Crypto-Calvinism

Crypto-Calvinism is a pejorative term describing a segment of those members of the Lutheran Church in Germany who were accused of secretly subscribing to Calvinist doctrine of the Eucharist in the decades immediately after the death of Martin Luther in 1546.

It denotes what was seen as a hidden (crypto- from Greek: κρύπτω meaning "to hide, conceal, to be hid")[1] Calvinist belief, i.e., the doctrines of John Calvin, by members of the Lutheran Church.

This attitude towards the Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist had become evident already in 1540, when Melanchthon had published another version of the Augsburg Confession ("Variata"), in which the article on the Real Presence differed essentially from what had been expressed in 1530.

It was printed (with the title and preface of the Invariata) in Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum in 1559; it was expressly approved by the Lutheran princes at the Convention of Naumburg in 1561, after Melanchthon's death, as an improved modification and authentic interpretation of the Confession, and was adhered to by the Melanchthonians and the Reformed even after the adoption of the Book of Concord (1580).

Matthias Flacius had been the leader against Philippism in earlier controversies, but even Gnesio-Lutherans did not pay much attention to the doctrine of the Eucharist until Joachim Westphal began, in 1552, to write against those who denied the Real Presence.

The controversy was also about eucharistic adoration, which was defended by "Gnesio-Lutherans" and also many other Lutherans outside of the Flacian party, including Johann Hachenburg, Andreas Musculus, Jakob Rungius, and Laurentius Petri.

Their cause was thwarted in those territories that adopted the Formula of Concord, 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.

[9] In Sweden, crypto-Calvinism, which was resisted by Archbishop Olaus Martini, was supported by Duke Charles, uncle of Catholic king Sigismund III Vasa.