Catholics on Luther's
Responsibility for the
German Peasants' War
"There were many peasants slain in the uprising, many fanatics banished, many false prophets hanged, burned, drowned, or beheaded who perhaps would still all live as good obedient Christians had Luther not written." Such was the conclusion of the Catholic controversialist Johann Cochlaeus. "There are (unfortunately) still many Anabaptists, assailants of the Sacrament, and other mob-spirits awakened by Luther to rebellion and error," he continued. "I'd lay you odds, however, that among all the peasants, fanatics, and mobspirits not one could be found who has written more obscenely, more disdainfully, and more rebelliously than Luther has."1 It is a charge that was repeated with variations by almost every Catholic controversialist who touched on the uprising. Luther's writings and teachings, they all insisted, were in large part responsible for the Peasants' War.
Is this defamation or propagandistic exaggeration? Certainly from Luther's perspective, and probably from the perspective of the modern historian who is aware of Luther's many statements before 1525 condemning rebellion, it is.2 But is it defamation in the specific sense, a deliberate and malicious attempt to ruin Luther's good name by attributing to him responsibility that his critics knew was not properly his? I think not. What needs to be understood is how a nonpolemical mindset disposed Catholic apologists to read Luther's writings as they did. To illustrate this process of reception, let us examine why Catholic authors in Leipzig and Dresden, the two leading centers for Catholic