The Catholic Publicists

One of the most striking characteristics of the Evangelical media campaign in the early years of the Reformation is the extent to which the

Evangelical publicists operated almost unopposed. In fact, Catholic publicists were unable to offer a large-scale and credible response to the Evangelical barrage until years if not decades after the Reformation movement got underway.^[21] Some statistics should makes this clear.^[22]

Comparative statistics based on incomplete data can only be suggestive. Nevertheless, a simple comparison between the vernacular editions of the Catholic publicists and the output of one Evangelical, Martin Luther, suggests the wildly unequal battle for the hearts and minds of literate laity in the first decades of the Reformation (compare table 2 with tables 6 and 8). Over the period 1518 to 1544, Luther's publications (that is, printings and reprintings of his works in German, excluding Bible translations) numbered at least 2551. For the same period the Catholic publicists produced 514 printings (or 542 if all undated printings are to be counted within this time span). In stark terms this translates into about five printings of Luther for every Catholic printing. If consideration is restricted to works by Luther that contained clear anti-Catholic material (that is, if nonpolemical works and polemical works directed exclusively against other Evangelicals are excluded), the ratio drops to about five to three (875 for Luther to 514 for the Catholics), a much lower but still striking difference in output. And of course Luther was seconded by a number of other prolific Evangelical authors. Chapter 3 offers some reasons for the disparity between the publishing effort of Catholics and Evangelicals.

The geographic distribution of Catholic printings presents some additional striking patterns on the matter of influence. Since the shipment of books and treatises was costly and could add substantially to the price of a work, treatises often spread geographically by reprinting. It was normally cheaper, especially for vernacular treatises, to reprint a work in a distant town than to send a large shipment from the place of original publication. This is not a hard and fast rule, and so conclusions based on this assumption must be tentative. Nevertheless, place of publication is not an unreasonable measure of range of influence of a publication.

If the data are broken down geographically and then chronologically, we find the following development (see tables 7 and 8). During the initial years of the Reformation movement (1518–1524), Catholic controversial literature was published in a wide variety of centers, including cities such as Strasbourg and Augsburg, which were later to become Evangelical. Half of these works were in Latin. As the Reformation advanced and Evangelical cities prohibited the publication of

Catholic polemical works, two printing centers came to dominate the production of Catholic controversial literature: the western, Rhenish city of Cologne (assisted slightly by its southern neighbor, Mainz) and the two eastern printing centers of Ducal Saxony: Leipzig and Dresden. From 1525 to 1539, when Ducal Saxony turned Evangelical, these two centers accounted for about half of all Catholic controversial literature in general and half of Catholic controversial literature in German. Cologne and Mainz, two ecclesiastical centers, continued to produce works largely for a learned audience; less than a sixth of the controversial works they produced were in German. By contrast, Leipzig and Dresden in the lay principality of Ducal Saxony issued more than three German treatises for every two in Latin. Nevertheless, overall production of controversial literature in German steadily declined throughout the period.

In 1539 the Catholic Duke Georg of Albertine Saxony died; his principality turned Evangelical and Catholicism lost its eastern printing center. Shut off from the presses of Leipzig and Dresden, Catholic publicists turned to Cologne, Mainz, and Igolstadt. Mainz, a minor center up to this point, began producing works in fairly large numbers with about a quarter of the production in German. Ingolstadt, too, began producing in greater numbers with about a fifth of the production in German. But overall, German production still continued to decline. It was not until mid-century that this trend reversed and Catholic controversial writers increased their production of vernacular works.

It is striking that it was a lay principality, Ducal Saxony, and not an ecclesiastical center such as Cologne, that contributed most to the effort to reach a broad, lay audience. In the decade of the 1530s, while Cologne's presses were producing almost exclusively for a learned elite (85 percent of their production was in Latin), over 50 percent of the total output of controversial literature in the vernacular for all of Germany flowed from the presses of Leipzig and Dresden! This is no statistical fluke. For the whole period, 1518 to 1555, Leipzig and Dresden accounted for over a quarter of the vernacular printings, despite the fact that not a single Catholic work in the vernacular was published the fact that not a single Catholic work in the vernacular was published after 1539. At least two factors were at work here. On the one hand, there was the influence both of the patronage of Ducal Saxony's staunch Catholic ruler, Duke Georg, and of the individual efforts of several publicists, especially Johann Cochlaeus. On the other, there was the indifference or even hostility in Catholic eccelesiastical circles towards addressing the laity on religious issues.

Duke Georg of Saxony appears to have understood and exploited the press in the Catholic cause more than any other Catholic ruler, including the various ecclesiastical princes. An author of several controversial treatises himself, he also supported the efforts of other publicists.^[23] Two of his chaplains, Hieronymous Emser (1478–1527) and Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–1552), made major contributions to the controversial effort, and it seems likely that it was Cochlaeus's published defense of Catholicism that especially recommended him to Duke Georg (and to Emser himself) as Emser's replacement in the post. Cochlaeus in turn, although not without considerable personal sacrifice and numerous pleas for financial assistance to often indifferent Catholic rulers, subsidized the printing of various other Catholic publicists including the Benedictine abbot of Altzelle, Paulus Bachmann (1465–1538), Georg Witzel (1501–1573), who converted to Protestantism for a time and then returned to Catholicism, and the Dominican Johannes Mensing (1480–1541/47).^[24]

Not only did one lay principality dominate the Catholic controversial effort in the vernacular, a handful of authors, most of them patronized by Duke Georg, accounted for nearly half of the printings from 1518 to 1555. Witzel, Cochlaeus, Emser, the Ingolstadt theologian Johannes Eck (1486–1543), the Dominican Petrus Sylvius (ca. 1470–1536), and the Franciscan theologian, jurist, and satirist Thomas Murner (1475–1537) produced nearly half of the vernacular printings for this period (see table 9). In all this Witzel and Cochlaeus, both supported by Duke Georg, were the most significant actors. Witzel's out-

put accounted for one out of every eight printings from 1518 to 1555. Cochlaeus was second with one printing of every ten. For the period 1518 to 1539, when Duke Georg died and Albertine Saxony turned Evangelical, Cochlaeus was the leading publicist with one out of eight printings. For this same period he accounted for over 20 percent of the literature issuing from Leipzig and Dresden. As already mentioned, Cochlaeus also subsidized the printing of a number of other authors' works.

Were it not for the efforts of Duke Georg of Albertine Saxony and his stable of publicists, the Evangelical media campaign would have been almost unopposed in the vernacular. As it was, the Evangelicals still dominated the presses for several decades. This dominance helps explain the rapid and successful spread of the Reformation.