In spite of its strategic geographical placement vis-a-vis Denmark and the Netherlands, Count Anton Guenther’s prudent management had kept Oldenburg neutral throughout the war. Well—he’d bribed Tilly to stay out of his lands with a gift of lots of the famous Oldenburg horses. It had been worth the cost. He had added Varel and Knyphausen to his domains. He had obtained an Imperial grant for the Weser River tolls that added substantially to his income.
There was some suspicion by orthodox Lutherans that he harbored crypto-Calvinist tendencies. Not just plain crypto-Calvinist tendencies, but Arminian, Remonstrant, crypto-Calvinist tendencies. Over the past three generations, Oldenburg had repeatedly offered sanctuary to men tossed out of the Netherlands by the stricter Calvinists. Justus Lipsius had thanked his host by complaining that the town “stank of brown coal and bacon.” Count Anton Guenther’s grandfather had replied calmly that this smell only signified that all of his subjects were prosperous enough to have a warm fire and meat for supper every night. Within the last few years, Hugo Grotius had enjoyed full run of the count’s library while he was temporarily between employers (or, depending how one looked at it, on the lam). Oldenburg’s sympathy for those in religious difficulties was sometimes extended even more widely. Jan Amos Comenius had spent some time in the library of Anton Guenther’s neat little Renaissance-style residence.
Or, in other words, the counts of Oldenburg were Philippists. Tolerant Philippists. Lax, even as Philippists went.
The Count of Oldenburg’s problem was a longstanding attachment to a woman of unequal birth. Elizabeth von Ungnad was scarcely a kitchen maid—her grandfather had served as Imperial ambassador to Turkey. But she was not of the higher nobility. Ferdinand II’s uncompromising introduction of the Counter-Reformation had driven her family out of Austria and they had found refuge in Oldenburg. By this relationship with Elizabeth, he had a dearly-beloved namesake son, very promising, who was not entitled to inherit Oldenburg. He foresaw that his snug, well-governed, little corner of Germany would some day be torn apart by feuding cousins from Denmark and Holstein, as Juelich and Cleves had been by cousins from Brandenburg and the Palatinate.
The Count of Rudolstadt’s problem, obviously, was how to resolve the quarrels among the disputatious groups of Lutherans encamped upon his doorstep.
Surely, the two of them thought, something could be arranged.
Count Anton Guenther proffered the first hypothetical suggestion. If Ludwig Guenther could see his way to granting the exemption to let Grantville’s Philippists take communion at St. Martin’s near Grantville, he suggested, then, in view of the upcoming marriage alliance, he himself might extend feelers through his new cousin-in-law that could possibly lead to an alliance of Oldenburg with the CPE.
If Anton Guenther were interested in an alliance, Ludwig Guenther replied, he was sure that Gustavus Adolphus would be happy to discuss terms. He cleared his throat. It was possible, of course, that such terms might include support for young Anton’s succession to his father. There might ways for an interested ruler to legitimate his status, since neither of his parents had ever been married to anyone else. If it should be found that the mother’s family were to have been raised into the higher nobility prior to the boy’s birth, but that somehow this had been inadvertently overlooked…?
Once the hypotheses were out in the open, more or less, the conversation advanced to procedural concerns. Count Ludwig Guenther commented that he would be willing to invite the King of Sweden’s personal observer, Margrave George of Baden-Durlach to dinner the next evening. If Margrave George proved to be open to further discussion, the American secretary of state, Mr. Piazza had a radio operator from Grantville here in Jena. There was a radio operator from Grantville with the King of Sweden. With a judicious use of these marvelous radio communications, one might…
The conversation continued for several hours, every sentence carefully kept in the subjunctive. It never referenced the doctrine of ubiquity. Not even once.
Both men were, in their own ways, very sincere, faithful, practicing Lutherans. Ludwig Guenther, to be sure, was considerably more pious, but, still, Anton Guenther was also. The doctrine of ubiquity had never played a large role in either of their religious lives, any more than it did in the religious life of Carol Koch.