1526Introduction of the Reformation in Alsfeld

In October 1526, Landgrave Philipp initiated the introduction of the Reformation in Hesse at the synod he convened in Homberg an der Efze, in consensus with the estates and representatives of the clergy.

The conversion to the Lutheran faith and the resulting dissolution of the monasteries provided the landgrave with considerable financial resources, which he used to found the first Protestant university in Marburg and to establish new hospitals, schools and charitable foundations. The landgrave himself had converted to the Lutheran faith in 1524, just one year after he had summoned Tileman Schnabel, Alsfeld’s pastor who had received his doctorate from Luther, to Romrod Castle in the summer of 1523 and rebuked him so harshly that Schnabel fled Alsfeld in fear that very evening. The reason for this was that Schnabel’s sermons in Alsfeld in the spirit of his friend and doctoral supervisor Luther had drawn the crowds away from the Walpurgis Church to the Augustinian monastery.

This fact was the basis for Luther’s later famous statement that Alsfeld was “the first town / to accept religion after the Reformation”. (quoted from: Merian/Zeiller: “Topographia Hassiae”). (MNic)