestant princes would bar any intervention from Heitersheim. In 1564 the Margrave had his Chancellor, Franz Neumann, elected Herrenmeister, but he took his responsibilities to the Bailiwick more seriously than suited his prince and was obliged to flee to Prague. Finally in 1594 the office began to be given to members of the electoral house, while commanderies in Mecklenburg and elsewhere were surrendered to their princes; by the middle of the seventeenth century the Grand Bailiwick retained only seven of its thirteen medieval commanderies, though an eighth had been bought at Schivelbein in 1540.
The case of Brandenburg illustrates the survival of Catholic institutions in Protestant Ger-
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Many where their usufruct had passed into the hands of the nobility. It also exemplifies the principle cuius regio eius religio. Wietersheim, the most westerly possession of the Grand Bailiwick, was held by Catholic knights till 1582, when a member of the ducal house of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel was elected Prince-Bishop of Minden and imposed Protestantism on the principality and the commandery. In this region the imperial commissioners were able to enforce the Edict of Restitution and introduce a Catholic commander in 1630, while French influence placed another Catholic there in 1641. Not until the Peace of Westphalia gave Minden to the Electorate of Brandenburg was Wieters-heim definitively restored to the jurisdiction of the Grand Bailiff.
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