Lyndal Roper

The holy household : women and morals, in Reformation Augsburg

The domestication of the Reformation the politics of sin prostitution and moral order weddings and the control of marriage discipline and marital disharmony the reformation of convents the Holy Family.

WITCHCRAFT AND THE WESTERN IMAGINATION

This essay proposes a new view of demonology, arguing that it was not just a set of theological and legal writings but could also form part of a literature of entertainment. Demonologists frequently used literary techniques such as the dialogue form, hyperbolic set-piece descriptions of the dance or the Sabbath, told stories to pique the readers interest, and employed humour, salaciousness and horror. Their work intersected with that of artists, influenced by classical images of witches, who began to produce elaborate panoramas of the Sabbath. The cultural legacy of demonology was immense. Through the Faustbuch of 1587, which borrowed from demonological treatises, demonology influenced drama and even figured in the development of the early novel.

Karlstadt's Wagen: The First Visual Propaganda for the Reformation

Wittenberg reformer Andreas Karlstadt is notorious as one of the Reformation’s most hard-line iconoclasts, yet in collaboration with artist Lucas Cranach he created the first piece of evangelical visual propaganda. Karlstadt was the mastermind behind the “Wagen” broadsheet of 1519, which did not depict or refer to Martin Luther. Cranach’s woodcut of wagons, horses and men travelling to Heaven and to Hell was executed with vigour and skill. But the obscure iconography devised by Karlstadt failed to communicate key ideas, and his theologically complex, awkwardly worded texts chaotically swamped the imagery. The broadsheets set off heated debate in print. Above all, inflamed Karlstadt’s conflict with Johannes Eck, who would become the enemy of both Karlstadt and Luther; a conflict also played out in the famous Leipzig debate of 1519. This essay reveals for the first time the scope and depth of the broadsheet’s aims, failures, and significance for Reformation visual culture.