Jumalasulase abielu ja antikatoliiklikud motiivid pastoritele pühendatud pulmaluules
Marriage of a cleric and some anti-Catholic motifs in 17th-century poems for pastors’ weddings

Summary/Abstract: Occasional poetry flourished in the early 17th-century Tallinn and Tartu. In Tallinn, wedding songs prevailed, while Tartu was more inclined to academic congratulations. About a third of the wedding song collections printed in either town were dedicated to acting clergy. As can be expected, congratulations for clergymen are richer in Christian motifs than the wedding poems written for representatives of other estates, yet the Christian motifs fail to overshadow the abundance of those of classical antiquity. As a matter of fact, the Christian and pagan motifs are intertwined no less closely in congratulations for pastors than in other wedding songs. The Christian motifs include, for example, references to biblical marriages, the mystical marriage between Christ and the Church, God as creator of the marital status, and the proclamation of God’s pure word as an official duty of the groom. Surprisingly, however, there are a few authors who find it appropriate – as late as the early 17th century – to refer to the pre-Reformation debate over whether it is proper for a man of God to get married or not. Even though for protestant pastors the answer is known in advance, there occur a few cases of anti-papal criticism coming down to identifying the pope with antichrist. By doing that, they refer to the same biblical passages found in some other wedding poems, no matter whether dedicated to pastors or not, without any negative connotation (e.g. God as the Creator of marriage, the story of Adam and Eve, to name a few more important ones).

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