July 2001 Moger
Pamphlets, Preaching and Politics:
The Image Controversy in Reformation Wittenberg, Zrich and Strassburg
J. TRAVIS MOGER[(] 
Abstract: After the first flush of success, sixteenth-century reformers began to apply their newly discovered theological convictions to religious practices. Part of the struggle to reform outward forms of worship involved the use of images in worship and public life. Traditionally, historians have focused on the theological arguments for and against images and have interpreted iconoclastic behavior as the direct result of the new evangelical doctrine. In recent years, however, a revisionist history of Reformation iconoclasm has challenged this trickle-down view by focusing not on ideology but on local and individual motives for violence against images. This article explores the relationship between popular anti-image propaganda and iconoclasm in three Reformation cities. It also attempts to explain the role politics played in bringing the so-called Image Controversy to a resolution in each locale.
On September 13, 1523-the Sunday after Sts. Felix and Regula-three men gathered in front of the great Fraumnster church in Zrich.[1] As they read a “little book,”[2] the men entered the church, tore down oil lamps (ampelen), and threw them around the sanctuary. Then they took holy water, sprinkled it on each other and swore an oath.[3] Afterwards one of the men defended their actions, saying that they would no longer tolerate such idolatry.[4]
This story records more than a carnivalesque prank.[5] It is one of many instances of Reformation iconoclasm in which material objects (in this case oil lamps) were identified as “idols” and physically attacked. The story also suggests that the printed word (in this case a pamphlet) played a role in acts of iconoclasm during this period.[6] Their action, and the response it evoked from Zrich authorities, points to the complex relationship between the printed word, politics and religious action against images during the early years of the Reformation.
PRINTING, POPULAR IDEAS AND ICONOCLASM
The dramatic increase in the production of pamphlets-most of them in vernacular languages-during the first decade of the Reformation, and the power of pamphlets to communicate ideas, make them an invaluable source for historians. Hans-Joachim Khler, director of the Tbingen Flugschriften-projekt, has estimated that some 10,000 pamphlet editions were printed within the Holy Roman Empire between 1501 and 1530.[7] With an average printing of 1000 copies each, probably ten million pamphlets circulated in central Europe in the first three decades of the sixteenth century.[8] Between 1517 and 1518 pamphlet production increased by 530%; and some 74% of the 10,000 pamphlet editions from 1501-1530 appeared within a seven-year period, 1520-1526.[9] Given the sixteenth-century concern with matters of belief, it is not surprising that a large majority of pamphlets dealt with religious issues-much to the delight of historians of religion. Historian Steven Ozment has argued convincingly that pamphlets can help Reformation historians overcome both ideological and sociological reductionism. “No other source,” he claims, “reveals so directly the questions and conflicts that moved the age.”[10]
Pamphlets are important for the study of Reformation iconoclasm because they show the content of popular, anti-image preaching at the time of publication. They provide a view into what people were reading, discussing on the streets and hearing from the pulpits. Pamphlets can even suggest the relative popularity of their ideas, as in the case of pamphlets that were reprinted soon after their initial release. They also indicate where iconoclasts originally got their ideas. For instance, anti-image pamphlets presenting the evangelical teaching on “idolatry” seem to have encouraged many city dwellers to remove or attack images in the early years of the Reformation.
Still, the importance of pamphlets should not be overstated.[11] Pamphlets alone cannot explain why iconoclasts targeted specific objects. In her book Voracious Idols and Violent Hands, Lee Palmer Wandel used court testimonies of iconoclasts to clarify their motives for attacking certain objects, highlighting the distinctive local features of specific iconoclastic attacks.[12] Wandel’s work counterbalanced earlier treatments of the so-called image controversy that tended to ignore local differences and treated the history of iconoclasm primarily “from above.”[13] Unfortunately, however, Wandel minimized the power of ideas-preached from evangelical pulpits and preserved for us in pamphlets-as a cause of iconoclasm.[14] Although she admitted that “in Strasbourg, the locations of many of the incidents of iconoclasm corresponded with locations of evangelical preaching,”[15] Wandel denied that preaching against images motivated iconoclasts to remove or attack them. She avoided the conclusion that anti-image preaching motivated hostile behavior toward images in Strassburg by suggesting that the parishes that elected evangelical pastors were already predisposed to iconoclasm.[16] Though creative, this hypothesis does not solve the problem of where these parishioners got their anti-image ideas in the first place. Only by substituting local idiosyncratic circumstances for theological motives was she able to remove preaching as a cause of iconoclasm. British historian Glenn Burgess has pointed out that such replacement of “ideological motivation with factional self-interest” is a general weakness of much revisionist history.[17]
To be sure, idiosyncratic motives-such as those verbalized in court by accused iconoclasts-did influence iconoclasts’ decisions to act on their anti-image convictions, especially regarding specific targets for iconoclastic action.[18] Also motivating iconoclasts were social considerations such as economics (tithes and rents paid for the oil of votive lamps associated with religious statuary), class conflict (most images were donated to churches by the wealthy patrician families) and rising literacy (the Catholic Church had long justified images as visual “books” for the illiterate). These social factors were long-term underlying causes of discontent with images, but it was the newly popular Reformation sermons and pamphlets against these “idols” that united many urban dwellers in a common cause and sparked local anti-image revolts.
If pamphlets and preaching can help answer the question why-Why did so many people who had venerated images turn against them’-it is politics that can respond to the question how-How did local leaders address and resolve the Image Controversy in each of the cities? The political process in each city took the form of negotiations between government entities, ecclesiastical authorities and the people. Further, most cities divided into at least three distinct groups around issues of religious reform: conservatives (who wanted no change), radicals (who wanted immediate change) and moderates (who often wanted immediate change but were willing to wait until it could be achieved by legal means). These factions struggled with each other on the local level until one became powerful enough to force its solution on the others. If iconoclasm is conceived of as a ship, then ideas launched and propelled it, the skids having been greased by social conditions. But it was politics-the process of change affected by rival factions of the crew fighting for control of the helm-that determined the direction and ultimate destination of the voyage.
The following analysis of three anti-image pamphlets (published in Wittenberg, Zrich and Strassburg) and the subsequent discussion of urban politics will support the foregoing assertions. Each pamphlet suggests the content of iconoclastic preaching in the city where it first appeared in print, and the ideas expressed in these works often parallel distinctive local features of iconoclasm. Also the pamphlets shed light on the authors’ own political goals. Hopefully, a more nuanced picture of Reformation iconoclasm will emerge as a result of listening to these printed “witnesses” and will augment the self-incriminating court testimonies of iconoclasts brought to light by Wandel. Following the examination of anti-image pamphlets, a discussion of politics in Wittenberg, Zrich and Strassburg will clarify how the Image Controversy progressed and was ultimately resolved in each urban center.
BREAKING IDOLS WITH WORDS: PAMPHLETS AND PREACHING
Andreas Karlstadt’s On The Removal of Images (1522)
On January 27, 1522 Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt,[19] professor of theology in Wittenberg[20] and the man who promoted Luther to his doctorate, published the first significant anti-image pamphlet of the Reformation. Karlstadt’s On the Removal of Images[21] came off the press at the height of the so-called “Wittenberg Movement”[22] while Luther was in hiding at the Wartburg.
Although On the Removal of Images was the first important Reformation tract to address the question of images, it was not Karlstadt’s first word on the subject. Apparently Karlstadt, who preached regularly in Wittenberg’s All Saints, or Castle Church (Stifftskirche), and occasionally said mass at the parish church (Pfarrkirche), had addressed the issue of images in sermons prior to the first iconoclastic disturbances.[23] We know, for example, that he had publicly advocated the removal of images during a disputation in Wittenberg as early as summer 1521.[24] In a pamphlet published in June 1521 he also made some remarks against the cult of images.[25] Since the earliest acts of violence against images took place in December of 1521 and January of 1522, it is reasonable to assume that Karlstadt had spoken out against these “idols” from the pulpit well before the first hand was raised in violence against them. It is also reasonable to assume that Karlstadt’s pamphlet reflects, more or less, the content of his preaching at the time of publication.
The fact that Karlstadt wrote his tract in the vernacular German indicates that he intended to reach the widest possible audience, not just the literati. And indeed On the Removal of Images enjoyed brief but noteworthy popularity. It was reprinted in Wittenberg once in 1522 and again in Strassburg the same year.[26] If we assume a print run of 1000 copies, there would have been almost as many copies as residents of Wittenberg-far more than the city’s literate burghers could have consumed.[27] This suggests that Karlstadt’s pamphlet would have been available to anyone in Wittenberg who wanted to read it and that it also would have circulated well beyond its city of origin.
Karlstadt’s pamphlet worked in two directions: looking back, it tried to legitimize and give theological grounds for recent iconoclastic disturbances;[28] looking forward, it called for the complete removal of “idols” without further delay.[29] Religious disturbances had broken out in Wittenberg in early December of 1521, already a month before Karlstadt published his tract. On December 3-coincidentally, during Luther’s clandestine visit to the city-a small-scale riot erupted during which a mob of students and townspeople disrupted the mass in the Franciscan cloister, smashed an altar and attacked the priest. Also, on Christmas Eve of 1521, the day before Karlstadt celebrated the first public evangelical mass in defiance of the Elector, a mob burst into the parish church, smashed lamps, threatened the priests and sang ribald songs.[30] These two incidents were iconoclastic in the sense that religious objects were attacked, but these attacks involved no statuary or religious images-only an altar, some lamps and the priests themselves. The first real anti-image activity took place the following month just sixteen days before Karlstadt published On the Removal of Images. On January 11, 1522 Augustinians removed and destroyed altars and images in their cloister chapel, perhaps under the direction of Gabriel Zwilling.[31] Karlstadt’s pamphlet attempted to legitimize such physical attacks on religious objects while calling for the speedy and legal removal of all images in Wittenberg.
An analysis of the content of Karlstadt’s tract sheds light on popular anti-image ideas at the time of Wittenberg’s iconoclastic riots and reveals a connection to some distinctive local features of iconoclasm in the city.[32]
The style of On the Removal of Images was characterized by numerous biblical citations, a rigid flesh/spirit dualism, anticlericalism and, at times, inflammatory rhetoric. Karlstadt argued that images were being worshipped as idols and therefore were clearly prohibited by the Bible.[33]
To guide the reader, Karlstadt arranged his text around three theses stated in the beginning of his somewhat rambling work: (1) “That we have images in churches and God’s houses is unjust and against the first commandment: ‘You shall not have foreign gods,'”[34] (2) “It is . . . harmful and devilish that carved and painted oil-idols (Olgotzen) stand upon the altars,”[35] (3) “Thus it is good, necessary, praiseworthy and godly that we get rid of them and that we give the justification and judgment from Scripture.”[36]
Consistent with the biblical focus of his first thesis, Karlstadt began his argument by citing the Mosaic law, interpreting literally the commandment against images. Even if the laity could learn something useful and redemptive from images, Karlstadt argued, he could not allow them because they are against Scripture’s command and God’s will.[37]
In order to show the superiority of Scripture over church tradition, Karlstadt argued against the famous slogan of Pope Gregory I (590-604) that “images are the books of the laity.”[38] Here Karlstadt used a flesh/spirit dualism: “From the image of the crucified Christ you learn nothing except the fleshly suffering of Christ-how Christ bowed his head and the like. But Christ says that his own flesh is useless: rather that the spirit is useful and enlivens.”[39] A little later, Karlstadt quoted John 6:27: “The flesh avails nothing.”[40]
Even though Karlstadt put Biblical authority over church tradition, he nevertheless appealed to a patristic example to support his own position. Using Erasmus’ 1516 edition of Jerome’s works, Karlstadt employed an illustration from early church history-a story about Epiphanius from a letter he wrote to Bishop John of Jerusalem in 394[41]-in which Epiphanius had cut up a cloth with a “colored and painted” image, either of a saint or of the crucified Christ, which had been hung in a church against the prohibition of Scripture.[42] Karlstadt’s use of this story was a thinly veiled attack on the sudarium, the cloth St. Veronica had supposedly used to wipe Jesus’s bloodstained face. By the sixteenth century this so-called Veil of Veronica with its miraculous image of the “holy face” of Christ had become the most popular relic in Rome.[43]
Not only did Karlstadt verbally attack images, but he also aimed some of his anticlerical rhetoric directly at the Roman pontiff. He said the popes wanted to retain images as “books for the laity” to preserve their “junk market.”[44] In rhetoric mirroring some of the religious sentiments in Wittenberg at the time, he spoke of “unsaved popes” and “foolish monks.”[45] Anticlericalism was a distinctive feature of the Image Controversy in Wittenberg, even more than in Zrich or Strassburg.[46] As noted above, attacks against “idols” went hand in hand with assaults on “idolatrous” (non-evangelical) priests.
Clerics, however, were not the only targets of Karlstadt’s verbal attacks. He repeatedly called those who sought after images “whores and adulterers”[47] and cited Old Testament passages that describe Israel as “whoring” after other gods.[48] “The Scriptures,” he wrote, “compare images and idols to knaves, and say in several places that the godless carry on with images like whores with knaves.”[49] Thus, Karlstadt associated veneration of images with spiritual whoring, religious infidelity to God. And the significance of the issue went beyond rhetoric or temporal politics; it determined the individual’s eternal destiny. He said, “Look, you who praise idols, what Ezekiel says about images and don’t ever forget-when you take an idol or image into your heart . . . that God wants to destroy and damn you and wants to answer you himself.”[50]
Karlstadt dismissed the familiar argument that the worshiper is not venerating the image but, rather, the saint the image represents. Such a clever argument may fool some men, he claimed, but not God. Addressing iconophiles directly, Karlstadt continued: “You unholy whore, don’t you know that God knows your heart better than you do'”[51] Then, in the most self-revealing passage of his pamphlet, he confessed the state of his own heart with regard to images:
I ought not fear any image just as I ought not honor any. But (I appeal to God), my heart has been trained since my youth to give honor and respect to images and such a dreadful fear has been instilled in me of which I would gladly rid myself, but cannot. Thus I am afraid to burn any idols. I fear the devil’s fool might insult me.[52]
Was Karlstadt merely trying to assert he was not involved in the recent iconoclastic violence in Wittenberg? Although this is a possible interpretation, there is an inescapable ring of sincerity in these words. If Karlstadt’s words are accepted at face value, then his anger toward images did not stem merely from theological objections. Looking back, he could see their negative emotional effect (“a dreadful fear”) in his own life.
Karlstadt concluded his discussion of images by chastening the Wittenberg magistrates for not completing the good work they had begun. On January 24, 1522, two weeks after the Augustinians had removed images from their cloister and exactly one month after Karlstadt celebrated the first public evangelical mass in Wittenberg, the city magistrates had passed the “Wittenberg Ordinances,” the first attempt to legalize Protestant reforms.[53] Even though Karlstadt had played an important role in the drafting of this legislation, he was not totally satisfied with the outcome, since the Ordinances called for the removal of images without specifying how or when. Hence, on January 27, 1522, three days after the Wittenberg Ordinances were passed, Karlstadt published On the Removal of Images in order to spur the city council to take further action against the city’s “idols.” In his pamphlet he warned the magistrates that if they did not act they were risking God’s wrath. He said further that the Wittenberg magistrates should not wait for “priests of Baal” to act.[54] Karlstadt’s solution: “The highest worldly authority must order and do it.”[55] This was no call for individual citizens to act on their own. Karlstadt clearly envisioned a magisterial reform. But he expected the magistrates to act without further delay. Earlier in the pamphlet Karlstadt had exclaimed, “All images [should] be carted to the devil,” yet apparently he wanted to let the magistrates push the carts![56]
Thus contrary to popular belief, Karlstadt’s political goals revealed in his pamphlet mark him, at least at this point in his career, as a religious moderate.[57] Luther’s later description of him in his 1525 pamphlet Against the Heavenly Prophets,[58] published only after Karlstadt’s expulsion from Saxony in 1524, greatly contributed to Karlstadt’s reputation as a radical and revolutionary, and Karlstadt’s participation in the Peasants’ War later in 1525 seemed only to confirm Luther’s assessment. However, the Karlstadt of 1521-22 was more moderate than his later tarnished image. On the Removal of Images called for legal reform only. To be sure, if the magistrates failed to carry out reform, God would punish them. Yet, despite his strong rhetoric, Karlstadt never called for the people to take matters into their own hands, and there is no evidence that Karlstadt personally participated in any of the iconoclastic disturbances in Wittenberg.
Ludwig Htzer’s A Judgment of God (1523)
Karlstadt’s On the Removal of Images clearly circulated far beyond the Saxon town where it was printed. Even though we have no indication that it was ever reprinted in Switzerland, it was accessible to at least one man living there. Ludwig Htzer,[59] a radical reformer and resident of Zrich, had apparently read the tract and incorporated several of its arguments in his own anti-image pamphlet A Judgment of God[60] printed in Zrich on September 24, 1523 at the beginning the Image Controversy in that city. The similarities to Karlstadt’s pamphlet were far from accidental. Already in 1960, Charles Garside, Jr. noted that Htzer’s pamphlet showed literary dependence on Karlstadt’s On the Removal of Images,[61] mirroring at certain points the order and phraseology of Karlstadt’s argument. Like Karlstadt’s tract, Htzer’s pamphlet was heavily Bible-centered and anticlerical, though it lacked the rigid flesh/spirit dualism found in the Wittenberg reformer’s work. Htzer did not follow Karlstadt word for word, but he did retrace much of the same ground, borrowing, augmenting, rewording, condensing from Karlstadt here and there, and adding his own thoughts and biblical proof texts.
Whereas Karlstadt’s tract had been aimed at convincing the magistrates to follow through on the newly passed Wittenberg Ordinances with the immediate removal of images, Htzer’s A Judgment of God served a slightly different, more technical purpose.
Both internal and external evidence suggests that Htzer intended the pamphlet as a handbook for disputation on the topic of images. This possibility is suggested first of all by the pamphlet’s internal structure. In its first edition A Judgment of God had eighteen pages of text consisting of two sections. Htzer arranged the first section around three theses supported solely by relevant selections of Bible passages, without commentary from the author. On page after page the reader encounters uninterrupted, paragraph-length quotations from the Scriptures. The author’s presence is evident only in the three theses that serve merely to organize the Bible passages under topical headings:
1. God our Father and Spouse forbids us to make images.[62]
2. God intends to destroy images as well as those who possess them and honor them.[63]
3. The deeds of those who have done away with images and idols will be praised and glorified.[64]
The second section, much shorter than the first, included four arguments in favor of images and Htzer’s rebuttal to each. The four iconophile arguments discussed are:
1. All these passages are from the Old Testament which no longer bind or have anything to do with us Christians.[65]
2. We neither honor the images nor pray to them, rather [we honor and pray to] the saints which they represent to us.[66]
3. They [i.e., images] are books for laymen.[67]
4. They induce people to reverence and improvement.[68]
All four of these theses had been discussed by Karlstadt, the first three explicitly, the last implicitly.[69] The twofold structure of A Judgment of God made Htzer’s work ideal for anyone wishing to debate the topic of iconoclasm. His pamphlet probably functioned as a topical ready reference, making possible quick access to biblical passages on idol-worship without needing to search through a copy of the Scriptures.[70] It was impractical and expensive to use a Bible for disputation, since Bibles were some of the largest and most costly books during this period. Htzer’s pamphlet, on the other hand, would have been an affordable and convenient way for a disputant to have access to the relevant biblical texts on images.[71] Additionally, Htzer’s pamphlet would have been useful to preachers as a sourcebook for iconoclastic sermons and to individuals engaged in private discussions on images.
External evidence also suggests that Htzer wrote his pamphlet specifically for use in public disputations. Shortly after the publication of A Judgment of God, the Zrich authorities held three disputations in the city on images.[72] At the October 26, 1523 opening of the Second Zrich Disputation-a month after Htzer’s pamphlet appeared in print-Leo Jud, pastor of St. Peter’s Church in Zrich, publicly recommended Htzer’s A Judgment of God to the assembly with these words: “There exists a small book printed here a few days ago in which images are sufficiently condemned by clear Holy Scripture.”[73] On September 19, 1523 the three iconoclasts mentioned at the beginning of this article had gone into a Zrich church with pamphlet in hand for a physical assault on oil lamps that they saw as idolatrous. A month later at the Second Zrich Disputation, a different relationship between a pamphlet and iconoclasm was at work when Htzer’s A Judgment of God provided ammunition (in the form of biblical proof texts and arguments) for the verbal assault on “idols” that took place in the arena of formal disputation. While the internal evidence demonstrates that Htzer’s pamphlet was ideal for use in debates on images, the external evidence proves that it was indeed used (or at least advocated for use) in a public disputation. It also suggests that Htzer’s (and Karlstadt’s) ideas had an impact on the minds of Zrichers during that city’s struggle over images.
The iconoclastic ideas in Htzer’s tract also seem to reflect popular anti-image preaching in Zrich dating long before A Judgment of God was printed.[74] The fact that Jud publicly praised Htzer’s pamphlet suggests that its content was in line with iconoclastic preaching in the city.[75] We know that the pamphlet also met with Zwingli’s approval since by this time he had been given the power of censorship over all publishing in the city. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Htzer’s tract was in basic agreement with the preaching of the city’s two leading ministers and that it reflected popular ideas in Zrich at the time.
Further evidence for the popularity of Htzer’s ideas is suggested by the fact that A Judgment of God was reprinted in Zrich within a few of months of its initial release.[76] Again assuming an average print run of 1000 copies, there would have been more copies available in Zrich in late 1523 than there were literate residents.[77] As was the case with Karlstadt’s On the Removal of Images, this surplus suggests that every interested literate person in Zrich who wanted to could have read Htzer’s A Judgment of God and that even before being reprinted elsewhere it probably circulated well beyond the city in which it was first printed.
Despite the basic ideological agreement between Htzer and the others on the question of images, his political goals were more radical. Like Karlstadt, the Zrich preachers Zwingli and Jud were moderates who advocated immediate reform but were willing to wait until it could be achieved by legal means. But even though Htzer worked with Zwingli for the sake of reform, at least initially,[78] Htzer was no moderate. His verbal attack on images went well beyond the others. Whereas Karlstadt, Zwingli and Jud had condemned images and called for their removal, Htzer actually praised those who attacked images and condemned those who did not.[79] Unlike Karlstadt, Htzer did not just want images removed; he wanted them destroyed. He wrote: “Quickly put them in a fire, since wood belongs there.”[80] He did not call for magisterial action as did Karlstadt in On the Removal of Images; rather, in true radical form Htzer simply advocated the immediate destruction of the “idols.”
Clement Ziegler’s A Short Register (1524)
Another pamphleteer who shared Htzer’s radicalism, also calling for the immediate destruction of images, was the Strassburg gardener and lay preacher Clement Ziegler,[81] whom historian George H. Williams once described as “the most unusual and distinctive figure of the Radical Reformation in Alsace.”[82] In June 1524, the same month the Zrich authorities were busy destroying their city’s “idols,” Clement Ziegler published an anti-image pamphlet titled A Short Register[83] in Strassburg. The tract bears many similarities to the previous works on the topic, especially in its anticlericalism and the multiplication of biblical proof texts.[84]
Like Karlstadt, Ziegler linked iconoclasm to the mass and poor relief. On the mass he wrote: “I consider papal masses for the dead and other masses to be the same as food offered to idols.” He expressed his exasperation with priests who knew that requiem masses are of no use and yet still say them: “O when will damned masses for the dead go away (since we hear God is very angry)? Our preachers indeed say they are not necessary, and yet they continue the practice.”[85] On poor relief Ziegler wrote:
You say: ‘Who are [the saints]? I don’t know them.’ Answer: You’re not supposed to know them, but only believe. For you should love all people as yourself. Gather food together and bring it to the poor, as was done by those from Macedonia and Achaia. Rom. 15[:26]. But before a person brings it to the poor, he hangs it on the oil-idols [lgtzen] inside and outside the churches. But I hope this practice will soon be done away with.
In Strassburg anti-image protests illustrated concerns similar to those of iconoclasts in Wittenberg two years earlier, especially concern for the poor over against the avarice of the Catholic Church. For example, during the earliest attacks against images Strassburg iconoclasts took money from church altars and placed it in the alms boxes. Lee Palmer Wandel has discussed this interesting connection between iconoclasm and concern for the poor but did not account for its intellectual origins.[86] Carlos Eire pointed out that as early as 1523 Strassburg’s leading reformer Martin Bucer preached against the uncharitable aspects of Catholic worship that siphoned off funds better spent on the needy.[87] In this context, Eire even mentioned Karlstadt’s On the Removal of Images with its second section “That There Should Be No Beggars Among Christians.”[88] Still, he did not link Karlstadt’s pamphlet to Strassburg, even though this tract was reprinted in Strassburg in 1522, the year before Bucer began proclaiming his message of relief for the poor. This Strassburg edition of On the Removal of Images links Karlstadt’s ideas to the Reformation in Strassburg and suggests the likely source for Ziegler’s thoughts on the topic.
Despite some similarities to early anti-image works, Ziegler’s A Short Register shows some differences as well. With its six and a half pages, the pamphlet was indeed short-much shorter than either Karlstadt’s (39 pages) or Htzer’s (18 pages). Unlike Karlstadt and Htzer, Ziegler never mentioned the pope (only papal masses), and he aimed his anticlerical rhetoric at the local priests alone:
Then God spoke faithfully to them: “I will send a deceitful people to you.” Isa. 10[:5-6]. Let this be interpreted to you as if this passage refers to our clergy through whom it is feared we have long been deceived. These want to retain images. They are like Nebuchadnezzar. Dan. 3[:1f].[89]
Further he charged that the priest would take the golden crowns given them for the idols “. . . and give to prostitutes.”[90]
Also unique to A Short Register was Ziegler’s apocalyptic argument that Christian “idolatry” was hindering the conversion of the Jews:[91]
How do we want to give an account before God, since we clearly know that the Jews are supposed to be converted before the Day of Judgment? Mal. 4[:5f]. Now they still don’t want to join us, because we have not put away images. Thus, we are a cause of their stumbling and a hindrance before God.[92]
He also used an interesting illustration to make the point that God mocks those who think images are something special: “One should only see how God is poking fun at our images and He shows how the owls and cats sit on them at night and the swallows copulate on them during the day. . . .”[93]
Ziegler’s political goals expressed in A Short Register were radical. Like Htzer, he enthusiastically quoted the Mosaic command to burn idols with fire.[94] And like Htzer, Ziegler did not call on the governmental authorities to solve the problem. Moreover, it was also not enough to get rid of “idols”; Ziegler also recommended avoiding “idolaters” for the sake of one’s soul.[95]
As a lay preacher Ziegler likely voiced his objections to images through sermons as well as the written word. And there is strong circumstantial evidence that he may have taken part in physical attacks on images in Strassburg. As a gardener Ziegler would have been a member of Strassburg’s powerful Gardeners’ Guild, which included shepherds and day laborers in addition to gardeners.[96] According to Reformation historian Miriam Chrisman, this guild was “the largest and most proletarian workers’ association in Strasbourg.”[97] The members of the Gardeners’ Guild belonged to St. Aurelia’s parish, where some of the earliest and most extreme acts of iconoclasm in Strassburg took place. Chrisman has described St. Aurelia’s parishioners as “a particularly vocal and unruly lot” who “reflected the dissatisfaction and restlessness of the peasantry within the walls of the city.”[98] At St. Aurelia’s, parishioners “had challenged the right of the powerful chapter of St. Thomas to appoint the pastor of their parish.”[99] On January 28, 1524, six months prior to the publication of Ziegler’s A Short Register, they had petitioned the city council and won the right to call the man of their choice, Martin Bucer, as their new pastor.
Ziegler’s ideas must have influenced his fellow parishioners who began to smash images and remove relics only after the publication of A Short Register. Most likely Ziegler was one of the main agitators of the iconoclastic violence in St. Aurelia’s and possibly in Strassburg as a whole.
It is also tempting to interpret the evolution of Bucer’s views on images as a product of Ziegler’s influence. Some time after St. Aurelia’s called Bucer as its pastor,[100] Bucer’s views on images changed from a general tolerance of images (in 1523) to a thoroughly anti-image posture by 1530 when the city council mandated the removal of all images, though it is not clear exactly when this change took place.[101] As early as November 1524 Bucer had participated in the removal of the relics of St. Aurelia, the patron saint of his parish. Perhaps a staunch iconoclast such as Ziegler had won his pastor over to the iconoclasts’ cause. If so, then Ziegler’s influence went far beyond the walls of Strassburg, since Bucer’s program of reform became a model for many others, including Protestant leaders in numerous southwest German cities, French reformers such as Lefevre, Roussel and Farel, and even the great Geneva reformer John Calvin.[102]
The foregoing discussion of three iconoclastic pamphlets written by Karlstadt, Htzer and Ziegler has suggested that these works exemplify popular anti-image propaganda in the cities at the time of publication, especially iconoclastic preaching. This preaching, at least in Zrich if not in all three cities, preceded the first physical attacks on images and no doubt inspired individuals to attack objects that they formerly considered sacred. Although the concerns of their authors were similar, iconoclastic pamphlets were tailored in each case to fit the local situation and the political goals of the pamphleteers. Karlstadt worked with the magistrates to bring about legal reform, a truly moderate approach. Htzer labored hand in hand with the moderate reformers who were leading the reform in Zrich but advocated immediate, violent attacks against images. Ziegler, who had little or no direct involvement in his city’s government,[103] was apparently more involved in disturbances on the parish level, but his ideas likely had much broader impact through his influence on Strassburg’s leading reformer, Martin Bucer. Nonetheless, a more complete understanding of iconoclasm in the cities requires that we look beyond the ideological motivation behind Reformation iconoclasm to the political contexts within which these debates unfolded.
THE POLITICS OF ICONOCLASM
Wittenberg (1521-22)
In each city the political process-the power plays by rival factions and negotiations among these groups-shaped the progress and resolution of the controversy over images.
In Wittenberg the anti-image movement first turned to acts of violence against images in December of 1521 and January of 1522. There iconoclasm was inextricably linked to other issues such as the mass, alms and anticlericalism. Unlike Zrich and Strassburg, the struggle against images in Wittenberg was brief, intense and, in the end, unsuccessful.
After the Augustinian monks of the Black monastery began to abandon their vows and ceased offering private masses in early October of 1521, Elector Frederick appointed a commission to investigate and report back to him. This commission was made up of both conservative chapter canons and reform-minded faculty members at the university. The commission remained divided along party lines and submitted majority (pro-reform) and minority (anti-reform) reports to the Elector. Karlstadt, a member of both the chapter and the university faculty, was a part of this commission and tried in vain to use his position to sway Frederick’s opinion in favor of reform.
In early December of 1521 small-scale riots broke out when a mob of students and townspeople disrupted a mass and attacked priests at the Franciscan cloister. In the wake of the disturbances Frederick pressured his advisory commission to reach a consensus on reform issues, which they were unable to do. Townspeople then presented a petition to the city council demanding amnesty for the rioters and calling for reforms in worship. On December 15 an angry Frederick ordered that all petitions for reform be addressed to him, not the city council. Four days later he reiterated his policy that no changes in outward forms be made “until he [Frederick] should establish an order.”[104] In defiance of the Elector’s decree, Karlstadt announced that he would celebrate an evangelical mass at All Saints on New Year’s Day, 1522, his next scheduled time to offer mass there. When Frederick heard this, he warned Karlstadt not to go through with it. Defiantly, Karlstadt leaked the news that he would now conduct his evangelical mass on Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve another disturbance took place: a mob burst into the parish church, smashed lamps, threatened the priests and sang ribald songs. When a guard showed up they moved outside, still singing, then went on to All Saints where they shouted insults at the priest.[105] On Christmas Day Karlstadt, dressed in peasant garb, celebrated his evangelical mass and offered communion to celebrants “in both kinds,” much to Frederick’s displeasure.[106] Despite the large turnout and sensational character of the service, it was remarkably peaceful. On January 11 Augustinians removed images from their Chapel of the Holy Spirit and destroyed them. Then on January 24, 1522 the city council issued its “Wittenberg Ordinances,” which mandated reforms in worship. This legislation was “in effect, the first municipal Reformation ordinance.”[107] Karlstadt apparently played an important role in drafting this legislation, which legitimized his previously illegal evangelical worship service, banned all private masses and outlawed begging in the city. Yet Karlstadt was not totally satisfied with the Ordinances because they called for the removal of images without specifying how or when.[108]
By late January 1522 the Elector seemed to have lost control over events in Wittenberg. The townspeople and Karlstadt were making momentous changes in religious practice, and the magistrates were supporting them with new legislation. While their prince fumed, conservatives in the city hunkered down and licked their wounds.
Frederick faced a dilemma. The majority of townspeople wanted immediate reform,[109] yet he risked Imperial intervention if he did not rein in his people and stop the innovations. On January 20, 1522 the Imperial government issued a mandate threatening Frederick with a visitation of Electoral Saxony by the responsible bishops, which put even more pressure on the Elector to regain control of events in his city and return public worship to its prescribed forms.
Exactly a week later Karlstadt published On the Removal of Images not only to legitimize prior iconoclastic acts but also to persuade the magistrates to carry out the intended removal of images without further delay. His pamphlet initially had the desired effect: the magistrates set a date for the removal of images from the churches. Some Wittenbergers, not willing to wait for the government to act, broke into the parish church during the first week of February and “engaged in a rampage of destruction” in which “statues and paintings were torn down, smashed, and burned. It is said that even some gravestones were despoiled.”[110] Both the city council and the Elector quickly condemned the violence and disorder. The transgressors were fined. Frederick again pressed his demand for a restoration of order and a halt to further reform measures until a final decision could be made. When Luther heard of the continuing disturbances, he decided to return from the Wartburg in order to regain control of the foundering Reformation movement and fill what he saw as a leadership vacuum.[111] Luther had hoped that Melanchthon would be able to assume and maintain leadership of the Reformation during his absence, but the retiring, scholarly humanist was easily rattled and had been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to take charge of events in the city.[112]
Luther blamed the problems on Karlstadt-who had in Luther’s opinion usurped authority-and, to a lesser extent, on the preacher Gabriel Zwilling. “By the time he returned in March,” historian James Preus has argued, “Luther all but identified Carlstadt as Judas (a traitor within the fold) and Satan (instigator of false reform).”[113] Luther returned to Wittenberg on March 6, 1522 and regained control of the reform movement in the city during the following week by preaching a series of eight powerful “Invocavit Sermons.”[114] The sermons illustrate not only the personal authority of Luther but the power of preaching as well. By claiming the authority of the Word of God, Luther was able to undo the city’s reform legislation, something his prince Frederick had been unable to do by means of his secular power. Luther’s return effectively ended iconoclasm in Wittenberg.[115] As a result, Karlstadt felt betrayed and believed Luther was acting like a “new pope.”[116]
One can see a pattern of iconoclastic reform leading up to this point: preaching, iconoclastic disturbances, legislation by the city council, publication of an iconoclastic pamphlet, further iconoclastic disturbances and then a solution (Luther, backed by moderates, won over the radicals). Spurred on by radical townspeople and students, Karlstadt and the city’s magistrates had defied the Elector and had legalized the reforms that were already taking place. With a common short-term goal in sight, Luther (motivated by a desire to regain control of what he saw as a foundering Reformation) and Frederick (motivated by a fear of Imperial intervention in his territory) worked together, at least for a while, to put an end to the Wittenberg Movement and restore traditional forms of worship. Thus, politics played a decisive role in the outcome of the Image Controversy in Wittenberg.
Zrich (1523-24)
Like Wittenberg, the city of Zrich also became caught up in the struggle to reform its worship. In late 1523 questions of the mass and images came to the fore of the debate, and the city split into the same three factions, each one contending for power.
Much like Wittenberg, Zrich was a small city of only about 5700 residents,[117] with a fairly simple political structure.[118] The religious leadership in both cities was moderate, since both Karlstadt and the Zrich reformers advocated only legal means of reform throughout the Image Controversy-Karlstadt turning radical only after Luther’s return to Wittenberg.
Nevertheless, there were important differences between Wittenberg in 1521-22 and Zrich in 1523. Zrich’s leading reformer, Zwingli, was physically present during the Image Controversy as Luther had not been, and there was no leadership vacuum, real or imagined. Zwingli had to contend with a divided city council, but not with a prince or the direct pressures of Imperial politics. Acts of iconoclasm in Zrich, even at the height of the controversy, did not reach the level of small-scale rioting seen in Wittenberg. And, most significantly, Zrich eventually achieved the legal and orderly removal of all images by July 1524, less than a year after the city’s Image Controversy began.
Although the first acts of iconoclasm did not occur in Zrich until September 1523, an earlier incident in the environs of Zrich shows just how much the city council changed on the issue. In the summer of 1520 Uli Anders of Kennelbach was executed by the Zrich town council for destroying an image in the village of Utznach.[119] Yet three years later, Zwingli and Jud were described as preaching against images “for a long time now,”[120] and Jud delivered a particularly powerful sermon on September 1, 1523 that explicitly called for the removal of images.[121] By the following summer all the images were removed from the city’s churches under the city council’s mandate. Thus, in just a few years, iconoclasm went from capital crime to public policy in Zrich.
Even though the iconoclastic disturbances were much milder in Zrich than in Wittenberg, they caused the authorities a great deal of alarm. Two incidents took place in September 1523, one before and one after Htzer published his A Judgment of God. In the first incident a man named Lorenz Meyer destroyed a picture frame in Zrich’s St. Peter’s church and was put in jail for a few days. In the second incident a large roadside crucifix in Stadelhofen just outside Zrich was removed.[122]
The city preachers and many of the citizens were ready to get rid of their “idols,” but a conservative element on the city’s powerful Small Council, led by a strongly iconophile burgomaster, opposed any innovation. A committee appointed by the city council was unable to find a solution to the problem, so they recommended a disputation. On the committee’s recommendation, the town council convened the Second Zrich Disputation (October 26-28, 1523) to debate the mass and images, with Ludwig Htzer serving as recording secretary. Two additional disputations dedicated solely to the subject of images were held in December 1523 and January 1524. In the meantime, the council issued a series of interim mandates on the question of images until a final conclusion could be reached. During this interim period several more incidents of iconoclasm took place in the villages of Hngg, Wipkingen and Zollikon in the environs of Zrich.[123] However, since each interim mandate allowed donors to remove images that had been given to churches by their families, it is likely that far more images were removed peaceably in Zrich than were ever attacked.
Despite the cooperation between the city’s strong radical faction[124] and moderate reformers who agreed with the radicals that the “idols” should go as soon as possible, the final mandate to remove all images from Zrich did not come until the death of Marcus Roist, the city’s staunchly iconophile mayor in late June of 1524.[125] With Burgomaster Roist out of the way, the moderate and radical factions worked together to win over the Small Council to their anti-image position. In Wittenberg one man (Luther) had dismantled iconoclastic reform, while in Zrich one man (Roist) held back reform, if only until his untimely death. And despite the opposite outcomes to the Image Controversy in the two cities, political considerations were decisive in both cases.
Although the radicals’ ideas launched the local struggle over images in Zrich, their radical program for iconoclastic reform did not win the day. Instead of a violent, immediate destruction of “idols” as advocated by men like Htzer, the city council effected a moderate, systematic, nonviolent, orderly removal of all images.[126] Although this solution was different from the one in Wittenberg, Zrich’s struggle over images followed a similar pattern: iconoclastic preaching, acts of iconoclasm, legislation by the city council, publication of an iconoclastic pamphlet, further iconoclastic disturbances and then a resolution.
Strassburg (1524-30)
Protestant ideas were first introduced in Strassburg by printers who began publishing Luther’s polemical writings in late 1520.[127] Although there were signs of Protestant sympathy in the city as early as 1520, the Reformation in Strassburg began in earnest the following year with the preaching of Matthus Zell, whose evangelical sermons drew large crowds to his pulpit in the cathedral.[128] Like Wittenberg and Zrich, Strassburg soon split into three factions-conservative, moderate and radical-each fighting for its own religious agenda, and by 1524 iconoclasts were attacking images.[129] While Protestant preachers and lay people lobbied the city council for the removal of all images, radicals like Ziegler spread the message that “idols” must go immediately or else the city would face God’s wrath.
The iconoclasts in Strassburg had similar concerns to their earlier counterparts in Wittenberg and Zrich; and they had exposure to the same kind of anti-image pamphlets. Although Htzer’s A Judgment of God was never reprinted in Strassburg, Karlstadt’s On the Removal of Images appeared in print there over a year before the city’s Image Controversy began in earnest. Clement Ziegler published his own pamphlet A Short Register in June 1524.[130] Then, owing to its popularity, Ziegler’s tract was reprinted by a different Strassburg printer the same year.[131]
Despite the popularity of anti-image propaganda, the radicals in Strassburg faced strong opposition from the city’s conservative faction, especially among the local noble and patrician families who filled the city’s five prominent chapters.[132] The moderate Protestant city council put off these powerful conservatives as long as possible, issuing several compromise mandates before arriving at their final solution February 14, 1530, after a long delay, when the city council ordered the removal of all images from Strassburg.
Because of these political realities, Strassburg was slow to resolve its struggle over images. According to historian Carl Christensen, the course of the Image Controversy in Strassburg “is perhaps most instructive for its illustration of just how complex the process could be for a Reformation community.”[133] Despite a strong Protestant group of preachers who continually pressed for reform, images were not completely removed until six years after the first acts of iconoclasm in the city. Why did Strassburg take so long to resolve its Image Controversy? What can account for the ambivalent response of the city council to repeated petitions for religious reform’[134]
Christensen has suggested that, among other things, Martin Bucer, the city’s leading Reformer, did not have the kind of influence on the city council that Zwingli enjoyed in Zrich.[135] Miriam Chrisman has echoed this judgement, adding that “the Magistrat did not snatch at the Reform, seize the initiative, and set about to bring the church under its jurisdiction. Policy was made from crisis to crisis, from incident to incident, and the Rat accepted new responsibilities and functions irresolutely and with reluctance.”[136] But what would cause this reluctance?
Unlike the other two cities, Strassburg was a thriving, cosmopolitan city at the beginning of the sixteenth century.[137] It had a much more complex city government, with a smaller, less representative city council, plus a powerful Ammeister, a Stettmeister, and several permanent committees or privy councils, each of which oversaw a specific governmental responsibility: Council of XV for domestic affairs, Council of XIII for war and diplomacy, etc.[138] Unlike Zrich or Wittenberg, Strassburg was a Free Imperial City with much closer ties and accountability to the Emperor. The city’s leaders naturally wanted to keep out of trouble with Emperor Charles V, who was hostile to Protestant reforms. On the other hand, Strassburg was also negotiating a defensive alliance with Protestant cities of the Swiss Confederation.[139] These cities had strong iconoclastic tendencies, as illustrated by Zrich’s removal of all images by the summer of 1524. Thus, Strassburg city leaders were caught not only between competing local factions but also between opposing regional and Imperial interests. “Moreover,” as Wandel has pointed out, “unlike Zurich, which lay peacefully within the Swiss Confederation, Strasbourg was a border city, resting on the ever-shifting boundary between two states of differing confession.”[140] All of these factors made the city council reluctant to pursue a more decisive path to religious reform.
When the long-awaited decree to remove images was finally issued on February 14, 1530, the city council in Strassburg failed to carry out a peaceful and orderly removal, as had been done in Zrich six years earlier. Instead, “many objects were smashed or torn apart, violently destroyed, before their removal, often without the cooperation of any authority, secular or religious.”[141]
CONCLUSION
The political process was clearly responsible for the course and conclusion of the Image Controversy in Strassburg, just as it was in Wittenberg and Zrich. Even so, the political reality cannot be separated from the preached ideal. To the contrary, anti-image propaganda motivated the people to act against the very objects they formerly venerated. Some acted on their beliefs about “idols” by attacking them physically, others by using more formal, less violent means to achieve the desired solution. In both cases, ideas fueled the process of change. Two weeks after Strassburg’s final mandate ordering the complete removal of images, the canons of Young St. Peter’s church petitioned the city council to allow them to preserve a few of their remaining images. The Council denied their request, saying:
Since the sermons that have been given frequently up to now inform one sufficiently of the bright and illuminated Word of God-that such images are idolatrous, that Scripture is opposed to and angry toward them-the town council announces, in order that this issue anger no one any further, to bear them no longer, and therefore commands, to remove them in good order.[142]
Thus, the city council cited sermons and the ideas contained in them to justify their decision to remove all images from Strassburg churches.
Newly popular Reformation ideas-preached from pulpits and preserved in pamphlets-motivated iconoclasts in Wittenberg, Zrich and Strassburg to remove images, whether by violent, physical attacks or by nonviolent, political means. One could say that pamphlets and preaching enlisted troops for the cause and provided words for the battle cry, but in the end politics determined who won the war over images.
Ludwig Htzer, Ein Urteil Gottes unsers Ehegemahls
(Zrich: Christoph Froschauer, 1523)
[(] J. Travis Moger is a Ph.D. student in history at the U. of California, Santa Barbara.
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[1]. Emil Egli, ed. Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Zricher Reformation in den Jahren 1519-1533 (1879; rpt., Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1973), 1:159.
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[2]. Und wie si in einem bechli lesint, gienge er gegen der grossen kilchentren zuohin. . . .-Egli, Aktensammlung, 159. During the sixteenth century a pamphlet was called a “little book” (libellius or bchlein). The German word for pamphlet (Flugschrift) was not a sixteenth-century term. Pamphlets were short, unbound, relatively cheap, printed works, which normally appeared in quarto size. They usually ran fewer than 100 pages, although the average length of a pamphlet during this period was far shorter, only 8 pages in fact. For average length and size of sixteenth-century pamphlets see Richard Cole, “The Reformation Pamphlet in Communication Process,” Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit, Sptmittelalter und Frhe Neuzeit Tbinger Beitrge zur Geschichtsforschung 13, ed. Hans-Joachim Khler (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), 146.
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[3]. hettind si einandern mit dem wiewasser gesprengt und gesprochen, si welltind einandern bescweren.-Egli, Aktensammlung, 159.
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[4]. Si welltind und mchtind solich abgttery nit mer erliden.-Egli, Aktensammlung, 159-60.
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[5]. “Their treatment of the holy water reflects certain gestures and patterns of behavior associated with Carnival.”-Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1995), 71.
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[6]. Charles Garside, Jr. claimed that “in all likelihood” the men were reading Ludwig Htzer’s anti-image pamphlet A Judgement of God-Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1966), 115. That is not possible since this event took place five days before the publication of Htzer’s tract. Eire recognized the problem with Garside’s hypothesis but suggested that Htzer’s pamphlet “may have been made available before the offical publication date.”-Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1986), 80, n. 111. I see this as highly unlikely. There is no way of knowing which “little book” the men were reading.
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[7]. Hans-Joachim Khler, “The Flugschriften and their Importance in Religious Debate: A Quantitative Approach,” in ‘Astrologi hallucinati’: Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s Time, ed. Paola Zambelli (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), 154.
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[8]. Ibid. This number is quite impressive since literacy rates in Germany were still quite low at the dawn of the Reformation. The overall literacy rate for Germany at the beginning of the sixteenth century has been estimated at about five percent, which means that about 15 pamphlet copies would have been available for each literate person.-Khler, “Quantitative Approach,” 154-55. See also Mark U. Edwards, Printing, Propaganda and Martin Luther (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1994), 37-38; R[obert] W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation, Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1981), 1-2.
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[9]. Khler, “Quantitative Approach,” 155.
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[10]. Steven Ozment, “The Social History of the Reformation: What Can We Learn from Pamphlets'” Flugschiften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit, ed. Hans-Joachim Khler (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), 177.
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[11]. Despite the important role I assign to ideas communicated through print, I do not contend that the Reformation was primarily a “print event” nor that religious ideas alone are sufficient to explain the way the Image Controversy was resolved in the cities.
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[12]. Wandel used city chronicles as well as court records. In the case of Strassburg, she relied upon city chronicles exclusively since no court testimonies of iconoclasts survive from that city.- Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1994), 109.
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[13]. Helmut Feld, Der Ikonoklasmus des Westens, Studies in Late Medieval and Reformation Thought 41, ed. Heiko A[ugustinus] Oberman (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990); Margarete Stirm, Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation, ed. Gustav Adolf Benrath (Gtersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1977); Serguisz Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 1993); H. Freiherr von Campenhausen, “Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation,” Zeitschrift fr Kirchengeschichte 68 (1957), 96-128. One notable exception to this rule being Carlos Eire’s War Against Idols which does the best job of integrating social and intellectual history.-Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1986).
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[14]. “The reformers’ preaching may well have contributed to the [Zrich] town council’s ultimate acceptance of specific acts, but it cannot explain, cannot provide the ’cause’ for, iconoclasm.”-Ibid., 61.
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[15]. Wandel, Voracious Idols, 131.
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[16]. “That is not to argue for preachers provoking iconoclasm. . . . Rather, it suggests something of a predisposition for evangelicalism in those parishes. Iconoclasts may well have numbered among those seeking an evangelical preacher.”-Ibid, 131.
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[17]. Glenn Burgess, “On Revisionism: An Analysis of Early Stuart Historiography in the 1970s and 1980s,” Historical Journal 33 (1990), 613.
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[18]. One must be careful to distinguish the motive for taking action against images from the justification voiced for targeting a specific object. The justifications given by accused iconoclasts for targeting specific objects were indeed idiosyncratic, while the motive in nearly every case was the conviction that images were forbidden by the Bible and therefore must go. In September 1523 Zrich iconoclast Claus Hottinger justified his removal of a roadside crucifix by claiming a benevolent motive (to sell the wood and give the money to the poor) and by alleging prior permission from the donor and some members of the town council to remove the image. Yet Hottinger had convinced the donor to assign him jurisdiction over the image by arguing that “the holy word did inform him [the donor] that the idols should not exist,” and he mentioned to a co-conspirator that “one heard daily, that such a crucifix and all other images are forbidden by God our Savior.”-Wandel, Voracious Idols, 73, 76.
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[19]. For Karlstadt’s biography see Hermann Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Friedrich Brandstetter, 1905); Sider, Karlstadt; Calvin Augustine Pater, Karlstadt as the Father of Baptist Movements: The Emergence of Lay Protestantism (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1984); Gordon Rupp, Patterns of Reformation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 49-153. For a brief treatment see Ronald J[ames] Sider, “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt: Between Liberal and Radical,” Profiles of Radical Reformers: Biographical Sketches from Thomas Mntzer to Paracelsus, ed. Hans-Jrgen Goertz (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1982).
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[20]. Karlstadt had been dean of the theological faculty earlier but rotated out of this position in October 1521 before he published his pamphlet against images.-Sider, Karlstadt, 157 n. 40.
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[21]. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Von abtuhung der Bylder // Vnd das keyn Betdler // vnther den Chri- // sten seyn soll. // Carolstatt. In der Christliche[n] // statt Wittenberg (Wittenberg: Nickel Schirlentz, January 27, 1522). (Rpt., Kleine Texte fr theologische und philologische Vorlesungen und bungen 74, ed. Hans Leitzmann [Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Weber, 1911]). German text and page numbers in the footnotes taken from the Leitzmann edition. The first edition clearly dates the pamphlet “Montags nach Conversionis Pauli, 1522” or January 27, 1522; however, there has been confusion over the date among some scholars.-Sider, Karlstadt, 167, n. 92. The pamphlet is dedicated to Count Wolfgang von Schlick of Joachimsthal in order to “move his heart” to call for the same reforms in his territory as were done in Wittenberg.-Zorzin, Karlstadt, 150-51. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
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[22]. This was the sometimes violent, predominantly lay-led reform movement which took place during Luther’s absence in 1521-22. On the history of the Wittenberg Movement see James S. Preus, Carlstadt’s ‘Ordinaciones’ and Luther’s Liberty: A Study of the Wittenberg Movement 1521-1522 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard U. Press, 1974); Nikolaus Mller, Die Wittenberger Bewegung, 1521 und 1522: die Vorgnge in und um Wittenberg whrend Luthers Wartburgaufenthalt, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1911); Ronald J. Sider, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt: The Development of His Thought 1517-1525 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 153-73; Gordon Rupp, Patterns, 79-110.
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[23]. Very few printed sermons on images survive from the early years of the Reformation. One example is Diepold Peringer’s 1524 sermon Eyn Sermon von der Abgtterey / durch den Pawern / der weder Schreyben noch Lesen Kan / Gepredigt zu Kitzing im Franckenland auff Unsers Herren Fromleychnams Tag. For more on this sermon see Steven Ozment, Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1975), 66-67.
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[24]. Sider, Karlstadt, 166.
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[25]. Carl Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens, OH and Detroit, MI: Ohio U. Press and Wayne State U. Press, 1979), 27.
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[26]. Nickel Schirlentz printed two editions in Wittenberg in 1522, and Ulrich Morhart printed an edition later the same year.-Verzeichnis der im Deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des XVI. Jahrhunderts [hereafter VD 16] Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Mnchen)-Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbttel), B 6213-15. See also Zorzin, Karlstadt, 290.
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[27]. Two print runs in Wittenberg would probably have produced 2000 copies at a time when the population of Wittenberg was approximately 2500. For Wittenberg’s population see Steven Ozment, Reformation in the Cities, 8.
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[28]. The first known physical attack on “images” in Wittenberg took place on December 24, 1521, a month before Karlstadt published On the Removal of Images, when a mob of townspeople destroyed lamps in the parish church and threatened the priests who were officiating.-Sider, Karlstadt, 159. Then on January 11, 1522, two weeks before Karlstadt’s pamphlet appeared, Augustinians removed and destroyed religious statues and paintings from their cloister chapel.- Christensen, Art, 39.
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[29]. Ibid., 28.
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[30]. Ibid., 38; Sider, Karlstadt, 159.
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[31]. Christensen does not believe that there is evidence to support the charge, set forth by Roland Bainton and others, that Gabriel Zwilling had led the riot.-Christensen, Art, 39. Cf. Sider, Karlstadt, 168. Preus says only that the altars and images were removed “probably under Zwilling’s leadership.”-Preus, Carlstadt’s ‘Ordinaciones’, 33, n. 98.
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[32]. On the Removal of Images did not focus exclusively on the topic of images, though the larger portion of Karlstadt’s text (twenty pages) dealt with the subject. The smaller portion of the text (eight pages) treated begging, another controversial topic in the reformation of Wittenberg. The modern Leitzmann edition of Karlstadt’s On the Removal of Images has 28 pages of text; the first edition of Karlstadt’s pamphlet, published by Nickel Schirlentz, has 39 pages.-Hans-Joachim Khler, Flugschriften des frhen 16. Jahrhunderts. Microfiche Serie (Zug, Switzerland: Inter-dokumentation, 1978-1987), Fiche 434, Nr. 1175. For Karlstadt’s discussion of begging see Carter Lindberg, “‘There Should Be No Beggars among Christians’: Karlstadt, Luther, and the Origins of Poor Relief,” Church History 46 (1977), 313-34. Anti-mendicant feelings had turned violent a few months earlier when students threw dung and stones at the hermits of St. Anthony during their regular round of begging alms in the city in October 1521.- Christensen, Art, 37.
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[33]. In his section on images, he either cited or quoted the Scriptures at least 97 times: 67 citations from the Old Testament, 13 from the New Testament, none from the Apocrypha, and 17 passages quoted without citation (5 Old Testament, 12 New Testament).
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[34]. Das wir bilder in Kirchen vn[d] gots hewsern habe[n] ist unrecht und wider das erst gebot. Du solst nich frombde gotter haben, 4. The commandment prohibiting the manufacture of images was still, at this time, part of the “first commandment” of the Decalogue. Later, as a result of the Image Controversy of the 1520s, non-Lutheran Protestants began to divide the first commandment into two separate commands (as in the earlier Jewish numbering), making the commandment against images the second commandment. Leo Jud, the Zrich preacher, was the first Reformer to number the command against images as the second commandment in his 1534 catechism, Der grere Katechismus. Other reformers-Zell, Calvin, Bucer-followed suit in quick succession. See Stirm, Bilderfrage, 154, 238.
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[35]. Das geschnitzte und gemalthe Olgotzen vff den altarien stehnd ist noch schadelicher vnd Tewffellischer, 4. Karlstadt’s use of the word Olgotzen (oil-idols) casts doubt on Wandel’s translation of the same word in a pamphlet by Clement Ziegler. She claims the word means “oil lamps” or “idols that eat oil.”-Wandel, Voracious Idols, 70. Such a translation is problematic in the Ziegler text, but it simply would not work here where the Olgotzen are described as “carved and painted.” Karlstadt was talking about religious statuary that became associated with oil because either they were painted with oil paints or because of their oily, sooty appearance caused by the votive oil lamps which burned in front of and around them. Ludwig Htzer used “sooty oil-idol” (rssigen lgtzen) interchangeably with “sooty image” (rssige bildnus) in his 1523 pamphlet A Judgment of God.
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[36]. Drumb ists gut notlich loblich vn[d] gottlich das wir sie abthun vn[d] ire recht un[d] urteyl der schrift gebe[n], 4.
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[37]. Sih aich tzugobe das Leyhen ehtwas nutzes vn[d] seligbarliches aus bildern kondten lerne[n]. Dort ist doch das mit nicht gestate[n] wider verbot der schrifft vnd wider gotliche[n] willen, 11.
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[38]. Darumb ists nit war das bilder der Leyhen bucher sind, 9.
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[39]. Auss dem bild des gecreusigten Christi lernestu nicht dan das fleischlich leyden Christi. Wie Christus seine heubt geniegt und der || gleiche[n]. Nhu sagt Christus das sein eyge[n] fleisch nit nutz sey sonder dz der geist nutz vn[d] lebe[n]dig thun machen, 9.
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[40]. das fleysch is nicht nutz [John 6:27], 10.
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[41]. E. J. Furcha, ed., The Essential Carlstadt (Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 1995), 405, n. 13-14.
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[42]. Epiphanius ist kume[n] gen Anablatha un[d] do selbst indie kirchen gange[n]und hatt eyne[n] furhanck in der thur gesehe[n] geferbt und gemalett / der eyn bild gehabt gleich alss Christi oder eynes heilige[n]. . . . Doch hat erss nit yn der kirchen wollen leyde[n] drumb das wider die schrifftt yn der kirche[n] hing / derhalbe[n] tzuschneid der de[n] furha[n]g, 11.
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[43]. This relic became the most important indulgence image in the late Middle Ages. It was the most popular relic of pilgrims traveling to Rome after 1215, when the church raised the promise of indulgence from ten to ten thousand days. By 1370 it had been raised to twenty thousand years.-Joseph L. Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1993), 86.
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[44]. Ich mercke aber warumb die Bebst soliche bucher den Leyen fur gelegt haben. Sye haben vermerckt wan sie die schefflein yhn die bucher furtten yhr grempell marckt wurd nichst tzunhemen, 9.
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[45]. heilosse Bepst vnsinnige Monnichen, 17.
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[46]. Christensen, Art, 37; Sider, Karlstadt, 157.
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[47]. vn[d] ist ye war das sie alle sampt huren vnd eheprecheryn sein die bilder eheren oder vmb hylff ansuchen aber anbete[n], 18.
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[48]. Hosea 2, Ezekiel 16.
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[49]. Dye schrifft vergleicht bilder vnd olgotzen / de[n] puben / vn[d] saget an vil enden / das die gotlossen mit bildern bule[n] / wie huren mit puben, 17.
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[50]. Sih da olgotzischer preysser / was Etzechiell / von den bildern redet vnd vergysse beleib nit wan du eynen olgotzen oder bilde yn deyne hertze nymbst… das dich got verderben wil vn[d] verdamme[n] / vnd wil dir selbst antworten, 15.
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[51]. Ach du haylose hur / meynestu das got dein hertze nit tisser vn[d] mehr erkenn / dan du?
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[52]. Der wege[n] soll ich kein bilde forchten / gleich wie ich keynes soll ehere[n] . Aber (got klag ichs) mein hertz ist vo[n] Juge[n]d auff yn eher erbiethung vnd wolachtung der bildnis ertzogen vn[d] auff gewachssen. vn[d] ist mir ein Schedliche forcht eingetrage[n] / der ich mich gern wolt endletige[n] / vn[d] kan nit. Alsso sten ich in forcht / dz der ich keine[n] olgotze[n] dorsst verbrene[n]. Ich hette sorg der Teuffels narr mocht mich beleydigen, 19.
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[53]. Eire, War, 63.
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[54]. Derwegen solten vnsere Magistraten nit erwarte[n] bi die pfaffen Baal ire geve Kloster vnd verhindernis anfahen autzufren, 21.
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[55]. Die obirste weltliche hand soll gebieten vnd schaffen, 21.
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[56]. Furcha, The Essential Carlstadt, 112.
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[57]. That Karlstadt was a moderate, not a radical, at least until after Luther returned from the Wartburg, is convincingly argued by Sider.-See Sider, Karlstadt, 148-73.
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[58]. Martin Luther, Wider die hime- // lischen Propheten / // vo[n] den bildern // vnd Sacrament [etc]. // Martinus Luther. // (Wittenberg: Lucas Cranach & Christen Dring, 1525); Martin Luther, Das ander Teyl wid // der die hymlischen // Propheten // vom // Sacrament (Wittenberg: W. Kpfel, 1524/1525).-Khler, Flugschriften,Fiches 1636-1637, Nr. 4206.
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[59]. For Htzer’s biography see Goeters, J. F. Gerhard. Ludwig Htzer (ca. 1500 bis 1529). Spiritualist und Antitrinitarier. Einer Randfigur der frhen Tuferbewegung. Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 25 (Gtersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1957). For a brief biographical sketch in English see G. F. Gerhard Goeters, “Ludwig Haetzer,” ME, 2:621-26.
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[60]. Ludwig Htzer, Ein vrteil gottes un- // sers ee gemahels / wie // man sich mit allen gtzen und // bildnussen halte[n] sol / v der // heiligen gschrift gezo- // ge[n] // durch Ludwig Htzer (Zrich: Christoph Froschauer, September 24, 1523).-Khler, Flugschriften, Fiche 244, Nr. 675. The full title in English reads: A Judgment of God our Spouse on How One Should Act Toward All Idols and Images Taken from Holy Scripture. By Ludwig Htzer.
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[61]. Charles Garside, Jr., “Ludwig Haetzer’s Pamphlet Against Images: A Critical Study,” MQR 34 (Jan. 1960), 20-36. Even if, as Garside claimed, Htzer’s arguments reveal a “systematic dependence” upon Karlstadt’s On the Removal of Images, there is nothing like the plagiarism that was so common in this age before copyright laws. It tells us only that Htzer relied on Karlstadt for his inspiration and should not obscure the fact that, on the whole, Htzer’s work is original. Note Garside’s own comment: “Nevertheless Htzer’s dependence on Karlstadt in no wise detracts either from the originality or the significance of his text.”-Garside, “Haetzer’s Pamphlet,” 34.
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[62]. Got unser vatter und Egmahel verbt vns die bilder zemache[n], [a1v].
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[63]. Got heit die bild zerbrechen / vnd von der straff de[-]ren die sy habend und eerend, a2v.
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[64]. Die that deren,die bild vnd gtzen abgethon hand wirt germpt un[d] prisen, b2v. I disagree with Eire’s point about Htzer’s third thesis: “Haetzer was not being as openly revolutionary as Karlstadt, he was hinting that iconoclasm in general was praiseworthy without specifying that it should only be carried out by magistrates.”-Eire, War, 80. While Karlstadt’s plan for reform may have been “revolutionary” in that it ignored the wishes of his prince, Elector Frederick, the fact that Karlstadt called for a legal, magisterial reform (and Htzer did not) would seem to contradict Eire’s statement.
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[65]. Das sind alles nun zgnussen v dem alten testa-ment/ das vns Christen nit mer bindt noch angadt, b3v.
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[66]. Wir erend doch die bild nit/vn[d] bettend sy ouch nit an/ sunder die heiligen die sy vns anzeigen, b3r.
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[67]. Sy sind bcher der leyen, [c1r].
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[68]. Sy reytzen den menschen z andacht vnnd zbesse-rung, [c1v].
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[69]. Htzer’s fourth thesis recalls Karlstadt’s words: “Even if all the images on earth were to stand together, they would still not be able to elicit from you as much as a small sigh toward God.”-Furcha, The Essential Carlstadt, 114; Lass alle bilder auff erden tzesammen tredten / dannoch vermogen sie nit / dir eine[n] kleinen seufftzen tzu got tzegeben, 16.
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[70]. “The scripture passages chosen as proof-texts were the most radical Old Testament condemnations of image worship. The significance of this section of the Judgment is obvious; it provided arguments against images and made searching for Bible texts unnecessary. Here, in one compact pamphlet, they were available in the vernacular for all to study and use.”-Eire, War, 80.
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[71]. An average size pamphlet may have cost about sixteen pence, one-third the daily wage of an artisan apprentice, roughly the price of a chicken or a pitchfork.-Hans-Joachim Khler and Hans J. Hillerbrand, “Pamphlets,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation (New York: Oxford U. Press, 1996) 3:202.
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[72]. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th Zrich Disputations, held Oct. 26-28, 1523; Dec. 28, 1523; and Jan. 19-20, 1524, respectively.-Garside, Zwingli, 129-55.
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[73]. Quoted in Garsize, Zwingli, 131.
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[74]. A statement made in October 1523 attests that Zwingli and Jud had been preaching “for a long time” that “idols and images should not exist.”-Garside, Zwingli, 102.
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[75]. On Zwingli and Jud’s praise of Htzer’s pamphlet see Garside, Zwingli, 102, 147.
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[76]. Htzer’s most recent biographer mentions eight German editions but does not identify them.-Goeters, Ludwig Htzer, 36, n. 1. I have been able to identify the following seven German editions: (1) the first edition printed in Zrich by Christoph Froschauer on September 24, 1523 (VD 16/H 139; Khler Fiche 244, Nr. 675); (2) a second edition also printed by Froschauer in Zrich later in 1523 (VD 16/H140; Khler Fiche 1895, Nr. 4850); (3) an edition published in Augsburg in 1523 (VD 16/H138; Khler Fiche 457, Nr. 1237); (4) Kaspar Libisch, Breslau, 1524 (VD 16/H142; Khler Fiche 1065, Nr. 2691); (5) Jakob Scmidt, Speyer, 1524 (VD 16/H143; Khler Fiche 1902, Nr. 4870); (6) Peter Schffer. 1529 (VD 16/H144); (7) an edition printed without location, publisher or date (VD 16/H141; Emil Weller, Reperatorum typographorum [Rpt., Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1961], 279, Nr. 2449).
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[77]. The overall literacy for central Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century has been estimated at five percent.-Khler, “Quantitative Approach,” 154-55. Even if we assume that the urban literacy rate was as high as thirty percent, no more than approximately 1700 of Zrich’s estimated 5700 residents would have been able to read the vernacular German at this time.
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[78]. “In the matter of church politics during these months he sided entirely with Zwingli, who was still urging immediate reform.”-Goeters, “Ludwig Haetzer,” 622. Htzer was expelled from Zrich as a noncitizen on January 31, 1525 because he rejected infant baptism, having challenged Zwingli on the topic.-Ibid.
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[79]. There were actually very few physical attacks on images before their removal in the summer of 1524. Though we cannot be certain of numbers, it seems that many more images were peaceably removed from Zrich’s churches by the donor families during late 1523 and early 1524 than were ever destroyed or attacked by iconoclasts.
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[80]. Huss mit inen in ein fhr da gehrt das holtz hin, [c1r].
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[81]. For Ziegler’s biography see Rodolphe Peter, “Le maracher Clment Ziegler: l’homme et son oeuvre,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 34 (1954), 255-82; Rudolphe Peter, “Clement Ziegler the Gardener: The Man and His Work,” trans. Cynthia Reimer and John Derksen, MQR 64 (Oct. 1995), 421-51.
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[82]. George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 245.
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[83]. Clement Ziegler, Ein kurtz Register // vn[d] auszzug der Bibel in // welchem man findet was ab // gtterey sey / vnd wo man yedes // suchen sol. Colligiert durch // Clement zyegler // Gartner zu Stra- // burg (Strassburg: Johann Schwann, 1524). In English the full title reads: A Short Register and Excerpt from the Bible In Which One Finds What Idolatry Is and What Every Man Should Seek. Collected by Clement Ziegler, Strassburg Gardener. The text I use is a photocopy of the 1524 Augsburg edition of Ziegler’s pamphlet in the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the U. of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Many thanks to Hilary Bernstein for getting me this copy.
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[84]. Although Karlstadt’s ideas are present in this work, there is no evidence of the kind of direct borrowing from the Wittenberg reformer’s pamphlet that we find in Htzer’s A Judgment of God. I disagree with Martin Arnold, who asserted that Ziegler’s pamphlet shows no signs of dependence upon Karlstadt.-Martin Arnold, Handwerker als theologische Schriftsteller: Studien zu Flugschriften der frhen Reformation (1523-1525) (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 124. Ziegler cited the Bible 69 times (42 Old Testament, 21 New Testament), the Apocrypha (Baruch and Maccabees) 6 times, and the extra-biblical Babylonian Acts (Gensit Babilonien Actuum an dem 7) once. While he quoted from a pre-Lutheran translation of the Old Testament, his New Testament quotations were taken from Luther’s translation which had been published in Strassburg by Jean Schott at the end of 1522.-Rudolphe Peter, “Clement Ziegler the Gardener,” 431.
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[85]. O wan[n] wllen die verflchten seelmessen abgon. so wir hren das got durch die grlich zrnet. Ja sagen vnser predicanten sy seind kainntz/vnd treybens doch fr vnd fr, a1v-a2r.
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[86]. Wandel, Voracious Idols, 124.
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[87]. Eire, War, 90.
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[89]. da hat dan[n] jnen got trewet sprechend Ich will euch sende[n] ainbetriegent volk Esa.10 lat euch sein als obs vnser gaistlich genante[n] weren durch wlche/zbesrge[n] wir lang zeyt betroge[n] seind. Wlcher die bilder erhalte[n] will der ist gleich Nabuchodonosor Dani.3, a2r.
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[90]. Sy machen jren gtern gulden kronen vn[d] die priester ziehen es jn ab vn[d] verzerens vnd gebens den gemainen weybern. Baru. 6, a3r.
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[91]. Ziegler taught “the idea of a universal reign of God on earth in an empire that would also embrace Jews and Turks” in the end times.-Klaus Deppermann, Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of the Reformation, trans. Malcom Wren (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 175.
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[92]. Wie wllen wir uns antworten vor gott so wir klrlich haben das die Juden bekert sollen werden vor dem tag des gerichts. Mala. 4. Nu wllent sy ye noch nit z falle[n] macht das wir die bilder nit abthn, a2r-a2v.
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[93]. Besehe man nur wie got ain gespt treybt mit vnsern bil den vn[d] zayget wie des nachts die eylen vn[d] die katzen auff sy sitzen vn[d] des tags die schwalwen jung auff jn machen. . . , a2v.
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[94]. verbrennen sy mit fewer / Deutero. 12, a1v.
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[95]. Daru[m]b ain yeder ht sich vor den abgtische[n] auf das ain yeder sein seel bewar Hiere 51, a2v.
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[96]. Deppermann described Ziegler as the leader of the Gardeners, one of seven nonconformist groupings Deppermann identified.-Melchior Hoffman, 275.
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[97]. Christensen, Art, 85. In 1444 the Strassburg gardeners’ guild had 690 members compared with the tailors’ guild, the next largest, which had only 293. By 1537 its members numbered 714; the next largest guild, the Mhrin or tradesmen’s guild, numbered only 368-Chrisman, Strasbourg, 308.
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[98]. Chrisman, Strasbourg, 113.
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[99]. Wandel, Voracious Idols, 117.
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[100]. Rudolphe Peter, however, challenged the traditionally held view that Ziegler was a member of St. Aurelia’s parish.-“Clement Ziegler the Gardener,” 426, n. 23. Even if Peter was right, there is little doubt of Ziegler’s influence on his fellow gardeners of St. Aurelia’s.
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[101]. To celebrate and defend the final removal of the images from the Strassburg churches in 1530, Bucer wrote a treatise entitled That Any Kind of Images May Not Be Permitted. This work shows a definite change in Bucer’s attitude toward images, since he no longer considered them indifferent things. Now, in 1530, he proclaimed that images were forbidden by the first and second commandments because they always led to idolatry.-Eire, War, 93.
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[102]. Ibid., 89.
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[103]. Ziegler’s lack of direct involvement in his city’s political process stems from his low social status and the political situation in Strassburg, which was much larger than Wittenberg or Zrich but had a smaller, less representative city government.
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[104]. piss er ein ordnung fuerschlug. Quoted in Preus, Carlstadt’s ‘Ordinaciones’, 28.
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[105]. Sider, Karlstadt, 159.
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[106]. Ibid., 160.
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[107]. Eire, War, 63.
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[108]. Item die bild vnd altarien in der kirchen sllen auch abgethon werden, damit die abgtterey zu vermeyden, dann drey altaria on bild genug seind-Quoted in Stirm, Bilderfrage, 24.
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[109]. This is evidenced not only by the popular revolts and willingness of the city council to defy the elector but also the huge number of residents that had turned out for Karlstadt’s evangelical mass. One contemporary report says 1000 attended, another 2000.-Preus, Carlstadt’s ‘Ordinaciones,’ 28, n. 62. This is quite remarkable since the total population of Wittenberg at the time is estimated at 2500. For Wittenberg’s population see Ozment, Reformation in the Cities, 8.
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[110]. Christensen, Art, 40.
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[111]. Preus, Carlstadt’s ‘Ordinaciones,’ 51, 54.
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[112]. Mark U. Edwards, Jr., Luther and the False Brethren (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1975), 30-1.
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[113]. Preus, Carlstadt’s ‘Ordinaciones,’ 58.
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[114]. Karlstadt wrote a pamphlet in reply to Luther’s Invocavit Sermons: Ob man gemach faren und des ergernssen der schwachen verschonen soll (Basel, 1524). For English translation see Ronald J[ames] Sider, ed., Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther: Documents in a Liberal Radical Debate (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 49-71. This pamphlet, initially suppressed (perhaps by Karlstadt himself), was printed only after Karlstadt’s 1524 exile from Saxony when he sent his brother-in-law Gerhard Westerburg to Switzerland with eight tracts for publication.-Sider, Karlstadt, 175, n. 6; cf. Sider, Debate, 49.
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[115]. There was, however, at least one further iconoclastic incident in a nearby town later that spring.-Christensen, Art, 41.
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[116]. “Karlstadt war zutiefst erstaunt und verletzt. Luther hatte alles zerstrt, was Karlstadt aufgebaut hatte. Luther is anscheinend neidisch, behandelt ihn ungerecht, gebrdet sich wie der neue Papst.”-Stirm, Bilderfrage, 25.
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[117]. Actually Zrich was over twice the size of Wittenberg, but both cities had similar small city ways and simple governing structures.
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[118]. Zrich’s city council was made up of a Large Council and a Small Council. The Large Council was composed of twelve members from each of twelve guilds plus 18 members from the “Society of Constabulary” (made up of knights, merchants, property owners and financiers) for a total of 162 councilmen. The Small Council, which had the greater political power, included 25 men from various guilds and was headed by a burgomaster. There were two such bodies which rotated governing responsibilities every 6 months. The Small and Large Councils together formed the “Council of the Two Hundred,” actually numbering 212 (162 + 25 + 25). This Council of the Two Hundred decided larger issues which had implications outside of Zrich. Both the Small and Large Council used advisory committees through which men like Zwingli had considerable access and influence. For more on Zrich’s political structures see Ulrich Gbler, Huldrych Zwingli: His Life and Work, trans. Ruth C.L. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 1-19.
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[119]. Wandel, Voracious Idols, 53-54.
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[120]. Quoted in Garside, Zwingli, 131.
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[121]. Garside, Zwingli, 104.
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[122]. Wandel, Voracious Idols, 73, 76.
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[123]. Garside, Zwingli, 122-25; Wandel, Voracious Idols, 83-94.
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[124]. Zrich had a well organized group of radicals which included men such as Htzer and the future Anabaptist leaders Conrad Grebel and Felix Mantz. All of these men (and several others) had been present at the home of Zrich publisher Christoph Froschauer in 1522 when he intentionally violated the Lenten fast by eating a sausage.-Garside, Zwingli, 127; Goeters, Ludwig Htzer, 31-32; Wandel, Voracious Idols, 69.
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[125]. In fact, this mandate was promulgated on June 24, 1524, the very day of his death!-Garside, Zwingli, 158.
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[126]. Gerold Edlibach, a conservative Catholic observer of these events, predictably reported a less irenic view of the removal of images from Zrich.-Bilderstreit: Kulturwandel in Zwinglis Reformation, ed. Hans-Dietrich Altendorf and Peter Jezler (Zrich: Theologischer Verlag, 1984), 49-70. Many thanks to James M. Stayer for bringing this account to my attention.
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[127]. Luther’s devotional writings were printed in Strassburg as early as 1519, but his controversial writings began to appear in late 1520. Mark U. Edwards, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1994), 43.
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[128]. Chrisman, Strasbourg, 98-100.
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[129]. The two earliest acts of violence against images in February and March 1524 involved only verbal attacks on images. In both of these incidents iconoclasts took money from altars and put it into alms boxes. On September 5, 1524 the first physical attack took place when a few iconoclasts tore down images in churches and in the streets. The perpetrators were fined and put in the tower.- Wandel, Voracious Idols, 112-15.
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[130]. Strassburg printer Johann Schwan first printed Ziegler’s pamphlet in June 1524.-Michael A. Pegg, A Catalogue of German Reformaion Pamphlets (1516-1546) in Libraries of Great-Britain and Ireland (Baden-Baden: Valentine Koerner, 1973), 305, #3946. Excerpts of this edition are reproduced in Manfred Krebs and Hans Georg Rott, Quellen zur Geschichte der Tufer, Vol 7, Elsa, Teil I, Stadt Straburg 1522-1532 (Gtersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1959), 8-11.
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[131]. Augsburg printer Ulhart reprinted Ziegler’s tract in 1524.-Pegg, Catalogue, 306, #3947. A second Strassburg edition appeared from the press of W. Kpfel in 1524.-Miriam Usher Chrisman, Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 259.
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[132]. Christensen, Art, 82-83.
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[133]. Ibid., 81.
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[134]. Wandel, Voracious Idols, 105.
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[135]. Christensen, Art, 82.
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[136]. Miriam Usher Chrisman, Strasbourg and the Reform: A Study in the Process of Change (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1967), 132.
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[137]. In fact Strassburg was four times larger than Zrich.-Wandel, Voracious Idols, 103.
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[138]. For more on the political structure in Strassburg see Chrisman, Strasbourg, 14-31; Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation in Strasboug 1520-1555 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978), 163-65.
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[139]. Christensen, Art, 83.
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[140]. Wandel, Voracious Idols, 147.
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[141]. Ibid., 128.
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[142]. Quoted in Ibid., 127-28.
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Pamphlets, Preaching and Politics
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