Crypto-Calvinism - in Saxony

In Saxony

Controversy about crypto-Calvinism inside of Lutheran Church divides into two stages: 1552–74 and 1586–92. It was the most bitter of all controversies after Luther's death.

Crypto-Calvinists had gained the ecclesiastical power in Saxony during the rule of elector Augustus, but the unquestionably Calvinistic work of Joachim Cureus, Exegesis perspicua de sacra cœna (1574), and a confidential letter of Johann Stössel which fell into the elector's hands opened his eyes. The heads of the Philippist party were imprisoned and roughly handled, and the Torgau Confession of 1574 completed their downfall (Caspar Peucer, not incidentally Melanchthon's son-in-law, was captured and jailed in the Königstein Fortress for Crypto- Calvinism for 12 years). By the adoption of the Formula of Concord their cause was ruined in all the territories which accepted it, although in some others it survived under the aspect of a modified Lutheranism, as in Nuremberg, or, as in Nassau, Hesse, Anhalt, and Bremen, where it became more or less definitely identified with Calvinism.

Crypto-Calvinism raised its head once more in the Electorate of Saxony in 1586, on the accession of Christian I., but on his death five years later it came to a sudden and bloody end with the murder of Nikolaus Krell as a victim to this unpopular revival of Calvinism.