ABSTRACT
Variations on a theme In certain crucial ways the anti-Franciscan campaign of 1523 was a controlled outburst. Luther had called it forth against a specific group within the first estate, and all of the pamphleteers involved had close personal connections with Wittenberg, with the possible exceptions of Heinrich Spelt and Heinrich von Kettenbach. The mendicants were an obvious threat to the spread of the Reformation and their traditional ties to the papacy and autonomy from episcopal jurisdiction immediately excluded them from the ranks of the reformed clerical order. Schatzgeyer’s response to Luther, then, set the stage for the employment of anticlerical sentiment for a limited tactical objective.
