Refuting Luther by Scripture Alone: Sebastian Felbaum and Catholic Propaganda in Early Reformation Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT Studies of the Catholic side of the German pamphlet war (c. 1520–1525) tend to focus on the most prolific opponents of Luther, such as Johann Eck and Johannes Cochlaeus. It can however be argued that this approach skews our picture of the Catholic effort, because most conservative pamphlet warriors wrote only one item apiece. This investigation of a singleton from 1524, by the otherwise unknown author Sebastian Felbaum, attempts to evaluate its literary and theological characteristics and to contextualise it within the Catholic controversial output of the years 1522–24. What emerges is an insight into the aims and methods of one of the controversy’s ‘also-rans’, and arguably a more representative picture of the overall campaign. In the process, new light is shed on the identity of a hitherto obscure pamphleteer.