ABSTRACT
Christian Peters’s redating of Eberlin’s ‘Against the Profaners of God’s Creatures’ raises a host of new questions about the nature of this work and its place in Eberlin’s corpus. Riggenbach’s identification of this pamphlet as a radical Karlstadtian polemic, written before Eberlin came under the moderating influences of Luther and Melanchthon, obscured the more problematic questions raised by it.1 As Martin Brecht has claimed, despite the radicalism of its rhetoric, ‘Against the Profaners’ never really oversteps the boundaries of the Wittenberg theology of the time.2 Yet, the radicalism of Eberlin’s language and the general denunciation of the clergy contained in it contrast sharply with the tone and purposes of Eberlin’s previous writings in Wittenberg. This discrepancy was noted by Christian Peters who suggested, as a result, that this work belonged with the pamphlets directed against the Franciscan order in the summer of 1523.3 Despite certain specific criticisms of the Franciscans contained in this work, I prefer to regard it as a distinct salvo preceding the more general broadside against the order. Nonetheless, it does belong with the more radically anticlerical charges of the spring and summer of 1523 and, as such, provides interesting insights into the development not only of Eberlin’s anticleric al polemics, but of those of the Wittenberg Reformers more generally.
