Volume 10, Issue 1 - Words at War: “Invectivity” in Transformative Processes of the Sixteenth Century; Guest Editors: Cora Dietl, Bernward Schmidt, and Isabelle Stauffer

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the controversy around the Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin rather quickly developed from a mere scholarly dispute into a mass media event. The German humanists played a large part in this, countering his supposed opponent, the Jewish convert Johannes Pfefferkorn, with a multitude of elaborate invectives, and acting as a vituperative community. Ulrich von Hutten participated particularly eagerly in the anti-Pfefferkorn discourse and was heavily involved in its satirical climax, the Epistolae obscurorum virorum . The concept of “invectivity” can provide a new heuristic focus for questions related to the function, effect and group dynamics of humanist invectives, especially in the example of Hutten, and help to better understand the complexity of this European media event.

The article explores Luther’s usage of invective language. In recent years of research into Church history, it has only rarely been recognized, and often been concealed, as an indispensable part of Luther’s theology. Firstly the article presents some (relevant) passages of Luther’s invective rhetoric. In a second section, perspectives on the interpretation of this form of linguistic expression are explained. The final section concludes with the appeal to a historicizing claim essential to understanding the designs of the Reformation theology of the Wittenberg reformer.

Thomas Murner’s verse satire Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren (1522) and Martin Luther’s pamphlet Wider das Papsttum zu Rom, vom Teufel gestiftet (1545) are known as particularly grobian texts. This paper examines the grobian as a historically new key figure in these two pamphlets and views it in relation to the concept of “invectivity.” Both are performative, violent, and in need of an audience. Moreover, their shared epistemic function is to question the existing order. The grobian also shows the contagiousness of “invectivity”: both Murner and Luther profess grobianism – which they say they were forced into because their opponents adopted it. These attributions of grobianism raise the debate to the level of the metainvective. As a transmedial figure, the grobian helps to make debates about religious conflicts more figurative and visual. As a ridiculous figure, he challenges not only pejorative ridicule but also liberating laughter, and ex negativo demonstrates the utopia of polite behavior – thus going beyond “invectivity.”

Luther’s treatise is presented as an answer to attacks from the Italian Dominican Ambrosius Catharinus. The language is highly invective, and Luther’s argument culminates in a comprehensive biblical verification of a terrifying truth: that the pope is the Antichrist foreseen in several biblical texts. The papal Curia is part of the Antichrist’s realm. Relating to Heiko Oberman’s thoughts on the theological roots of Luther’s “invectivity,” the article offers a closer look into Luther’s radically offensive language in his early years, arguing that it was closely linked to his central theological convictions at least since 1520/21.

Johannes Cochlaeus’s Commentaria or Historia de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri has been described as a “polemical invective.” This essay discusses the double title and the double characterization of the work and argues that its aim is to deconstruct Luther’s memory. Its effectivity derives from the combination of a polemical commentary and an invective biography. According to the Commentaria Luther’s works disgrace the author, and according to the Historia the author disqualifies his own works.

The article analyses forms of invective speech in a historiographical work composed during the first half of the sixteenth century. The Annales maiores of the Augustinian canon Kilian Leib are not only an eminent source for the perception of the Reformation transformations in southern Germany, but also offer exquisite insights into anti-Reformation patterns of thought and writing of an intellectual and pastor. The article argues that by analysing “invectivity,” the character of Leib’s annals can also be understood more precisely: as private chronicle that formed its contribution to the formation of confessional identities.

The article is devoted to coarse uses of language as a subject of dispute in confessional controversies over legendary narration. Such metainvective forms of communication are systematized, and questioned with regard to their functions: in the Protestant Lügenden (word combination of “legend” and “lie,” lying legends) and their Catholic replies, the “true” faith and its defense are connected with communicative behavior. Whereas Lutherans are above all effective at adopting coarse speech and the metainvective reproach of lying, the Counter-Reformation argumentation develops the strategic potential of metainvective communication in very different ways. Metainvective statements become a weapon particularly when they are absorbed into figures of meta-metainvective, which not only display the coarse speech but reveal and then criticize the strategy behind it. The tension between polemical prefaces and annotated miracle narratives in the Lügenden as well as the thematic proliferation of the legend discussion in the Catholic reports and sermons are ultimately shown to be genre-dynamic effects of the use of metainvectives.

This article presents two German Catholic prayer books written by the two sixteenth-century priests Johann Faber OP and Peter Michael Brillmacher SJ – known for their catechetical and apologetical work in areas of confessional division. Adding to the claims by early twentieth-century researchers that these books were used for “resisting and combating Protestantism,” I argue that they were tools for the re-Catholicising of Protestant populations. By referring to the Church fathers “and the old Christians” as proof for the ancient origin and the orthodoxy of beliefs and practices questioned by the Protestant reformers, and by countering “misconceptions” about the Catholic faith, the authors strived to lead their readers in the direction toward “true religion and divine worship.”