“zu grob gewest”: Metainvective Communication in Confessional Disputes over Narration of the Saints in the Sixteenth Century

1 Introduction

The point of contention in the controversial theological disputes of the sixteenth century is the religious truth that each confessional camp claims for itself. Fundamental modes of these disputes include antithetical portrayals and the use of rigid dichotomies, first and foremost the juxtaposition of divine truth with devilish lies, as well as binary codings such as the asymmetric distinction between “us” and “them.” The aim of interconfessional dispute is no longer a consensus but demarcation.^[1]

The escalatory dynamics of confessional demarcations may be observed in manifold forms of disparagement, particularly in their linguistic and rhetorical aspects. They are accompanied by a shift in communicative norms and licenses in theological discussions: personal defamations, crude insults, and insinuations that are hardly justified or bound to the rules of learned dispute.^[2] Former research describes linguistic invectives as affective outbursts, thus dismissing them as communicative disturbances.^[3] However, already in the confessional disputes of the sixteenth century, both the own and the opponent’s inappropriate expressions are being addressed. It is remarkable that the manner of disputing can become a topic of discussion and can be used as an argument in dispute. This is particularly relevant for the debate about the cult of saints and about legendary narratives. This discourse is central to the success of the Reformation: the disparagement of traditional legends as “lying legends” or so-called Lügenden as well as the rejection of the cult of relics, of the veneration and invocation of the saints decisively changed the everyday practice of piety. The Reformation’s critique of the cult of the saints is about nothing less than the central question of how man can justify himself before God and how he should form his impact on earth.

A debate has developed between the Protestant and Catholic sides around the Lügenden, which on the one hand involved more and more persons and issues, but on the other hand this debate was conducted in a special way, which I characterize as “metainvective communication,” following Joachim Scharloth’s definition:^[4] Metainvective communication is part of the linguistic-rhetorical repertoire of invective forms. They show how differently one can disparage someone or something.^[5] Metainvective communication is fundamentally linguistic in nature and marks preceding acts of communication as vituperation, insults, or disparagement. Thus it is at the same time itself highly disparaging and has the potential to dynamize the invective. Metainvective communication can not only be used to change social positioning but also to effect community-stabilizing distancing. Its use makes an invective interaction perceptible and thus relevant to reality. Invective speech acts are often performed in the context of metainvective communication via “making emotions relevant or making affective practices believable.”^[6] They increase the already high invective potential of explicit thematizations of experienced or observed disparagement, and thereby can lead to corresponding follow-on communications. “This potential is fed by the declarative nature of [metainvective] expressions.”^[7] Not infrequently, the subject of debate changes from the content-related to the metacommunicative.^[8] The modality of metainvective is then not just a means of agreeing or disagreeing with the invective nature of an utterance. Rather, metainvective forms of communication, on account of their both implicit and explicit reference to norms, are “media in which ideas of social order and the mechanisms of their constitution can be negotiated. If they are initiated intentionally, they can be a strategic resource.”^[9]

In Reformation research, metainvective forms of communication have certainly been identified, but without being systematically examined and questioned as to their function. As a rule, these are concise references to or descriptions of devaluations of the opponent’s invective or justifications of one’s own.^[10] However, it is worth pursuing the topic in more detail. For the repertoire of the invective forms of the Lügenden, metainvective communication is of great explanatory power: for it is an essential site of negotiation of religious truth and shows how differentiated the methods of disparagement are in the dispute over the legends and veneration of the saints.

In this paper, I would like to demonstrate that metacommunicative speech acts have an essential function for the confessional dispute over the narration of the saints: they are not only catalysts of the debate but are also used as a strategic resource. I argue that the dispute about the right way to portray and handle saints and their legends is connected with disputing about disputing.^[11] Metainvective statements are used to negotiate or declare interpretive sovereignty, which is based on the correct religious norm in each particular case and at the same time defends this norm. In addition, the controversialist has the opportunity to affect his readership with them.^[12] Metainvective communication may therefore be placed in the field of rhetoric and fulfill a strategic function that is by no means anachronistic.^[13]

In the context of Marina Münkler’s sub-project Sacredness and Sacrilege: The Disparagement of the Sacred within the Interconfessional Dispute of the Sixteenth Century as part of the Dresden Collaborative Research Centre 1285 Invectivity: Constellations and Dynamics of Disparagement Constellations and Dynamics of Disparagement,^[14] I have developed a theoretical classification of the Lügende as a metagenre.^[15] Focusing on invective genres, invective paratexts, communicative practices of boundary setting, as well as iterativity and fictionalization, I have described essential modes of disparagement in the Lügenden and their functions.^[16] The following study on metainvective communication is intended to supplement the previous analyses by a further important invective mode and show how differentiated the techniques of disparagement are in the discourse on Lügenden. Here, I place greater emphasis than before on the Catholic counter-invectives and expand the text corpus accordingly. This allows me to do more justice to the dynamic character of the disputes.

It is necessary to begin with a concise overview of the Lügenden in order to introduce the literary setting of the controversy over saints and thus demonstrate the fundamental correlation between metacommunicative forms of utterance and the Protestant Lügenden. Following the systematics of the linguist Walther Dieckmann in his monograph Streiten über das Streiten (“Disputing about Disputing”) on German polemic texts of the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, I will then go into the different types of metainvective utterance that play a part in the legend/Lügende discourse. The selection of sources is oriented toward the premises of exemplarity and – with regard to the text types – relative breadth. The texts I will consider include the Lügende editions of Martin Luther and Hieronymus Rauscher on the one hand and Catholic replies on the other, including Johannes Cochlaeus’ Bericht (report) against Luther’s Lügend, Friedrich Staphylus’ counter-report in response to various defamatory writings against his person, a sermon by Martin Eisengrein that also includes an attack on Rauscher, and Johannes Nas’ Evangelische Wahrheiten (“Evangelical Truths”), which refers back structurally to Rauscher’s Papistische Lügen (“Papist Lies”).^[17] The authors skillfully apply the whole gamut of metainvective and pursue very different strategies. The tendency that emerges is that destructive argumentation increases not only the frequency but also the legitimacy of coarse speech. The significance of metainvective in confessional disputes over narration of the saints is shown not least – and this is my follow-up thesis – in the fact that this significance is conveyed in the texts themselves by figures of meta-metainvective. Then the invective speech as such is not only displayed, but its strategic use and its effectiveness are also reflected upon and the opponent reproached for it. This can, as in the case of Nas’ Evangelische Wahrheiten, even be realized poetically in the broadest sense, thus promoting genre-dynamic developments.

2 Lügende!

In his Lügend von St. Johanne Chrysostomo, published in Wittenberg in 1537, Luther reprinted a legend taken from Der Heiligen Leben, a popular legendary written around 1400, and added an invective preface, afterword, and marginal annotations. The title Lügend goes back to the play on words Lügenlegende (“lying legend”), which had already been established as an invective pattern of language use several years ago.^[18] The pun Lügende successfully superimposes itself over the noun Legende (legend) in that it is always conveyed along with the word legend. The genre of the Lügende manages to build on this communicative success, while at the same time perpetuating the pattern of invective language use.^[19] The Lügende is an expression of the changed theological view about the cult of saints and the premises of hagiographic narration. With the Lügend, Luther clearly marks his rejection of the sale of indulgences, the cult of pilgrimage, the veneration of saints, and especially their function as mediators between God and mankind for the attainment of salvation – hence, of what he saw as the economization of salvation by the institution of the Church. In this respect, the word Lügende does not only imply the assertion that the traditional or Catholic legends are untruthful and improbable stories, but also always connotes an outrage – as if it were with an exclamation mark. Lügend! carries the assertion that those who spread and believe these stories are themselves “veritable liars who lie in earnest and want to deceive and damage the people.”^[20] Their lies are “devilish,” because they remain undiscovered “until they have done damage to what is eternal and invincible, and there is neither consolation nor help for evermore.”^[21] Being deceived by them means nothing less than losing one’s salvation. The Lügend! thus becomes an abbreviation of metainvective reproaches to the confessional opponents, who lie, deceive, and mock not only the saints but also the faithful with their miracle legends.^[22] At the same time, Luther’s publication indicates that a radical redefinition of religious norms is at stake: the certainties of faith that are conveyed with the legends of the saints, and specific patterns of narrating the sacred, such as miraculous episodes, lose their validity and are discarded as lies.^[23]

The invective paratext is a constitutive element of the genre of the Lügende. The marginal annotations and the Erinnerung recapitulating each Lügende in the editions of Rauscher in particular multiply the metainvective reproach of the lie and perpetuate it throughout the reading process. As a rule, the Lügende is accompanied by other disparaging speech acts. The numerous epitexts accompanying editions show that such provocations result not only in further disparagement but especially in metainvective communications as follow-on invectives. These are Catholic replies, which the Protestant authors then respond to in the paratexts of their Lügende editions. The Catholic side uses other vernacular text types, such as sermons or (counter-)reports, which in their polemical density may be classified with Kai Bremer in the field of Streitschriften (“polemical pamphlets”).^[24] Moreover, the Franciscan Johannes Nas gets involved in the controversy in the same genre with his Gegenlügenden (counter-Lügenden). His work Das Antipapistisch eins vnd hundert: Außerleßner, gewiser, Evangelischer wahrhait copies the style of the Lügenden to expose the lives of the Reformers and their conception of the new Gospel in a total of six Centurien (one Centurie has about a hundred Lügenden).^[25] In an ironic-parodic reversal of the Papistische Lügen, the Evangelische or Evangelose Wahrheiten simultaneously show^[26] how virulent the theme of sacralization through narration and desacralization through the deconstruction of legendary narrative patterns is for the sixteenth century.

The authors are not concerned with convincing the confessional opponent.^[27] Rather, the controversies are “a suitable means of explaining their particular theological standpoint and popularizing current theological points of contention.”^[28] These functions can also be performed by sermons. The close relationship between sermons and polemical pamphlets may be seen not only in the numerous diatribes against “heathens,” “Turks,”^[29] “papists,” or seductive lay preachers but also in their similarities with regard to the forms of address and the structural conception of the texts. Not infrequently, polemical pamphlets emerged from revised sermons.^[30] The prefaces of the Protestant Lügende editions may be assigned to this text type field of polemical pamphlets, especially since they often discuss only little of what they are actually introducing. The destruction of the truth of the legend is here closely associated with polemical demolition of the confessional opponent. The publication of the Historien of “Protestant” confessors and martyrs, on the contrary, aimed at a new form of narration about saints.^[31]

In the preface to the first Centurie of his Hundert außerwelte, grosse, vnuerschempte, feiste, wolgemeste, Papistische Lügen, Rauscher is not concerned with providing a differentiated discussion of the legendary narrative. The Lügenden printed in the following are set; he does not justify them. The main focus of the preface is a polemic against the “apostate Mameluke”^[32] Friedrich Staphylus. Until 1541 he was a disciple of Melanchthon in Wittenberg, in 1546 he was appointed theology professor in Königsberg, converted back to the Catholic faith in late 1552, and then served as superintendent (curator) of the University of Ingolstadt from 1560 on:

But because you know the truth yet take money from your godless papist against your own conscience, and conceal the truth but attack the only true religion with devilish calumnies, and think that you want to bewitch the people to the point where everyone takes your papistical and diabolical lies for truth […], you have made me want to collect one hundred plump, well-fattened, obvious papist lies from your own scribblers. […] Someone will perhaps think that I have been too coarse in this preface and also in the notes I have added to the following lies. He should know that it is absolutely essential, because the clergy in the papacy and their servant Staphylus are so stubborn, and thus besiege us with blasphemies.^[33]

Rauscher calls the “Calumnien,” that is, the slanders and falsifications as well as the lies of the so-called papists (especially those of Staphylus) his motive for putting Catholic examples into print. They should provide evidence, as it were, of their mendacity and intention to deceive. Rauscher justifies his coarseness as a response to the preceding disparaging speech of Catholics, which he describes pejoratively as “lestern” and “stürmen.” Thus, a close connection becomes apparent between the actual invectives and the metacommunicative statements reflecting on one’s own invective mode of communication or that of the hostile other. With each side acting as thought it were only responding to the coarseness of the other, it also becomes apparent how much the metacommunicative speech acts can dynamize the dispute. As a rule, they initiate the dispute and serve the function of legitimizing one’s own explications and modes of communication. In the following analysis of types of metainvective utterance, I will focus on the Catholic works due to their great variety in this regard.

3 Metainvective Forms of Utterance

Dieckmann provides a means of differentiating various types of utterance in polemical metacommunication that serve different strategic purposes.^[34] These metainvective forms of utterance frequently overlap. All of them are based on a normative reference with which one’s own communicative behavior and that of the confessional opponent can be related and evaluated. The validity of the norm is often assumed without being specifically addressed or problematized. Dieckmann focuses exclusively on the normative reference with regard to communicative behavior. “The expression norm refers to expectations on the basis of which the members of a communication community judge communicative behavior as correct/appropriate or incorrect/inappropriate in relative agreement and with the prospect of consensus.”^[35] This plays a role for my subject matter as well. However, the communicative behavior is also bound up with the debate over content and – in the broadest sense – over theology.

Probably the most succinct example of this is Luther’s introduction of German into theological disputes. It should be emphasized, however, that Latin scholars were not his primary addressees. Very soon after the potential for disseminating vernacular writings was realized, it was necessary to educate the Christian laity in German about the abuses of the Church and introduce them to Reformational thought. As this was not the language and therefore not the public sphere in which the supporters of the Papal Church debated with their confessional opponents, the Catholic responses were initially printed in Latin. To remain competitive, however, Catholics had to accept the norm violation and practice disputing in the vernacular.^[36] It may be seen, for example, in the reactions of Hieronymus Emser in the dispute against Luther and his 1520 letter to the nobility that this was quite a challenge and that the norm violation is often marked as such: in addition to exhortations to argue in a way that is more appropriate to one’s intellectual standing and references to an “unwritten code of honor” of argumentation,^[37] Emser concludes his work Auff des Stieres tzu Wiettenberg wiettende replica, with which he responded in 1521 to Luther’s Auff des bocks zu Leypczick Antwort, with three Latin epigrams.^[38] In terms of content and argumentation, he thus participates in the demonization of Luther; in formal linguistic terms, he demonstrates and declares his humanist demand for communicative appropriateness, drawing an asymmetric comparison to coarse German.^[39] Accordingly, Emser announces in his penultimate writing in this controversy that he intends “to no longer write against the monk in German but in Latin.”^[40] This of course does not change the fact that the normative boundaries for religio-polemical writing shifted in the long term, leading to an “increasing permeability between Latin and German.”^[41] With the polemical pamphlets of Staphylus in particular, the vernacular gained acceptance among Catholics, meaning that they used it less defensively but with more self-confidence for their own cause. Nevertheless, the provocation of using the German language continued to reverberate due to its programmatic connection to Protestant premises of faith. The Catholic side used it not least through metainvective communication that were concerned less with the inappropriateness of the German language but all the more with that of the level of speech. The normative reference remains constitutive and results from the respective side’s religious claim to absoluteness. The discrediting of the opponent as a liar and as a deceiver of the faithful who acts against his own conscience presupposes each side’s own norm of religious truth. The Protestants had reserved the right to use coarse German, so to speak. The Catholics had to accept the thereby initiated expansion of the communicative norm for theological disputes, which, however, should not be understood purely as a one-sided concession. Their initially reactive position in the dispute about disputing also had an advantage, which I will describe in the following with the strategic use of metainvective communication.

A fundamental operation of metainvective communication is the reproach, which serves to denigrate the communicative behavior of the opponent and thus also the person in question. This can be formulated more or less clearly – via unambiguous speech acts like reproaching, accusing, or blaming, or furthermore via complaining about something or advising or forbidding someone to do something. Sometimes, the reproach is “associated with the request to justify or apologize.”^[42] Reactions to reproaches are varied and usually generate invective follow-on communications. For the question of hagiographic narrative, they are essential drivers of discourse and are accordingly staged as occasions for comment. Luther, for example, begins the preface of his Lügend with an exaggerated ironic “self-stigmatization,”^[43] when he introduces himself as a “damned, cursed, dirty, stinking heretic” with an “obscene, stinking writing.”^[44] He thus takes up vilifications of his person, exposes them as malicious slander, and makes them into the starting point of the dispute over his risky invitation to the Council of Mantua. In this way, Luther’s Lügend is staged as an invective reply aimed at attacking Pope Leo X with a sharp polemic and disparaging the traditional legends as “lies and idolatry.”^[45] Still in 1537, Johann Cochlaeus responded with his Bericht der warheit, auff die vnwaren Lügend, in which he attempts to portray the legend of Saint John Chrysostom, which Luther chose for a malicious gloss, as an apocryphal and non-authorized source.^[46] Here too, the justification is accompanied by metainvective utterances: Cochlaeus asks “how he can lie and deceive so blatantly,” and characterizes Luther as an “insolent blasphemer,” as a “gross calumniator,” who “with his scribblings on the margins does nothing but sneer (after his manner) at the holy man.”^[47] In this respect, the dynamic of speech and counter-speech is not only a dynamic of mutual disparagement but a dynamic of metainvective reproach. Not infrequently, these reproaches are combined with a morally grounded rhetoric of affect. Thus, Cochlaeus’ action against the “pinnacle of all the thousands upon thousands of lies Luther wrote”^[48] is not based on envy or hate against Luther personally,^[49] “but on charity to my neighbor, whom Luther deceives with lies, and out of zeal for the truth against the untruth.”^[50] He contrasts his behavior asymmetrically with that of Luther, whose mockery evinces malice and ill will.^[51] The reproach of lying and cheating therefore always implies an immoral constitution of the opponent – especially when measured against the goodness of the love of truth in the true faith.

An example of an affect-based escalation in the mode of the metainvective is Martin Eisengrein’s Christenliche predig, Ausz was vrsachen, so viel Leut […] zum Luthertum fallen. In his public sermon of 1562, the Ingolstadt priest and professor of theology also attacks Rauscher and his Papistische Lügen, which the latter in turn parried in 1563 with his biting Kurtze Wider Legung.^[52] In it, he confronts Eisengrein as a “gross fantasist” who – under the tutelage of Staphylus – purportedly raves and rages against him.^[53]

Eisengrein uses metainvective communication as a text-internal strategy to emotionalize the Catholic congregation addressed by his sermon. Starting from the temptations of Jesus by the devil, Eisengrein wants to make his believers strong for the resistance against the temptations of the Protestant “sects” and their “tempting preachers.”^[54] Again and again, he calls to mind their deceitfulness but also their raging, blustering, and shouting. This runs like a thread through the sermon, which draws its legitimacy not least from the inappropriate behavior of the Protestants. Nevertheless, it is addressed in large part to Christians of the Catholic Church in a rather matter-of-fact tone. Affective attacks are therefore all the more striking and point to a rhetorical strategy fed by the modality of the metainvective: when Eisengrein comes to speak of the “taunter” Hieronymus Rauscher and his “one hundred novellas” (“Cento nouella,” a cacography of centurie), he interrupts the practical instruction he is providing to “put up resistance.”^[55] Eisengrein falls out of the sermon style, so to speak, to engage in a biting, seven-page polemic against the sacrilegious and insolent “Brother Rausch”^[56] and “fabulist,” whom he addresses directly and disparagingly in the familiar second person singular:^[57]

Oh Rauscher, Rauscher, how painful it will be once you are in the infernal flames: How much more right it would have been had you not written this poem of yours, which you published only for your own shame and mockery, and had you remained at home with your poor people.^[58]

Eisengrein concludes his cascade of reproaches and vilifications with the following words, again addressed to the congregation: “In such a way, beloved ones, we must, following the example of Christ in today’s Gospel, put up resistance against the evil enemy.”^[59] The formulation “in such a way” suggests that the presented invectives and metainvectives are legitimate means of putting up resistance for the laity addressed in the sermon. Eisengrein thus uses metainvective communication specifically to arouse his own followers and thus mobilize them for the war of words against the false doctrine.

With regard to one’s own communicative behavior, various reactions to actual or conceivable reproaches are possible: one can repudiate a reproach, justify oneself, ask for understanding, or even confess one’s guilt.^[60] The dominant reaction in the context focused on here is repudiation and justification. The justification of repaying like with like was already present with Rauscher – with Eisengrein less directly in the call to put up resistance “in such a way.” Repudiation and justification are often combined. The normative reference is twofold here as well, that is, the authors refer to both communicative behavior and religious truth. The opponent’s communicative behavior is attacked as outrageous, while the author’s own communicative behavior is justified by reference to the religious norm and its outrageous violation. Vilification is therefore legitimate if it is done in the service of religious truth and proclamation of the truth, as also emphasized explicitly by Johannes Nas in the preface to his Evangelische Wahrheiten:

This is to be heeded, however, as Paul speaks in Philippians 1. It matters little from what cause Christ’s glory is preached, whether with quarrelling or with peace, whether earnestly or mockingly, as long as the truth comes to light.^[61]

In principle, it would therefore also be possible to rely on communicative norm conformity, that is, to distance oneself from the “quarrelling” and to firmly refrain from breaking communicative norms. The two normative references are then connected in different ways: while religious truth also justifies coarseness, the observance of communicative appropriateness is now supposed to represent one’s own religious norm. In this way, the preceding attack can be parried more in terms of content. This sovereignty strategy, which is fed by the fact that “the polemicist does not simply refrain but says that he is doing so,”^[62] is frequently found on the Catholic side. It is of course no less invectively effective, because the positive self-attribution serves simultaneously to disparage the confessional opponent. Eisengrein’s sermon shows that corresponding declarations of intent can nevertheless stand alongside obvious vilification. In the context of his polemic against the “raging and retching” Nicolaus Gallus, he states that he does not want to respond “with desacration and abuse, as is the custom of the heretics, but on the basis of God’s word and the legitimate Catholic understanding of the same.”^[63] Rauscher draws attention to this contradiction with the proverbial reference to the cuckoo, which not only boasts about itself with its call, but also betrays itself.^[64]

However, the strategic potential of metainvective communication is particularly evident when the norm conformity is actually used programmatically in the text and is closely tied to the premises of faith proclaimed therein. The emotionalization strategy is then concerned less with stirring up anger and hatred toward the confessional opponent^[65] than with initiating a feeling of charity among one’s co-religionists and their religio-moral superiority over the others.^[66] This in turn allows for a more substantial, instructional discussion of the religious points of contention.

In the Christlicher Gegenbericht, which, first of all, initiates Rauscher’s first Lügende print and is a response to Jacob Andreae’s Bericht Von der Einigkeit vnd Vneinigkeit der Christlichen Augspurgischen Confessions Verwandten Theologen of 1560,^[67] Staphylus aims to counter the slander and defamatory writings against his person. He wants to take a stand on this matter, resolutely in the German language – “to present my necessary and proper counter-report in such a way that an unlearned layman can understand me (yet on the stable basis of truth, sincere, without a lot of scolding or vilifying).”^[68] The propriety of the tone claims to be adequate to the truth here proclaimed. Staphylus is thus able to distance himself from the coarse tone of the Protestants, who have adopted it as a weapon. His own weapon is that of metainvective communication, which is morally grounded.

Addressing the Christian laity, Staphylus thus begins his Gegenbericht with a reminder, locating the conditions of disparaging speech not only on the side of the ignorant and unprincipled producer of the invective but also on the side of the reader. He appeals to the moral behavior of the third and thus involved party of the communication. The invectives would not be so successful without the behavior of the Christian laity:

It is a conventional though very bad habit that those who do not like to hear the truth avail themselves of revilement and reproach, for mankind is by nature much more inclined to hear other people’s vices than their virtues.^[69]

Staphylus displays the reprehensibility of revilement along with the implicit offer to distance oneself from such behavior. The formation of the affective community in this passage proceeds through several interconnected components^[70] that stage a very effective retarding element for affectation: first, a consensus over the correlation between revilement and lying is established with the “conventional though very bad habit,” thus providing a resource for community-stabilizing indignation over the inappropriate behavior of others. Immediately afterwards, however, shame and guilt are activated when attention is directed to the role of the audience in making the invective successful. For the “ordinary Christian layman,” this results in the moral requirement to distance oneself from it. The will to overcome vice in turn engenders a sense of superiority over the blaspheming Protestants.

Accordingly, the first and second parts of the Gegenbericht are dominated by more objective remarks on the interpretation of the Bible and its translation into German. Still, Staphylus does not refrain entirely from pejorative assertions concerning Luther and his followers. Not only do they “commit adultery, booze, gorge, rob, steal, profiteer, tyrannize,” but they also “lie, deceive, slander, calumniate, blaspheme, mock the name of God, bitch, moan, and countless other such things.”^[71] He repeats the latter reproaches several times. In this respect, they may be understood as metainvective framings for the “decent counter-report.” With them, Staphylus continually contrasts his own norm-conforming communicative behavior, which represents the true Catholic faith, asymetrically with the “brutish and bestial”^[72] speech of the Protestants and their corresponding faith.

4 Meta-Metainvectives

Finally, additional evidence that the communicative mode of the metainvective is a highly relevant parameter in confessional disputes is provided by an intensified form of its use that may be referred to as meta-metainvective communication. This strategy involves not only displaying the invective element of speech but revealing and condemning the strategy behind it. Staphylus’ Gegenbericht offers several examples: the “inflammatory heretics” expose the priests’ sins so selectively and manipulatively “that they cannot help but think that the lives and works of some priests is Catholic doctrine.”^[73] Staphylus also touches on the topic of glossing and textual editing as invective strategies. In his translation of the Bible, Luther

[…] miserably misrepresented the text in many hundreds of places, added to it in some places, truncated it in others, and either garbled or cobbled together the Scriptures to such an extent that he might give his Lutheran doctrine a veneer and paint the abominable heresies with a pretty color.^[74]

A particularly concise example of meta-metainvective communication, however, is offered by a passage in which the effectiveness of designations is reflected on in relation to a central slogan^[75] of the Reformation: the papists.^[76] At a purely morphological level, the German terms Papist or papistisch are derived initially from Papst and indicate affiliation with the pope, the Roman Curia, and its followers. In the confessional disputes, however, a negative evaluation inscribed in the terms is dominant, which may be seen, for instance, in how papists are often mentioned in conjunction with Jews, Turks, or other stigmatized groups.^[77] As Staphylus explains, the pejorative effect is also generated from the asymmetric comparison of Papisten with Evangelischen (Protestants). He notes that it is

very surprising what Satan meant by this, when he gave the sectarians the idea of calling themselves and their followers Protestants [German: Evangelische] and naming the Catholics papists, although we sing, read, preach, and interpret the Gospels [German: Evangelium] in our churches. Luther was not unaware of this, so why does he pretend that he is: because he could all the more easily deceive the common laity with malicious deception.^[78]

The strategic use of the Protestant invective is discredited and explained in more detail for this purpose. The designation of Catholics as Papisten in distinction to the Evangelischen aims exclusively at dividing the Church. This distinction suggests that the Catholics are affiliated with the pope on the one hand and the Protestants with the Scriptures on the other, which, from the Catholic point of view, is a presumptuous and mendacious use of the Gospel. The meta-metainvective communication consists in the reproach of deliberately exploiting the effectiveness of these designations and attributions for the Lutheran cause, and in making the “wicked sophistical trick”^[79] transparent for the Christian laity.^[80] Hence, not only is the invective mode of a statement or action marked, but the strategy behind it is revealed and condemned. Such a procedure is again highly invective and can develop its own dynamic.^[81]

Johannes Nas’ Evangelische Wahrheiten may also be understood as a form of meta-metainvective communication. It is implicit insofar as Nas responds to Rauscher’s Centurien by imitating their style. Whereas Rauscher printed Catholic legendary and miracle narratives and added malicious commentary to them, Nas now reproduces the Hystorien about Luther’s life and that of his followers and frames them with invective paratexts as well.^[82] As in the preface to the first edition, Nas announces in the preface to his second edition that he will repay evil with evil. In an appeal to the friendly reader, Nas pleads:

Please do not blame me for including such disgraceful hystori and such impolite, coarse words from time to time, but they themselves give rise to it. The hystorien are for the most part taken from their own books and writings. So I have mixed in their pretty Rauscherian court flowers, because such is for him the highest art.^[83]

The aim is to ironically mirror the Protestant strategy of falsification, to expose its “art.” Accordingly, in his “Fourth Evangelose truth” about “How the Evangelischen do not address anyone reprehensibly or judge them outrageously,”^[84] Nas can relate, on the contrary, how he himself was verbally and physically molested by a predicant and his companions on 2 May 1567 on the way from Ingolstadt to Hohenwart near Ebenhausen. However, Nas was able to ward off this assault in like manner and sums up: “There you can see whether it is Evangelisch or eternal-hellish people with whom one is most respected with such coarse foolishness; they need it most.”^[85]

5 Conclusion

It has become clear in the preceding that metainvective communication in the confessional disputes of the sixteenth century are based on connecting communicative behavior with the respective true faith and its defense. The reproaches of lies and defamation are not only staged as occasions for countering the respective opponents and their reproaches and presenting the premises of one’s own faith. Rather, they are always also used for social positioning aimed at enhancing one’s own status and degrading that of the others. In this regard, metainvectives are functionalized for rhetorical purposes. Depending on the follow-up strategy of justified communicative norm violation or norm conformity, they can serve to emotionalize and involve one’s own followers.

However, metainvective communication can be observed not only as a strategic resource in the struggle for the true faith and in the portrayal of the sacred. With regard to establishing a genre that carries the metainvective reproach of lies, deceit, and coarseness in its title or connotes it in the mode of irony, metainvectives furthermore become – in the broadest sense – a poetic resource. This is also evident in their potential to expand the thematic range of the legend/Lügende discourse. Although Rauscher follows Luther’s prototype of the genre in formal terms, his first Lügende edition is already initiated by Staphylus’ works. Many of the subsequent Catholic counter-invectives written not exclusively in response to Rauscher and his Papistische Lügen belong to the genre of polemical pamphlet and are called sermon, report, or refutation. On the one hand, this has an effect on the structure of the Lügenden, which is characterized not only by the annotated miracle narratives but also by the personal polemics in the prefaces. On the other hand, the counter-invectives show a tendency to digress from the subject of the legendary narrative for polemic purposes and to treat the Lügenden incidentally in favour of other points of contention. Not infrequently, they are embedded in entirely different argumentative contexts.^[86] In this regard, metainvective communication in confessional disputes over narration of the saints develop a weblike dynamic that favours both a formal hybridization of the lügendary narratives and their thematic expansion and combination with other polemical genre formats.