"Matters of Faith Should Not Be Disputed before the Ignorant Common Folk"

Murner generally replied point-by-point to Luther's arguments. For our purposes, however, the details of his refutation are less important than the general message he attempted to convey. That message can be briefly summarized and broken into several components. Luther was a religious demagogue whose writings challenged traditional authority and threatened to overturn the established order. First, although Luther was a highly learned and skilled theologian, his theology offered a mixture of truth and falsehood that could easily mislead "simple Christians" not only into religious error but also into rebellion against authority. Second, despite his claims to the contrary, Luther would not submit his theology to any authority, be it the papacy, ecumenical councils, the Greek or Latin Fathers, scholastic theologians, or ecclesiastical law. This unwillingness promoted a disregard for authority among the common people. Third, Luther attacked a number of widely recognized and deplorable abuses within the institutional church, but the existence of these abuses did not justify his changing the traditional faith. His attack on abuses did, however, gain Luther a popular following that could easily be incited to violence and rebellion against proper authority. Fourth, Luther was attempting to subvert the traditional order of society and promote rebellion when he challenged the authority of the papacy and when he asserted that the distinction between the spiritual and temporal (worldly) estate was a deceit intended to enrich the clergy at the laity's expense and that, in fact, all baptized Christians were priests.

With each of these four points Murner emphasized the effect of Luther's teachings on the common people. It was highly inappropriate and dangerous, Murner insisted in each of these treatises, that Luther was involving what Murner termed the "rebellious and ignorant commoners [gemein ],"^[16] the "unlearned and rebellious commoners

[gemein ],"^[17] or "Karsthans"—the eponymous hoe-carrying peasant^[18] —in a debate over religious issues. Commoners could not separate the "sound and Christian" from that which was "false and mixed with poison [and] also pungent with acidic comments [auch vff den essich stechend ]."^[19] The "pious simple Christian" did not understand how subtly falsehood [unwahrheit ] is mixed with truth and the devilish angel transforms itself into the angel of light."^[20] Even worse, a public debate encouraged the commoners to take matters into their own hands, thereby subverting proper authority and promoting rebellion. Even legitimate reforms, as some of those Luther listed in his book "to the German nobility," Murner insisted, should not be paraded before the ignorant common folk, who might, like the Bohemians before them, attempt to undertake the reforms themselves and end up murdering priests and monks, whom Luther had sharply criticized.^[21]

So concerned was Murner about the subversive potential of airing such disputes in vernacular publications that he devoted a whole section of Concerning Doctor Martin Luther's Teaching and Preaching to the proposition that "matters of faith should not be disputed before the ignorant common folk."^[22] In this section he marshaled the objections also found scattered through his other treatises. He started with a blanket assertion. Whether Luther's teachings were true, as Spengler in his Defense asserted, or false, as Murner was convinced, they should not in principle be discussed before the common people because they dealt with matters of faith. To defend this principle, he offered the analogy that city councils should not discuss their business publicly even though they dealt with issues touching on the welfare of all.^[23] Imperial law forbade open discussions of faith because, among other things, "such public justification of the faith causes great scandal among Jews and other unbelievers" and also caused "great scandal and disobedience among ignorant Christians." "As we unfortunately now can clearly see," Murner continued, "not many Christians have been moved to reverence by doctor Martin's teaching but only to rebellion [and] to stealing two of the pope's crowns," that is, to a denial of papal authority in both spiritual and temporal realms. The "ignorant Christians" had been moved "not to obedience but rather to despise the ban along with the bishops, to electing bishops themselves 'behind the oven and over wine' [that is, informally and frivolously], [and] to priests marrying their maids in a thievish fashion." To put the matter briefly, people had now turned away from the good, paid no attention to bishops or anyone else, and simply announced, "I no lon-

ger obey anyone, I am a good Lutheran." That was the end result of Luther's teachings. That was its fruit. And for this reason everyone should be kept from teaching such things publicly. "I am concerned that Luther's teaching will soon prove with deeds whether it is of God or of the devil," Murner wrote, "for the teaching of God serves peace and unity and [the teaching] of the devil [promotes] contempt of authority with rebellion."^[24]

Murner had put the Catholic case clearly. Matters of faith should be left to proper authority to decide. To bring the common people into the debate, even on legitimate reforms, was to subvert proper authority and to promote rebellion. Murner was especially upset that Luther had decided to air these issues in the vernacular. "Previously you have published Latin books that have brought you much fame," Murner wrote at one point, "But now you have begun to answer every cuckoo in its own terms, to repay each insult with an insult, to speak slanderously and unworthily of the pope and the highest authorities of faith in Europe, to your own disgrace, so that I pity you greatly that you have so completely forgotten your moderation.^[25]

This concern for the deleterious consequences of vernacular pamphlets in which religious issues were debated runs like a red thread through Murner's treatises. It is a concern voiced repeatedly by other Catholic publicists in subsequent years,^[26] a concern that made the Catholic counterattack in the press so conflicted. We may wonder what the "common people" thought of this argument when they read or heard it in the vernacular. Even if they agreed with Murner or the other early Catholic controversialists in principle, in the very reading or hearing they were violating this principle. The medium subverted the message.