Page 131 - Vinkler, Jonatan. 2020. Izpod krivoverskega peresa: slovenska književnost 16. stoletja in njen evropski kontekst. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem
P. 131
Summary
Between the Hammer of History
and the Anvil of Historiography: Martin Luther
In the (non)German-speaking region of Central Europe (the Holy Roman
Empire of German nationality and, after its collapse, the countries which
had historical dealings with the reception of the Lutheran Reformation) the
imaginary and the idearium of Martin Luther underwent a considerable
change from the 16th century onwards. The textual and pictorial expres-
sions of Luther’s image were predominantly influenced by the dominant
social (religious, intellectual, cultural) “explanatory” models.
In the 16th century the religious conceptual framework was the big-
gest and most complete interpretative model known to European culture
at that time. For religion explained everything to everyman – from here to
the next world, from yesterday to eternity, and even what everyman could
possibly think of “asleep or awake”. Thus Luther in his own time and right
to the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648) was read in a decidedly one-di-
mensionaland binary way: as a schismatic theologian (the Catholic view)
or as “the apostle of the true old Christian faith” (the Protestant view).
Historiography between 1517 and 1738 thus cast him in the images of “bes-
tiae Triumphans” or “God’s herald”. We find such imaginary and ideari-
um in Lutheran biography which on the Protestant side develops from the
obituary sermon of Johannes Bugenhagen Pomoranus at Luther’s grave-
side, as also in the first editions of Luther’s collected works and even in edi-
131
Between the Hammer of History
and the Anvil of Historiography: Martin Luther
In the (non)German-speaking region of Central Europe (the Holy Roman
Empire of German nationality and, after its collapse, the countries which
had historical dealings with the reception of the Lutheran Reformation) the
imaginary and the idearium of Martin Luther underwent a considerable
change from the 16th century onwards. The textual and pictorial expres-
sions of Luther’s image were predominantly influenced by the dominant
social (religious, intellectual, cultural) “explanatory” models.
In the 16th century the religious conceptual framework was the big-
gest and most complete interpretative model known to European culture
at that time. For religion explained everything to everyman – from here to
the next world, from yesterday to eternity, and even what everyman could
possibly think of “asleep or awake”. Thus Luther in his own time and right
to the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648) was read in a decidedly one-di-
mensionaland binary way: as a schismatic theologian (the Catholic view)
or as “the apostle of the true old Christian faith” (the Protestant view).
Historiography between 1517 and 1738 thus cast him in the images of “bes-
tiae Triumphans” or “God’s herald”. We find such imaginary and ideari-
um in Lutheran biography which on the Protestant side develops from the
obituary sermon of Johannes Bugenhagen Pomoranus at Luther’s grave-
side, as also in the first editions of Luther’s collected works and even in edi-
131
