SUPERINTENDENT, a term which, apart from its general use for an official in charge, has a distinct religious connotation, being applied, e.g., to the head of a Sunday school and to the chief minister in a Methodist circuit. In its most important historical sense it refers to certain ecclesiastical officers of reformed churches of the Lutheran model.
In the confusion of the Reformation the name of superintendent was given to a class of men who discharged many of the functions of the older bishops, while bearing a character which in several respects was new. Only in Denmark was the name of bishops re served for the new officers after the Lutheran model had been adopted and the older bishops had been deposed and imprisoned, It is still used there, though no claim is made that it is the sign of formal apostolical succession. In Scotland the First Book of Discipline provided not only for ministers, teachers, elders and deacons, but also for superintendents and readers. The superin tendents (who were appointed because of the scarcity of Protes tant pastors) took charge of districts corresponding in some degree with the episcopal dioceses, and made annual reports to the general assembly of the ecclesiastical and religious state of their provinces, in the churches of which they also preached.
Duties of Superintendents.—The distinctive character borne by the new officers was determined by the cardinal principles which Luther had laid down in his work regarding the religious functions of the state. He conceived of the secular government as an ordi nance of God, and as being set to direct and control the external fortunes of the Church. He hoped that righteous magistrates would at all times form a sound court of appeal in times of ecclesi astical disorder, and that they would guard the interests of truth and justice more securely than had been done under papal juris diction. The superintendents, who now had to undertake large administrative responsibilities in the Church, were therefore to be appointed by the civil power and to be answerable to it. They were to stand as intermediaries between the prince or magistrates on the one hand, and the ministers in their districts on the other.
The character of the office and duties of the superintendent were not everywhere the same. Luther shrank from imposing any
stereotyped forms and asked that the special circumstances of each separate district should be consulted. He hoped that as few changes as possible would be made, and trusted that the reformed doctrines would spread peacefully throughout the country. After the Diet of Speyer (1526) the civil authorities were invited to reorganize the Church in their respective dominions as they thought best. In the free towns superintendents were answerable to the city fathers for their good order. There were difficulties in the territories of the German princes, and in the case of Saxony Luther proposed to the elector that his first step should be to send out a commission of visitation which should report on the moral and spiritual condition of his principality, district by district. His proposal was carried out, and Luther himself became one of the visitors (1527-1528). He found the people in a state of such religious indifference and ignorance, and the clergy living often in such grossness, that his faith in their fitness to govern them selves ecclesiastically sank even lower than before, and he resisted all schemes for self-government such as had been proposed by Francis Lambert. The church organization which he devised for Saxony provided no place for democratic or representative ele ments : the grasp of the state must at all times be felt. The super intendent must speak at all times as a minister of the state, and the state must be represented in the synod to which he makes his first report, for upon the synod there must sit not only the pastors but also a delegate from every parish. If any appeal should be made from the decisions of the synod it must be heard in the court of the electoral prince, for he, as supreme civil ruler, possessed the jus episcopate, the right of oversight of the churches. Luther proposed that he should exercise this right by appointing a con sistorial court composed in part of theologians and in part of canon lawyers, and it was thus that in 1542 the Wittenberg ecclesiastical consistory was formed. Other principalities adopted the model, so that the institution became common throughout the Lutheran churches.