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Order Number 9125663
“Eyn Wunderliche Weyssagung von dem Babstumb”: Medieval
prophecy into Reformation polemic
Heffner, David Todd, Ph.D.
University oi Pennsylvania, 1991
300 N. Zeeb Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Eyn wunderliche Weyssagung von dem Babstumb:
Medieval Prophecy into Reformation Polemic
David Heffner
A Dissertation
in
The History of Art
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
1991
O w l \ W iw O V
Supervisor of Dissertation
Graduate Grdup Chairperson
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To my parents and son.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Various funding agencies, institutions, and individuals have aided my research.
A grant from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst allowed me to live in
Nuremberg for a yeai where I enjoyed a cordial and productive period at the
Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Dr. Kurt Locher at the GNM and Dr. Bemd
Hamm at the Universitai Nurnberg-E'7 : :.gen were especially helpful. The Soldner
and Meister families with whom I stayed briefly gave me a great deal of help in my
first month in Nuremberg. Two Mellon grants from the University of Pennsylvania
enabled me to continue research and write tb Excitation in Philadelphia. To all
of the faculty in the Department of the History of Art I extend my thanks, but
especially to my advisor and friend, Dr. Charles Minott, who has always trusted my
projects and improved iny writing witU his ed -;:g. Dr. Ann Matter, Chairperson
of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, has been of great help over
the years as a reader of. the dissertation and someone with whom I discuss ideas
regularly. Dr. Robert Sc.bncr, at Cambridge University, has listened to my ideas
and encouraged me, as has Dr. Maijorie Reeve.., at Oxford University. Both of
these scholars have imde me feel very much at home in the often alien territories
of Reformation studies anu research on .Toach of Fiore. Susan Tegtmeyer and
Peter Gerhardt helped nv with difficult passage: in Latin and German.
Various libraries hav; been utilized over the years; my special thanks go to
the courteous staffs of the British TC; y I, London, the rarebook rooms of
Princeton Univei sity ;nd die New York Public Library, and the library of the
Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Alan Morrison, of the Fine
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Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania, often circumvented library red tape
for me.
Some material from chapter three has appeared in print before the completion
of this dissertation in the Sixteenth Century Journal. Material from chapters two
and four will appear in a forthcoming volume, Atti del III Congresso intemazionale
di studi gioachimiti. I have presented papers on material from the dissertation to
Dr. Ann Roberts’s Northern Renaissance seminar at the University of Iowa in
spring 1990, the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in St. Louis in October
1990, and the III Congresso intemazionale di studi gioachimiti, S. Giovanni in
Fiore, Italy, September 1989.
Above all, I want to thank family and friends who have encouraged me along
the way. Among many, I want to single out Ken Grant, Tom and Phil Lasansky,
Jim Snitzer, David Steinberg, and Robert Wojtowicz. A1 Acres has been my friend,
critic and confidant. To him and to Liz Butler I owe special thanks. Besides
sharing a great deal with me she also re-typed this dissertation, transferring it from
my woefully-inadequate computer onto a real one.
To my parents, Ray and Ruth Heffner, I owe special thanks. They have
helped me most of all as advisors, editors, and friends.
iv
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ABSTRACT
Eyn wunderliche Weyssagung von dem Babstumb:
Medieval Prophecy into Reformation Polemic
David Heffner
Dr. Charles Minott
This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study, tracing the reception of a single,
primarily visual, late-medieval prophecy concerning the papacy—the pseudo-
Joachimite Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus, or Pope Prophecies. After preliminary
chapters in which the early manuscript history of the prophecy, the iconography and
sources of images, and a theory of visual prophecy are presented, this study focuses
on the 1527 refashioning of the Pope Prophecies as Protestant propaganda by
Andreas Osiander, Hans Sachs, and Erhard Schon entitled Eyn Wunderliche
Weyssagung von dem Babstumb and the numerous later editions that are responses
to and adaptations of this polemical work. Osiander’s edition and its afterlife are
studied from a variety of perspectives and with a number of methodological tools,
including iconography, local history, the social history of the Reformation, folklore,
and reception history in order to shed more light on how prophecy was understood
and refashioned as propaganda in the sixteenth century. Broader issues discussed
as well include the rhetoric of prophecy prefaces and the use of images in
Reformation and Counter-Reformation polemic. Included as an appendix is an
English translation of Osiander’s and Sachs’s text.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF PLATES.....................................................................................vii.
CHAPTER 1: Early History of the Pope Prophecies.................. 1.
CHAPTER 2: Early Sixteenth-Century Printed Editions in Italy . . 49.
CHAPTER 3: Eyn wunderliche Weyssagung von dem Babstumb . . 61.
CHAPTER 4: The After-Life of the Pope Prophecies.................120.
CONCLUSION: ........................................................................................148.
APPENDIX: ........................................................................................151.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:.....................................................................................169.
PLATES: ........................................................................................181.
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