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Chapter 14


Westphalia

September 1635


“So Westphalia has a draft charter.” Frederik propped his feet up on a hassock without bothering to remove his boots.

“That was the purpose of the convention.” Erik Stenbock laughed and picked up his stein.

Christian Ulrik pursed his lips. “It’s far from ideal. Although . . . I am reluctant to admit it, but the one proposal from Bremen, that the charter itself shall be put to a popular vote rather than submitted to the Estates of the individual territories for ratification . . . isn’t bad. It will at least be faster. The individual Estates could have dragged it out for years before we got a majority for ratification. We can put it to a vote in mid-winter, once the harvest is over and the peasants have a bit of free time to hear about it in the village tavern. Circulate some broadsides, I suppose. Presuming that it passes, hold the inaugural session in . . . when? April, I suppose. In Münster. The draft charter doesn’t set a date for it.”

“It couldn’t,” Kerstin said pragmatically. “No way to predict when it would go into effect.”

Frederik frowned. “But we gave away too much. Gave in too often. As the proverb goes: Verkäuft der Fürst das Amt, so hält der Amtmann offenen Markt. Whenever a lord sells a manor, his steward sells everything on the open market. To paraphrase it somewhat. The FoJP will reap the benefits.”

“What are you going to do about the second session, in the fall? The one the charter sets to be held in the north?” Eric reached for his stein. “Bremervörde simply is not suitable. It will have to be in Bremen, I suppose.”

“Or,” Christian Ulrik grinned, “if the Bremer simply get too full of themselves between now and then, how about Glückstadt? Ahhh! Wouldn’t that inflict some miseria et melancholia upon your reluctant subjects.”

“Tsk, tsk.” Frederik shook his head in mock reproof. “Citizens, not subjects. Only Gustav Adolf gets to have subjects in the USE. All the rest of us are serving its citizens.”

“Although, not its ‘free citizens,’ always and only,” Kerstin shot back.

That brought an over-dramatic sigh from the beleaguered governor. “Please. Let’s not revisit the controversy over voting rights for serfs. Not right now. It’s a nightmare, and the legal conditions and practical burdens of serfdom are so different from region to region. Aside from what the USE constitution says, which isn’t much . . . just that serfs are citizens, but without specifying exactly how or why.”

“Other than that Mike Stearns insisted on the provision back in 1633.” Christian Ulrik grinned.

“Which is true,” Erik granted, “but not in the constitution.”

“And Carstens from Meppen is now asserting that he did not harbor the slightest intention of harming the governor, but was motivated by the purest of intentions and attempting to make sure that no one else hurt him by accident.,” the chaplain said.

“Leave him alone,” Frederik said a little wearily. “He is ambitious; I am undamaged.”

Everyone except Joachim Lütkemann wandered off to bed. The governor didn’t often want to talk. Occasionally, he did. Rarely. The chaplain tried to give him the opportunity when it happened.

For twenty minutes, nothing happened. “So hält der Amtmann offenen Markt,” Frederik said abruptly. “What do you make of Luke 16:1-13?”

“The parable of the unjust steward? It’s generally held to be one of the most difficult in the New Testament, when it comes to exegesis.”

“How is it that hard? A steward who is about to be fired curries favor with his master’s debtors by remitting some of their debts. A version of the proverbial servant who sells everything portable off in the open market once the lord is no longer in control. That’s straightforward enough. At the end, the master commends him for being so clever. I’ve taken a look at Tyndale’s exposition, the booklet called The Parable of the Wicked Mammon. It’s difficult reading; the English language has changed much more in the past century than High German has since the days of Martin Luther. He manages to find a moral in the story. That ‘we with righteousness should be as diligent to provide for our souls, as he with unrighteousness provided for his body.’ Which I did not see any evidence of in the words of scripture.”

“As I recall, Tyndale’s exposition was based upon a sermon that Martin Luther delivered in 1522. Luther did not avoid tackling some of the more . . . shall we say problematic . . . parables. And for all our emphasis on the literal words of scripture, rather than the Catholic error of allegory, a parable is a parable. It’s no more meant to be read literally than poetry is meant to be read as prose.”

“Great,” Frederik muttered. “What does this mean?”

“Those words are not only a heading in the catechism. Luther took them from Acts 2:12, the description of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. ‘And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?’ But first, to return to the parable, the steward mismanaged his master’s goods. If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have been dismissed.”

Frederik twirled the wine glass he was holding.

Twirled it upside down, the chaplain noticed. It had been empty for two hours and only half filled at the start of dinner. When the innkeeper’s wife had cleared away the table settings and put out a fresh decanter, the governor had kept his glass but not refilled it.

He took a deep breath. “So, the steward mismanaged his master’s goods; when the master found out, he dismissed the steward. Notice that I have omitted the adjectives in this summation. Some translations, some commentaries, cause me unease in how they bring the adjectives out of the Greek . . . as the one you quoted did, above. The ‘unjust’ servant; the ‘unrighteous’ servant. He was unrighteous; we are all unrighteous by nature. But for purposes of the parable, it is clearer, I believe, if it is read as if we read it as the ‘steward’ or, perhaps, ‘servant’ of the unrighteous Mammon.

“Then,” Lütkemann shifted uneasily in his chair, “the steward adds cheating to mismanagement; writes off a lot of what he’s been sent to collect as his last job for the master, in hopes the debtors who benefit from his cheating will take him in and let him live comfortably. He doesn’t want to do menial labor or beg, so he does what he can to make sure he won’t have to.”

“And?” Frederik raised his eyebrows.

“The master admires the dipshit for being shrewd. Commends him. Where we meet the big problem.”

“What do you define as the big problem?”

“A lot of commentators, preachers, books, essays, sermons—what you will—over the centuries then assume, given that it’s Jesus who is telling the parable, that the master giving the commendation has to be Jesus himself, as the speaker. Or God the Father. Which they find fairly confusing.”

“Who is speaking, then?”

“I think,” Lütkemann answered, “within the limits that I am a young pastor, far from being one of the Church Fathers or even a modern university professor, that in that place in the parable Jesus was quoting what a master who was himself the ‘unrighteous Mammon’ would say; showing us what the world admires. Then . . . ”

Frederik interrupted. “And οἰκονόμος for the steward is the root of the word that the up-timers use for their science of ‘economics,’ I am told. They might term him a ‘manager.’ My father has sent me a reprint of an ‘economics textbook’ from Grantville. Their English language is far from comprehensible to one who has managed to master the Bible in King James’ authorized version. Or even the plays of Shakespeare. I am struggling with the ‘labor theory of value.’ It is difficult to envision our footman, the good Vendt in Münster, as the ultimate foundation of all earthly wealth as he stands there polishing the brass knocker on the door.”

Lütkemann sighed and tried to retrieve his train of thought. “Then, I think, Jesus changed the subject, and we, you and I and all the translating committees, don’t live in the days of Jesus, don’t live in the days of Luke, and our ears possibly may be as poorly tuned to the koiné of the New Testament as they are in hearing the subtleties of Tyndale’s past English and Grantville’s future English. We don’t catch the change of subject when he turns it. When he switches over to saying, ‘the world, Mammon, admires this kind of cleverness, because the steward has successfully garnered a comfortable financial future by being thoroughly sneaky, but . . . ’

Might the remainder of the parable be validly interpreted to indicate that Jesus was nudging the hearers, urging the hearers, to ask themselves whether or not they were using their material wealth to advance and support eternal goals shrewdly as worldly people use theirs advance their worldly goals?”

Frederik raised his eyebrows. “As we, all sinful people, mismanage God’s gifts to us. That’s basic. Catechism level. You’re saying that the tricky bit is what comes next.”

Lütkemann wandered off into muttering additional considerations involving New Testament Greek. “Now in verse 9, one might translate thus, ‘And [or ‘but,’ but ‘and’ seems to work better] I [I, even I] say to you, “Make friends for yourselves, by means of unrighteous [dishonest] money [from the Aramaic, we believe; μαμων], in order that when it runs out [λείπω, fail utterly], they will welcome you [‘that you may be received’; impersonal, better than ‘that they may receive you’] into the eternal dwelling places [tents; σκήνη implying an abode].”’”

He didn’t have the Greek text before him. Thankfully, this was not a scholarly study or a class. He was musing, from memory. When he was diverted from his trip home, the luggage that he had shipped ahead of him had continued on its way to Rostock. Where, as one of God’s good gifts, his expensive and treasured Greek New Testament was now reposing in safety.

Nor had Frederik been keeping up his Greek since completing his university studies.

“The steward is a man who thinks, ‘phronimos,’ not a man who is wise, ‘sophos.’ He plots, he plans, he designs. In a military sense, almost, he engages in maneuvers. He has determined a goal and is doing what he perceives as necessary to achieve it. But that is not the wisdom of God.

“After the change of topic, Jesus is pointing out that Christians should use the worldly blessings that God showers upon us, for all good gifts come from above, as we hear in James 1:17, ‘Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows,’ to support the church. We should use our master’s wealth to spread the Gospel so that the presence of others there will add to the joys of heaven.”

“That must be a remarkably convenient conclusion for pastors,” came Frederik’s cynical reply.

“Look at the conclusion, in regard to serving the ‘Mammon of wickedness’ [from the Aramaic again, possibly with an emphatic ending? or a genitive?]. What is it that the unrighteous master respects? To use money to make friends for ourselves? We are by nature in no way worthy of God’s respect, but because He has saved us, now we are His servants. Who should serve Him well.”

Lütkemann tried harder to call up mental images of notes he had taken years before. Images that were mostly more than a little fuzzy around the edges, to say the least. In verse 10, consider: The one who is faithful [πιστός faithful, trustworthy] in a least thing [in a very small thing; μικρός, least] is also faithful in a great thing, and the one who is dishonest [unrighteous; ἄ-δικος unjust, dishonest] in a least thing [a very small thing] is also dishonest in a great thing.

“Remember the conclusion of this section,” Lütkemann summed up, “verse 13, that no servant can be a faithful servant of two masters at the same time. ‘No servant [literally ‘nobody servant’] is able to serve. You cannot [you are not able to] serve God and mammon [money, wealth].’ One cannot serve both god and Mammon. The steward, I think, in the best translation, was not an ‘unrighteous servant’ but rather a servant of the unrighteous Mammon. And in that capacity, he did well.”

He sought for a lighter note on which to end the evening.

“I do recall something of Luther’s sermon on this parable: Luther stated that we should take this parable in a common sense way. The Lord himself does not praise what the steward did as good, but points out that the world would say something on the order of that was a clever ploy. Luther added, ‘Just as when a whore draws a string of men following after her and I say: she is a clever whore, she knows her business.’”

Frederik winced as he put his wine glass down. A clever whore had come close to bringing his father to ruin. For Kirsten Munk was a clever whore; or a whore with a clever mother. Noble-born, but still a whore who shrewdly bargained her body for money and position.

The words of the parable echoed in his mind as he prepared for bed. “ . . . cannot serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.”

Who was his master? Or, perhaps, who were his masters?


Quedlinburg

September 1635


Among the up-time students at Quedlinburg, Annalise and Bethany were the ones most resorted-to as references and sources by the down-time girls. Annalise among those on scholarships and in the work-study program; Bethany by those of noble origins whose families paid their tuition in full. When it came to the newspaper articles featuring the phrase, “we shall not be moved,” each of them tried her best to explain the civil rights movement of the 1960s to her friends.

Each from her own perspective, which was a bit skewed for each of them. For Annalise, what she knew about it came from her Grantville high school textbooks, but the social studies teachers weren’t emphasizing up-time history any more, having enough of a challenge in getting their students up to speed on the here-and-now. Bethany didn’t even know that much, since she had attended the DESSSFG in Magdeburg and her classes hadn’t covered it at all. She recalled a few occasional comments at family dinners, the name of President John Kennedy; the name of Martin Luther King. The last of which introduced great confusion into the conversation.

“So anything you can send will help,” she wrote to her mother. “Aside from that, things are going well. You can’t imagine how excited the older ladies here were last summer when Mrs. Dreeson visited and they got to pass around her dentures and examine them. They’re still talking about dentists and Grantville.”

Iona read about it in the newspapers too. The other teachers were more interested in her evaluation of the governor of Westphalia from the perspective of an up-timer.

“It’s hard to know what to make of the man. I did look him up in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica reprint that they’re buying for the abbey library. It’s past the volume for ‘D’ now. I sure hope that Denmark’s nobles are battening down their hatches now that they can see the tornado cloud coming. Or maybe mending their ways.”

She had to explain tornadoes, saying, “We didn’t have them much in West Virginia, any more than you do here; they came more out on the Great Plains than in mountains; can’t build up steam in up and down hills. But they made impressive television. And the ground is flat up there on the north coast, like Kansas—I’ve seen some of the photos that Tina Marie Hollister has taken since she married Lucas Sartorius and moved up that way.

“As for what I’ve read about this Frederik, though . . . In old-fashioned westerns—you know what movies are?—the actors came with white hats and black hats; you knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were; where you should cheer and where you should boo. I suppose, from what I’ve seen reported, this man, this guy in Westphalia, is more like the famous duke of York.

“What on earth do you mean by that? Which duke of York?

“It’s a nursery rhyme.” She sang,


Oh, the famous duke of York,

He had ten thousand men;

He marched them up to the top of the hill,

And he marched them down again.


And when he was up, he was up;

And when he was down, he was down.

But when he was only half-way up,

He was neither up nor down.


“This guy in Westphalia? From what I can tell by reading the papers, he’s neither up nor down.”

But her mind was already on other things. Kansas had brought up The Wizard of Oz and she was pretty sure she had a score somewhere in the music she had brought with her. Maybe an abbreviated version in the spring . . . 


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