ABSTRACT
If its founder was so foolish to think that this Rule is the Gospel and was thereby deceived and deceived others, then he is indeed a great and harmful fool, . . . If, however, he knew that this rule is not the Gospel and, nonetheless, introduced this deceit into the world, then he is an arch-rogue, . . }
Although the sharpest in his criticism, Eberlin was not the only former Franciscan to turn his pen on the order in the first half of 1523. On 27 February, Johannes Schwan completed ‘An Epistle, in Which He Shows from the Bible and Scripture Why He Left the Franciscan Order in Whose Cloister at Basel He Formerly Was.’2 Also in February, Francis Lambert of Avignon wrote ‘The Reasons why He Rejects the Status of and Association with the Minors,’ and in .March, he began writing ‘An Evangelical Description of the Franciscan Rule.’3 During the same month a response by Johannes Briesmann to Caspar Schatzgeyer, the south German provincial of the Franciscan Observants who had written against Luther’s ‘Judgement on Monastic Vows,’ was printed in Wittenberg.4 Thereafter, the polemics became more virulent and more
1 Eberlin, ‘Wider die falschen Geistlichen, genannt die Barfusser und Franziskaner,’ Enders, vol. 3, p. 65.
