Friday, March 6, 2026

It is the 6th of March 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

One of the highlights of my now yearly trips through Europe and the lands of the Reformation (go to GTItours.org for more information) is the day we spend in the ancient city of Augsburg. Standing under the fountain for Caesar Augustus (yes, the one from the Nativity story) I tell the story of how this town was built as a major trade center by the Emperor (of Emperor’s) himself.

 

He couldn’t have known that he would be, perhaps, the second most powerful man from this city, Augsburg, now in Southern Germany, over the Alps from Italy. You may have heard of the Augsburg Confession (1530, the first Lutheran confession of faith) or the Peace of Augsburg (1555, the peace that legalized aspects of the Reformation). But we head back a little earlier- to the 1400s and the rise of perhaps the richest man to ever live: Jakob Fugger.

 

He was Jakob Fugger the II, better known as “the rich,” and he was born on this, the 6th of March in 1459. His family, the Fuggers, settled in Augsburg in the 1300s, and his grandfather and father used their business savvy and family connections to make their names in the manufacturing of Fustian (a kind of sturdy wool and flax material that is a precursor to blue jeans).

 

Jakob II was the youngest boy and was sent, as was the custom, into church work and in his case across the Alps into the Italian lands. His mother, who would take over the family business when his father died, encouraged him to study more than theology- and with a manufacturing family, it made sense for him to learn trade, measures, and most importantly: Italian banking (this is the double entry bookkeeping system- and all my former students say “oh, this again…).

 

Jakob would return to Augsburg, not as a churchman, but to join his older brothers making firm.

 

The Fugger bank would become one of the most successful business ventures in world history. Banking and trade had been important, but smaller trades in the largely agricultural world of late medieval Europe. The introduction and expansion of overseas territories, coupled with European wars, opened a new world for financial opportunities, and Jakob figured his best bet would be in mining. If you want the short version: Jakob bet on copper on the verge of both a copper shortage and demand in copper for ship building, weapons, and the like.

 

How rich did Jakob Fugger get? We can estimate his wealth at something like 400 billion dollars in current money. So, how did this wealth change the church and help to usher in the Reformation?

 

He and his family helped the consolidation and emergence of the Habsburg dynasty, helping Charles V become Holy Roman Emperor. The Catholic Habsburgs are the family in opposition to the early Reformation. When Pope Leo X needed funds for his rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica, he borrowed from the Fuggers. Leo would need to raise church revenue to pay the bank back.

 

This would dovetail with another powerful man, Albert of Brandeburg who would purchase the Archbishopric of Mainz with a loan from the Fuggers. Albert would need to raise revenue to pay the bank back.

 

Both Leo and Albert promoted a suspect, but a popular medieval practice: the selling of indulgences.

 

And so, to pay back Jakob Fugger and his family firm, special and often aggressively promoted indulgences became the story, especially in the German lands on the eve of the Reformation in 1517.

 

On our tour in Augsburg, we walk from the Augustus fountain to the Church of St. Anne (patron saint of Miners) where the Reformation would eventually take hold- but the fingerprints of the Fuggers remain- I tell this story in the Goldsmith’s chapel and then walk the group over to the very Catholic Fugger section of the otherwise, now Protestant, church where Jakob is buried- he died in 1525, born on this day in 1459- Jakob Fugger the Rich- was 66 years old.

 

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Ephesians 2:

17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 6th of March 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite Caesars include Augustus, Julius, Romero of Joker fame, and Cardini, who invented the salad- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who knows how to put the Umlauts over the right letters but never does… (hold the letter down and tap the number 4)- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.