Blood, Violence, Calvinism and The Devil: Lutheran Prodigy Culture by 1600 and Andreas Engel'S Wonder Book

BLOOD, VIOLENCE, CALVINISM AND
THE DEVIL: LUTHERAN PRODIGY

CULTURE BY 1600 AND ANDREAS
ENGELS WONDER BOOK
I
Feeling anxious about prodigious signs was a fundamental early modern
Lutheran experience. Lutherans read the Book of Nature alongside the Bible
in new and compelling ways intended to make sense of the centurys tur-
moil, and broadsheets, pamphlets and compendium-style wonder books
that described prodigious phenomena rolled off the press. The pan-
European phenomenon of the wonder book was particularly vigorous in
northern Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century, and Lutheran
authors were amongst its most enthusiastic proponents. These publications
recorded prodigious events and phenomena, identified the polemical and
often apocalyptic meaning of the natural world in disarray, and attacked
religious enemies.
Prodigy culture was not a minor or peripheral phenomenon. Paying close
attention to the disordered and frightening aberrations of the natural world as
manifestations of Gods plans for humanity was central to Protestant identity,
as Alexandra Walshams groundbreaking Providence in Early Modern England
demonstrated.1 Lutheranism was, from the early 1520s onwards, marked by a
special attention to apocalyptic signs. Both Martin Luther and his closest
colleague Philipp Melanchthon were at times fascinated by prodigies.
These ranged from meteorological phenomena to the notorious Monk Calf
and Papal Ass, two monstrous births that they wrote about collaboratively.2
While Luther would eventually grow impatient with close readings of the
mysteries of the natural world, Philipp Melanchthon and his circle main-
tained the importance of this intellectual trend in university life in
Wittenberg. Prodigy culture was, still more notably, a significant theme in
vernacular Lutheran popular print.3 From the mid sixteenth century,
1
Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999).
2
Jennifer Spinks, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany
(London, 2009), ch. 3.
3
First established by Aby Warburg in his 1920 essay Pagan-Antique Prophecy in Words
and Images in the Age of Luther, in Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity:
Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, trans. D. Britt
Past and Present (2017), Supplement 12 The Past and Present Society
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967
by guest
on 15 December 2017
BLOOD, VIOLENCE, CALVINISM AND THE DEVIL 213
Lutheran authors including Caspar Goltwurm, Job Fincel and Christoph

Irenaeus set individual prodigies into larger apocalyptic patterns in their
wonder books.4
Lutheranism was characterized by an increasingly apocalyptic mindset in
the sixteenth century, as Robin Bruce Barnes and others have established.5
Wonder books were central to this. Yet despite the richness of this source
material and a growing body of scholarship, the image we have of prodigy
culture remains surprisingly static. That is, in studies of the genre, the same
types of prodigy stories often appear to have been recycled across the century.
This study aims to nuance this static view and show how the content of
Lutheran prodigy culture could and did change, and did so in an important
way that pointed to new religious tensions at the very close of the turbulent
century of reformation.
Until fairly recently, the late sixteenth century as a period of Lutheran
experience has been dominated by scholarship on confessionalization and
the ways that religious confessions were entwined with state formation and
top-down social control.6 Scholars are, however, increasingly arguing for the
(Los Angeles, 1999). For an overview of scholarship on prodigy culture and Lutheran
popular print see Spinks, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture. Lutheran print culture has
been vigorously examined in the wake of Robert Scribners For the Sake of Simple Folk:
Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1994).
4
These often appeared in multiple editions. On Lutheran wonder books see Rudolf
Schenda, Die deutschen Prodigiensammlungen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Archiv
fur Geschichte des Buchwesens, iv (1963); Spinks, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture,
ch. 3; and above all Philip M. Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination: The
Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany (Oxford, 2012). This compelling over-
view of a number of important wonder books argued for an increasingly pessimistic
theological strain in Lutheran prodigy culture, but left aside Engel.
5
Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran
Reformation (Stanford, 1988); Volker Leppin, Antichrist und Jungster Tag: Das Profil
apokalyptischer Flugschriftenpublizistik im deutschen Luthertum 15481618 (Gutersloh,
1999); Ingvild Richardsen-Friedrich, Antichrist-Polemik in der Zeit der Reformation und
der Glaubenskampfe bis Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts. Argumentation, Form und Funktion
(Frankfurt am Main, 2003); Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination.
6
Philip M. Soergel, Protestantism in the Age of Catholic Renewal, in Ulinka Rublack
(ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations (Oxford, 2016), 269, and see
esp. these core studies: Heinz Schilling, Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung. Eine
Fallstudie uber das Verhaltnis von religiosem und sozialem Wandel in der Fruhneuzeit
am Beispiel der Grafschaft Lippe (Gutersloh, 1981), and Wolfgang Reinhard,
Konfession und Konfessionalisierung in Europa, in Wolfgang Reinhard (ed.), Die
Confessio Augustana im historischen Zusammenhang (Munich, 1981).

by guest
on 15 December 2017
214 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12
need to establish nuanced, individualized readings of later Lutheran gener-

ations and to pay closer attention to the different cultures of Lutheranism,
viewed from a variety of social levels.7 The burgeoning field of the history of
emotions has likewise prompted new questions along these lines.8 As Thomas
Kaufmann and others have demonstrated, the period leading up to 1600 were
years of anxiety for Lutherans, and 1600 in particular was a year freighted with
anxious expectation that was shaped by fears of religious others.9 Catholicism
remained a vivid source of anxiety, but was in some respects overtaken by the
rising Turkish threat and above all the new Protestant challenge of Calvinism.
How might Lutheran prodigy culture help us to understand some of the
new challenges and experiences faced by Lutherans as the sixteenth century
drew to a close? One of the most important but also most overlooked
Lutheran wonder books was the Lutheran pastor and historian Andreas
Engels WiderNatur und Wunderbuch of 1597.10 His book of wonders and
their unnatural properties against nature drew upon decades of Lutheran
wonder books that had polemically identified and interpreted bizarre natural
phenomena. Engel (156198) was the last of the Lutheran prodigy authors to
write in the century of reformation. His work was, however, far from a de-
rivative copy of works by earlier authors.11 Engel described a gamut of bizarre
7
See Bridget Heal, Introduction, in Bridget Heal, A Magnificent Faith: Art and Identity in
Lutheran Germany (Oxford, 2017); and Soergel, Protestantism in the Age of Catholic
Renewal. I am grateful to Bridget Heal for advance copies of several chapters of her book.
See also the Introduction by Kat Hill to this volume.
8
For an overview of recent work in the history of emotions with an early modern focus, see
Susan Broomhall (ed.), Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction (London, 2016).
9
See Kaufmann on the significance of 1600 as a year as well as the contested state of
Lutheranism: Thomas Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur: Lutherischer Protestantismus
in der zweiten Halfte des Reformationsjahrhunderts (Tubingen, 2006), 41364. On the
significance of the year 1600 in prophetic writing taken up by Lutherans see Barnes,
Prophecy and Gnosis, esp. 1345.
10
Andreas Engel [Angelus], WiderNatur und Wunderbuch (Franckfurt am Mayn, 1597).
The WiderNatur und Wunderbuch is not included in the two most important studies of
wonder books: Jean Ceard, La Nature et les Prodiges: LInsolite au XVI e siecle, en France,
2nd edn (Geneva, 1996), which discusses a number of other German language examples;
and Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination. It is briefly discussed in Rudolf
Schenda, Die deutschen Prodigiensammlungen, 6645 and 7078. It is better known for
narrower aspects of the book concerning possession and apocalyptic thought through H.
C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Stanford, 1999),
502 and 55; and Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: the Idea of Witchcraft in Early
Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), 3724.
11
On these authors see Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination, chs. 3, 4 and 5.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
and sometimes frightening phenomena in an apocalyptic framework: from

blazing comets, terrible storms, monstrous human and animal births to dev-
astating insect plagues and waves of illness. These were topics that had domi-
nated prodigy reports in the earlier decades of the sixteenth century, and they
maintained their presence in his wonder book. But Engel also transformed
the understanding and value of prodigies. He gave dramatic new emphasis to
the capacity of the Devil to physically act in the world, and to the phenom-
enon of demonic possession. He therefore connected prodigy culture to an
increasing sense of the presence of the Devil in Lutheran culture. And above
all, he mapped out entirely new ways to talk about the prodigious meanings of
violence and blood in a Lutheran context.
Engels book was in no sense intended to be a work of systematic theology.
He aimed to seize his readers attention with the compelling and entertaining
nature of his material but above all with its religious urgency. His two most
significant themes the power of the Devil, and the prodigious nature of
blood were, as this study will argue, uniquely grounded in local histories of
diabolical possession, blood cults and prophetic writing. His concerns were
closely related to new anxieties for Lutherans about religious identities and
rituals in a changing world, and the fear of religious enemies.
Engels wonder book provided a dramatic new perspective on Lutheran prod-
igy culture. It demands that we look again at Lutheran apocalyptic thought and
its connection to specific local pressures. For Engel was also the first author to
address Brandenburg prodigies so directly and thoroughly. Despite the shared,
pan-European dimensions of sixteenth-century prodigy culture, in which stories
were often recycled across publications and across borders, his examples were
resolutely regional in nature. They took place in locations in Brandenburg,
sometimes in neighbouring Mecklenburg, and still more rarely in nearby
Saxony. His favoured locations included Frankfurt an der Oder, where he first
attended university, and his home town of Strausberg, near Berlin. He had left
Brandenburg for several years in the 1570s following the death of most of his
family members from plague, but he returned in the 1580s and would eventually
become pastor in Strausberg where he would also die of plague in 1598.12
Brandenburg was a politically complex Lutheran territory that would go on
to experience a failed Calvinist experiment in the early seventeenth century,
although Engel would not live to see it.13 Engels book should certainly be
12
Hermann Pieper, Der markische Chronist Andreas Engel (Angelus) aus Strausberg (Berlin,
1902).
13
Bodo Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg
(Philadelphia, 1994), esp. 11 on the more divided political structure of the different
regions of Brandenburg in the middle of the sixteenth century.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
read as part of a wider field of prodigy culture that increasingly emerged in a

fractured, pan-European Protestant Europe in which Lutheran culture
struggled to retain its identity. The most substantial Calvinist wonder book
of the early modern period appeared only a few years after Engels
WiderNatur und Wunderbuch. Simon Goularts Histoires admirables et mem-
orables de nostre temps of 1600 would in its turn give a distinctively French
Calvinist form to its polemical reading of the disordered natural world.14 Like
Engel, Goulart addressed new themes of violence and demonic possession,
and in fact drew upon German material. Although there is no evidence that he
was directly familiar with Engels then just-published work, the two shared
common sources. Goularts openness to German Lutheran material reflected
the international character and accommodating strategies of Calvinism at the
close of the century. But Engels approach was quite different, and shows us
how Lutheran culture could look inwards and to local history during a period
of change and anxiety. Part of this inward turn involved identifying external
threats. Engels anxieties about religious others including Jews, Catholics,
Turks and the newer threat in German lands of Calvinists were funda-
mental to his larger fear about religious division and upheaval, and are central
to this study.
Engels personal networks did not stretch beyond German lands. He cer-
tainly would not have welcomed a connection with a Calvinist author such as
Goulart. He was, however, a significant figure in a regional network of
Lutheran theologians and humanists grappling in print with the ongoing
experience of religious reform. He influenced works such as Johann Wolffs
massive two-volume Latin Lectionum Memorabilium of 1600, which looked
at the long history of Christianity from a polemical viewpoint and incorpo-
rated prodigious events.15 Prodigies would ultimately lose ground as polem-
ical tools in the seventeenth century, but they were still an important aspect of
Lutheran culture during the stressed, divided years leading up to 1600.
Indeed, a vigorous sense of the possibilities of prodigy culture underpinned
Engels WiederNatur und Wunderbuch. His attentiveness to local phenomena
did not narrow his view of what prodigies might mean and why they were
important. Rather, his focus on local prodigies and their urgent meaning for
local communities seems to have set him free to reinvigorate Lutheran
14
Simon Goulart, Histoires admirables et memorables de nostre temps, recueillies de plusieurs
autheurs (Paris, 160010). Goulart is best known as the author of the 1567 Memoires
which recounted key early events of the French Wars of Religion from a Calvinist
perspective.
15
On Wolffs debt to Engel see Schenda, Die deutschen Prodigiensammlungen, 665.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
prodigy culture with one of the most sustained original approaches seen in
any wonder book of the century.
II
Engels WiderNatur und Wunderbuch reflected the increasing role of the Devil
in Lutheran culture.16 In Thinking with Demons, Stuart Clark argued for the
full interpenetration of demonologies and prodigy collections by the
second half of the sixteenth century, and he briefly characterized Engels
book as typical.17 It is best known today as a source for a possession case
analysed by H. C. Erik Midelfort.18 Rudolf Schenda characterized Engels
WiderNatur und Wunderbuch as giving the Devil his due place in German
wonder books.19 The WiderNatur und Wunderbuch clearly accorded the Devil
a newly central role in Lutheran prodigy culture at the close of the century.
Engels stress on the significance and existence of devilish wonders reflected
the rise of the well-known Teuffelbuch literature in the latter half of the six-
teenth century. But the Devil was a much more sporadic presence in prodigy
literature during the same period. The figure of the Devil had opened French
Protestant Pierre Boaistuaus Histoires prodigieueses of 1560, and also ap-
peared in one of the key closing passages in Lutheran Caspar Goltwurms
wonder book of 1557.20 Some reports of devils appeared in Lutheran Job
Fincels sequence of wonder books from 1556 onwards.21 However, the
Devil had not often appeared in wonder books, and prodigy books rarely
reported cases of diabolical possession before the 1575 edition of the French
Histoires prodigieuses, and in German lands Engels 1598 WiderNatur
und Wunderbuch.22
16
For contemporary publications on the Devil see Wolfgang Bruckner and Rainer
Alsheimer, Das Wirken des Teufels: Theologie und Sage im 16. Jahrhunderts, in
Wolfgang Bruckner (ed.), Volkerzahlung und Reformation: Ein Handbuch zur
Tradierung und Funktion von Erzahlstoffen und Erzahlliteratur in Protestantismus
(Berlin, 1974). On the Devil in German culture in this period see esp. J. M. van der
Laan and Andrew Weeks (eds.), The Faustian Century: German Literature and Culture in
the Age of Luther and Faustus (Woodbridge, 2013).
17
Clark, Thinking with Demons, 371 (quotation) and 3724.
18
Midelfort, History of Madness, 502.
19
Schenda, Die deutschen Prodigiensammlungen, 664.
20
Pierre Boaistuau, Histoires prodigieuses (Paris, 1560), fo. 1r; Caspar Goldwurm,
Wunderwerck und Wunderzeichen Buch (Frankfurt, 1557), fos. Eee3r Eee6r.
21
Job Fincel, Wunderzeichen mit Figuren (Leipzig, 1557), for example, fo. C8r.
22
Pierre Boaistuau, Claude de Tesserant and Francois de Belleforest, Histoires prodigieuses
extraictes de plusieurs fameux auteurs, Grecs & Latins, sacrez & prophanes (Paris, 1575).

by guest
on 15 December 2017
Early in his book, Engel carefully examined and explained his views on the
contested issue of the Devils capacity to perform physical actions in the world
with Gods permission. He argued that the Devil committed terrible and real
acts to the extent permitted by God, and could also be deceptive. The Devil
running rampant was one of the signs of the Last Days, as Engel stressed. This
was not, of course, an unusual set of beliefs. Engels distinctive contribution
to the reading of prodigious signs (which he proudly asserted) was that he
distinguished very clearly and at considerable length between devilish and
divine prodigies. 23 He analysed the potential for humans to be deceived by
the Devil and thus to misread the Book of Nature when interpreting prodi-
gious events. Engel pedantically explained that the Devil could not part water,
as this act belonged to the natural course of nature and was solely the pre-
rogative of God. Yet the Devil could commit murder, thereby dramatically
breaking a commandment and forming a direct link to human sin. The Devil
could also possess and physically vex humans, and the implications of this
characteristic for cases of diabolical possession formed the core of his discus-
sion of the Devil at work in Brandenburg. In his unusually fine-grained and
lengthy distinction between God-given and devilish wonders, Engel allowed
an important space for penitence that had the potential to mitigate the se-
verity of disastrous prodigies.24 Engel was not, however, trying to cast himself
as a theologian. The bulk of the book was concerned with describing recent
historical events and actors rather than unpacking theological concepts. The
material demonstrated his deployment of history in a pastoral mode: he
warned of the wiles of the Devil, the dangers of sin, and the closeness to
home of these threats to religious stability at a personal and communal level.
A wave of possession cases in Brandenburg had clearly unsettled Engel and
his community. These included the 1574 case of a young woman named
Judith Klatten from the village of Helpe, a rural community close to
Amwald. After taking the holy sacrament Klatten stayed in bed, did not
eat for five years and was visited and assisted by little people who secretly
brought her food and took away her urine and excrement.25 Her case ap-
peared in Engels chapter on wondrous raptures (wonderlichen Entzuckung),
alongside examples of extraordinary lay prophesying. The following, longer
chapter on diabolical possession was focused directly on the Devil, and the
23
See Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, 16 for his specific comment on this issue.
24
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch. See esp. 2315 on signs of Gods mercy, and 23646
on signs of Gods anger. Compare, for example, Christoph Irenaeus whose theological
pessimism has been stressed in Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination, ch. 5.
25
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, 20610; Midelfort, History of Madness, 502.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
ways in which he tormented individuals and groups.26 The Protestant wonder

book closest in chronological terms to Engel, Simon Goularts French
Calvinist work of 1600, would utilize deliberately pan-European examples
of possession cases in order to stress the increasingly widespread nature of the
phenomenon.27 Lutheran Engels examples were, by contrast, almost always
close to home.
The urgency of dealing with nearby prodigious events such as diabolical
possession was clearly growing in a region that, as Engel reported in the
chapter, had seen a number of group possessions. In 1593 there had been a
mass possession of over one hundred people in the town of Friedeberg in the
new Mark, close to the Polish border. The townspeople had screamed and
wailed (geschrien and geklaget), and even the Burgermeister and his wife had
been afflicted.28 This was followed in 1594 by the possession of another forty
people in Spandau.29 The provost of the church of St Nicholas in Berlin, Jacob
Colerus, wrote about the case in a pamphlet of 1595. This publication was
certainly known to Engel, who was married to Colerus daughter Sabina.30
Colerus had connected the case to apparitions of angelic figures. Engel his
name notwithstanding showed little interest in angels; God and the Devil
were his touchstones.
One of the most substantial possession cases discussed by Engel had
occurred in 1536 in the Brandenburg town of Lebus, a mile outside
Frankfurt an der Oder.31 The case concerned a woman named here as
Marx Fischers daughter. While in the thrall of possession she repeatedly
found and then ate coins made by the Devil coins that Engel emphasized
were real, not false. The woman was soon moved to the university town of
Frankfurt an der Oder. Engel transcribed published letters about her case by
Luther and others. The case was centrally concerned with the period of ap-
pointment of Andreas Ebert, Frankfurt an der Oders first Lutheran preacher.
Engel described how influential Catholics in the town had wanted an
26
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, 20430 for both chapters.
27
Goulart, Histoires admirables et memorables, esp. fos. 43r61v.
28
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, 129.
29
Ibid. Forty were in fact obsessed (besessen), and a number amongst them were also
possessed (besitzet).
30
It was also used by Simon Goulart several years later, indicating its wide dissemination:
Goulart, Histoires admirables et memorables, fos. 60r61v.
31
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, 303 [i.e. 213]229. (There are many pagination
errors.) This material was adapted from the Frankfurt an der Oder-born and Stettin-
based Lutheran theologian Christoph Stummels Kurtzer Vnterricht von Wunderwercken /
so in Go[e]ttlicher Schrifft and anderen Historien beschrieben sind (Franckfurt an der Oder,
1566), which was almost entirely concerned with biblical wonders; see sigs. X3rY1v.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
exorcism, while Lutherans had advocated preaching as the best response to

possession.32 This was a pivotal time and place in terms of Brandenburgs
progression towards Lutheranism. Brandenburgs most important figure,
Elector Joachim, was moving slowly towards Lutheran accommodation in
the late 1530s.33 Engel clearly read the possession case in the light of these
changes, and stressed Luthers positive involvement via correspondence.
There might even be another echo of Lutheran history in this case: the dia-
bolical coins could have recalled for some of Engels Lutheran readers the
university of Frankfurt an der Oders early sixteenth-century theological re-
sistance to Johann Tetzels indulgences. Money in the form of coins clink-
ing in the churchs coffers in payment had famously played a central role in
this event triggering aspects of the Lutheran Reformation.34
The spectacle of a woman ingesting coins not dissimilar in shape to
communion wafers may also have seemed like a parody of the Eucharist.
Contested forms of ritual can be seen in the context of the rising threat of
Calvinism against which Engels work appeared, although these points must
remain speculative because Engel, like most wonder-book authors, rarely
spelled out how readers should contextualize the cases he discussed. H. C.
Erik Midelfort suggested that struggles over the issue of infant baptism be-
tween Lutherans and Calvinists in Saxony and Brandenburg might have
helped to foster the large number of possession cases that occurred at the
close of the sixteenth century.35 Bodo Nischan described the bitter divisions
between Lutherans and Calvinists on exorcism in baptism, as well as on the
real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and on the issue of whether or not to
break the host (the fractio panis debate, in which Lutherans opposed any
division).36 Church ritual and the Eucharist were political and social trigger
points in the region, particularly given Joachim Is conservative retention of
rituals such as exorcism in baptism, and assertion of the real presence. These
32
On Catholic and Protestant approaches to possession and exorcism, see Brian Levack,
The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven, 2013), ch. 3.
33
Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession, 1124.
34
Engel attacked Tetzel at length in his history of Brandenburg. Andreas Engel [Angelus],
Annales Marchia Brandenburgic (Franckfurt an der Oder, 1598), 28399 [i.e. 290]; see
289 on Brandenburg and Frankfurt an der Oder.
35
Midelfort, History of Madness, 61.
36
Bodo Nischan, The Exorcism Controversy and Baptism in the Late Reformation,
Sixteenth Century Journal, xviii (1984); Bodo Nischan, Ritual and Protestant Identity
in Late Reformation Germany, in Bruce Gordon (ed.), Protestant History and Identity in
Sixteenth-Century Europe, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 1996), ii, 14258; and Bodo Nischan, The
Fractio Panis: A Reformed Communion Practice in Late Reformation Germany,
Church History, liii, 1 (1984).

by guest
on 15 December 2017
were approaches that had been associated with Catholicism. But they would
go on to become typical of a conservative Lutheranism that in due course
resisted Calvinism; resistance in which the bread and the blood of the body of
Christ were central.37 Engel did not frame his discussion of diabolical pos-
session in the WiderNatur und Wunderbuch in terms of the Calvinist threat.
But he was certainly anxious about the religious dimensions of wonders and
as we will see below about blood, about Calvinism and about the
particularities of religious experience in a regional context.
III
Diabolical possession is the best known aspect of Engels contribution to
Lutheran prodigy culture. But the most prominent new phenomena in
Engels wonder book were bloody signs, from the sad and bloody shape
(trawrige vnnd Blutige Gestalt) of one prodigious sun to another full of
blood (voller Blut), and the fiery signs in the sky known as chasmatibus
whose deep reddish brown colour could signify coming illness and infertility,
or that terrifyingly appeared to flow with blood from the sky to the earth.38 In
fact, the WiderNatur und Wunderbuch was full of blood: blood that oozed
from the ground, wept from gaping holes in the flesh of monstrous births,
flowed through rivers, fell from the sky, and appeared in domestic bread as
well as in Eucharistic wonders. One entire and lengthy chapter concerned
reports of wondrous flows of blood and other bloody things.39 It began with
a case of blood libel from 1247 and also referred to a notorious Jewish trial in
Berlin in 1510. Engel also concluded his book with a section about bloody
crosses on clothing and other signs from the sky, while blood featured prom-
inently in a chapter on various types of rain.40 In a way that previous wonder
37
Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession, see esp. 37; and on conservative approaches to
religious ritual and the importance of the real presence in Lutheran Brandenburg (as well
as a continuing elite concern about Catholicism) see also Heal, A Magnificent Faith, ch. 3.
Blood is discussed further, below. Communion and baptism also harked back to earlier
conflicts in central German lands about Anabaptism, which offered a different model for
the sectarian fears of central Germany. See Kat Hill, Baptism, Brotherhood and Belief in
Reformation Germany (Oxford, 2015), esp. chs. 4 and 5.
38
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, respectively 98, 99, 137 and 142. On colour in
relation to wondrous signs in the sky see Charles Zika, Visual Signs of Imminent
Disaster in the Sixteenth-Century Zurich Archive of Johann Jacob Wick, in Gerrit
Schenk and Monica Juneja (eds.), Disaster as Image: Iconographies and Media
Strategies across Europe and Asia (Regensburg, 2014).
39
Von wunderlichen Blutflu[e]ssen vnnd anderen blutigen Sachen, Engel, WiderNatur
und Wunderbuch, 25371.
40
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, respectively 2479 and 1603.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
book authors such as Lutherans Job Fincel, Caspar Goltwurm and Christoph
Irenaeus, or Protestants Pierre Boaistuau or Konrad Lycosthenes simply had
not done, Engel made extraordinary blood fundamental to his presentation
of prodigies.
Fiery, bloody red skies increased in number as Engel reported events closer
to his own times. These passages were often entwined with or adjacent to
descriptions of violence. Anxiety about violence and its disordering power
had been a hallmark of the Lutheran Reformation from the mid 1520s, when
Luther and his followers rejected the violence attached to the Peasants War
and other radical religious upheavals.41 In the later sixteenth century
Lutheran readers consumed new broadsheets concerned with the sin of do-
mestic murder.42 The shocking murder of a child in Koenigsburg in
Brandenburgs new Mark would close Engels 1598 history of
Brandenburg.43 The story reveals how much weight he placed on the theme
of violence within families.44 This particular case evidently came to Engels
attention too late to be included in the 1597 WiderNatur und Wunderbuch.
But his wonder book did include another compelling report of family vio-
lence. A Christian woman chopped up her child to make bread that in the
storys climax bled to reveal its horrifying origins when fed to a blood
relative.45 This story about violence in a Christian family reworked the trad-
ition of the Jewish blood libel.
Bleeding bread appeared repeatedly in Engels wonder book, in Jewish and
also especially in Christian contexts.46 This material should be read against
the waves of notorious anti-Jewish slanders, pogroms and expulsions that had
taken place in German-speaking areas from the fourteenth century.
Expulsions in this region had occurred in Brandenburg in 1510, in
41
Even in 1521, in one telling source noted by Lyndal Roper, we see a letter by Luthers
supporter Johann Agricola, in which he tried to get Muntzer to moderate his tone in
sermons and wrote: YOU BREATHE OUT NOTHING BUT SLAUGHTER AND
BLOOD . Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London, 2016), 250.
42
Charles Zika, Violence, Anger and Dishonour in Sixteenth-Century Broadsheets from
the Collection of Johann Jakob Wick, in Susan Broomhall (ed.), Violence and Emotions in
Early Modern Europe (London, 2015).
43
Engel, Annales Marchia Brandenburgic, 44950.
44
This was a theme that Simon Goulart would develop to considerable effect several years
later. See Spinks, Civil War Violence, Prodigy Culture and Families in the French Wars of
Religion in Jennifer Spinks and Charles Zika (eds.), Disaster, Death and the Emotions in
the Shadow of the Apocalypse, 14001700 (Basingstoke, 2016), 1278.
45
46
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch ; examples appear on 257, 258, and 271 (which
incorporated multiple examples).

by guest
on 15 December 2017
Mecklenburg in 1492, and in nearby Saxony in 1432, decimating Jewish

populations in the region.47 While Engel briefly noted Jewish connections
to specific cases, he most commonly presented his discussions of blood in
explicitly Christian contexts. Specific anxiety about the act of communion
was just as likely to underpin these stories as broader anxiety about a feared
Jewish threat. Another story in the WiderNatur und Wunderbuch described
the magical misuse of the host by a Christian woman in 1244 seeking to
protect her beer cask. The host that she had buried in her cellar started to
bleed and blood gushed from the ground, flowing from several cellars in the
town for more than three hours.48 This story concerned the well-known
blood cult site of Zehdenick. As this report indicated, wondrous blood was
always and most profoundly connected to Christ. Late medieval central
German lands, and in particular Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, were un-
paralleled sites for blood cults.49 Miraculous appearances of Christs blood
(on its own, or as part of a bleeding host) manifested in locations including
Wilsnack, Sternberg, Zehdenick and Heiligengrabe, and had transformed the
towns into pilgrimage sites that fostered religious fervour and sometimes also
unwelcome disorder.
The status of blood relics in the region was highly contested. In 1451 Erfurt
theologian Eberhard Waltmann had characterized blood miracles as signs of
the Devil or of Gods wrath.50 Critics of the cults in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries included not just predictable antagonists such as Jan Hus but also
senior figures within the pre- and post-Reformation Catholic Church.
Luther, unsurprisingly, wrote scathingly of regional blood cults in his Open
Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation of 1520.51 Lutheran
pastor Matthaeus Ludecus collected together and published reports about
47
Arno Herzig, Die Juden in Deutschland zur Zeit Reuchlins, in Arno Herzig and Julius H.
Schoeps with Saskia Rohde (eds.), Reuchlin und die Juden (Sigmaringen, 1993), 12, 19 and
18, respectively. See also Rotraud Ries, German Territorial Princes and the Jews, in R.
Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehman (eds.), In and Out of the Ghetto: JewishGentile
Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1995).
48
Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, 2545. On this case see Caroline Walker Bynum,
Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond
(Philadelphia, 2007), 58.
49
Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 67, 2681; Charles Zika, Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages:
Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany, Past and Present, no. 118 (Feb.
1988).
50
On Waltmann see Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 282, n. 95.
51
Martin Luther, An den christlichenn Adel deutscher Nation (Wittenberg, 1520), sig. J1r.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
the shrines in 1586. His book (which formed one of Engels sources) pre-
sented blood cults as a dangerous form of worship that belonged in the past.52
But wondrous blood was still being polemically rejected in the late sixteenth
century, and not merely described in a proto-antiquarian mode. It clearly still
had the power to stir strong feelings.
When Engel turned to bloody imagery in the 1590s, he was surely utilizing
tropes that had particular power in his home territory and which went
straight to the issue of the real presence in the Eucharist. One case in par-
ticular points to the polemical power of blood in the region; a controversy
that erupted in 1568 in Clistow, close to Lebus and Frankfurt an der Oder.
Preacher Johannes Musculus (son of controversial Lutheran professor of
theology Andreas Musculus), was accused of disorderly behaviour, of spilling
wine during communion, and of then shamelessly trying to cover Christs
blood with his foot. Elector Joachim was horrified and pursued the preacher
through the synod in a case that ultimately formed part of the hardening of
conservative Lutheran identity in the region.53 Lutherans would defend the
real presence just as they defended baptismal exorcism against the
Calvinist threat. Blood was an issue for early modern Lutherans in this
region, just as it had been an issue for their medieval forebears.
Blood rain has never brought anything good as Engel anxiously ex-
plained.54 The final pages of the WiderNatur und Wunderbuch concerned
the case of a bookbinder in the Hanseatic town of Stralsund, then in neigh-
bouring Mecklenburg, whose experience of blood rain and ensuing signs of
violence were sure markers of the Last Days.55 In late June 1597 blood rain fell
on the town and on local fishermen at sea. It left crosses on clothing and on
the landscape. Engel explicitly placed this within a dramatic and vividly
apocalyptic reading of wondrous signs. A man of unnatural height, whose
clothing was also marked with these crosses, ominously appeared in the
Kettenstrasse to bookbinder Hans Germer. The gigantic man, in a great
loud voice (lauten vnnd groben Stimme) told Hans not to be afraid. His ap-
pearance and voice seem to have deliberately echoed the Jewish historian
Josephus report of a man who stalked the streets of Jerusalem crying out
52
Matthaeus Ludecus, Historia von der erfinding, Wunderwercken vnd der zerstorung des
vermeinten heiligen Bluts zu Wilssnagk (Wittenberg, 1586).
53
54
Solch Blutregen hat nie etwas gut mitgebracht; Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch,
161.
55

by guest
on 15 December 2017
before the citys destruction in 70 CE.56 Hans was instructed to go forth and
tell the men of Stralsunden that they must stop their Godless, unchristian
natures, their maltreatment and scraping [or fleecing] of the poor. If they did
not, the man ominously and very specifically concluded, the city would be
devastated by waves of fire on 6 August, the day of St Lorenz.57 This dramatic
scene, with blood rain presaging threatened destruction by fire, fundamen-
tally addressed the Christian sense of community. The prodigy was a warning
to members of this community. But in his presentation of the final disaster as
something that could be averted if the community turned away from sin,
Engels approach to prodigies in his Lutheran wonder book was more opti-
mistic than that of some of his immediate predecessors.
The presence of blood also lent new intensity to Engels presentation of
monstrous births, the unsympathetic designation for children and animals
born with physical deformities and then read in symbolic terms. These cases
were a staple of wonder books throughout the century.58 Like some other
reports of monstrous births in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and in a
reflection of debates in the region about sumptuary law grounded in religious
concerns,59 Engel used both human and animal cases to attack elaborate
clothing. But he also reported how in three local cases, the children also
bled in unnatural ways from wound-like orifices. This was not typical of
reports of monstrous births in the sixteenth century, so Engels choice of
cases is revealing. He first described the body of a child, born in
Brandenburg in 1548, who had extra flesh on her body like misshapen cloth-
ing as well as a wound on her chest from which blood flowed.60 His next,
lengthier example concerned a child born in 1584.61 This girl, born in the
village of Tastorff, only a mile from Strausberg, had misshapen facial features
and limbs, and also had an opening on the back of her head. In a pathos-filled
detail, the wound-shaped opening flowed with blood, but only when the
girl was turned around and viewed by the people.62 When she was lying
56
Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G. A. Williamson, rev. and with a new intro-
duction by E. Mary Smallwood (London, 1981), 3602.
57
gehe hin vnnd sage deinem Herren zu Strallsunden / da sie von jhrem Gottlosen
vnchristlichen Wesen / Schinden / vnnd Schaben der Armen abstehen / order die Stadt
soll den. August auff den 6. tag Laurentij in Fewrigen Rolen stehen; Engel, WiderNatur
und Wunderbuch, 304.
58
Spinks, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture, ch. 4.
59
See, for example, Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession, 43.
60
61
Ibid., 18990.
62
von den leuten vmgekehret vnnd besehen wardt, ibid., 190.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
down on her back, the blood did not flow. His third example was from
1588, and concerned a boy born in Koepenick with similar physical de-
formities and also with several circle-shaped marks on his body.63 Here,
the open wound that flowed with blood was on the boys back, and this
wound also incorporated a heart-shaped mark. Infants with physical
deformities generally incited the same sorts of responses as comets and
floods in this period, and were treated in these texts with little pity or
tenderness. Engel cited the local pastor Michael Murrhe, who had asso-
ciated various parts of the childs body with sinful behaviour. But above
all, the wound with a heart flowing with blood demonstrated the heartfelt
pain (Hertzlichen Wehethut) of troubled Christianity (bedrengeten
Christenheit), which was the fault of an Epicurean lifestyle in which no
sin or shame is too great to attempt.64 These bleeding children were a
mirror to their own sinful communities. Their bloody, wounded bodies
surely recalled the bleeding body of Christ, and must also have evoked
the reports of violent crime that were a feature of the era.
Engels fascination with blood, which has not previously been identified,
reflected a number of biblical and other influences. In particular, he used the
familiar apocalyptic language of Joel: And I will show wonders in the heavens
and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned
into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of
the Lord comes.65 Kathryn Edwards stressed in a study of late medieval
Burgundy that bloody signs in the sky always had broader political and
social, in addition to religious, meanings.66 Blood rain and bloody crosses
in the sky were read as signs of impending events like plagues and battles,
which could in turn also form part of a larger apocalyptic pattern. A freshly
bleeding corpse could help expose a murderer, and was thus closely
63
Ibid., 1915.
64
der bedrengeten Christenheit / der Hertzlichen Wehethut / auch recht betru[e]bt vnd
trawrig zu Gott seufftzet / wegen der Epicurischen Sicherheit / in welcher jetzo die
Menschen Leben / da jhnen nun keine Su[e]nde vnd Schande zu gro ist / die sie
nicht treiben, ibid., 195.
65
Joel 2: 3031. Unnd [ich] wil Wunderzeichen geben im Himmel vnnd auff Erden /
nemlich Blut / Fewer vnnd Rauchdampff. Die Sonne sol in Finsterni / vnnd der
Mond in Blut verwandelt werden / ehe denn der grosse vnnd erschreckliche Tag de
Herrn kommet; Engel, WiderNatur und Wunderbuch, 69. There was an extended citation
from the Book of Joel on the page.
66
Kathryn A. Edwards, And blood rained from the sky: Creating a Burgundian identity
after the fall of Burgundy, in Christopher Ocker, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko and
Peter Wallace (eds.), Politics and Reformations: Communities, Polities, Nations, and
Empires (Leiden, 2007).

by guest
on 15 December 2017
connected to the notion of justice. In her discussion of Genesis 4:10 and the
spilling of Abels blood by Cain, Bettina Bildhauer observed that the notion
of blood crying out thus suggests that it cannot be hidden, but also that it
always has to be avenged.67
The complex, lurid, bloody imagery of the WiderNatur und Wunderbuch
surely left an indelible impression on contemporary readers. It formed part of
larger and often apocalyptic anxieties about civil war, sin and criminal vio-
lence. Much research on prodigy culture has tended to focus on natural
phenomena such as comets, monstrous births, floods and earthquakes.
Recent scholarship on the history of disasters has likewise had a tendency
to specifically and conceptually exclude human disasters of war and vio-
lence, separating them from natural disasters.68 Yet Engel formed part of an
under-recognized trend in late sixteenth-century prodigy culture to present
blood and violence as prodigious.69 Simon Goularts wonder book of 1600,
the Histoires admirables et memorables de nostre temps, developed this theme
in considerable detail, reflecting his earlier and very well-known reports of the
French Wars of Religion and its atrocities. Ironically, Andreas Engel, writing
in Brandenburg under the threat of a second reformation that loomed larger
than Catholic renewal, may have shared more with Calvinist author Goulart
than with the Lutheran authors who formed his direct heritage. Violent acts
could be read as providential signs from God, as punishments or warnings for
communities. Human violence was not just terrible in and of itself, but also a
sign of the world disordered, and of worse to come. Indeed, increasing vio-
lence was one of the signs that the Last Days were at hand. This was a theme
that Calvinist Goulart did not develop in a substantial way. But an unparal-
leled entwinement of blood, violence and apocalyptic fears was elaborated in
Engels nearly contemporary work. It reinforced and also gave new shape to
the apocalyptic ideas that had been so powerfully developed in earlier ex-
amples of Lutheran prodigy culture in the sixteenth century.
Splashing blood rain, staining clothes with the shapes of crucifixes and
instruments of the Passion, had featured in the manuscript wonder books
connected to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in the first decade of
the sixteenth century, as well as in pamphlets from the same period.70
However, it faded away as an aspect of prodigy culture in the Reformation
67
Bettina Bildhauer, Medieval Blood (Cardiff, 2006), 46.
68
For a collection attempting to close the gap see Spinks and Zika (eds.), Disaster, Death and
the Emotions.
69
See Spinks, Civil War Violence, Prodigy Culture and Families.
70
See esp. Jakob Mennel, De signis, portentis atque prodigiis, 1503, Oesterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Vindobana 4417*.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
period. The regional emphasis of Engels often overlooked wonder book

therefore created something new in Lutheran prodigy culture that built
upon a much longer tradition and reinvigorated it.71 This was partly
grounded in the long history of the contested culture of religious wonders
in his home region. It also reflected the threatened religious identity of later
sixteenth-century Lutheranism.
IV
Engels innovative attention to the prodigious qualities of the Devil, of vio-
lence and especially of blood made him unique amongst Lutheran prodigy
authors. His attention to the prodigious and prophetic, and to the regional
dimensions of religious change and the anxiety that this produced, were part
of a larger pattern in his work as a Lutheran polemicist and pastor writing at
the close of the sixteenth century.
Engels book on fifteenth-century local prophet Johann Hilten had ap-
peared in 1597, followed in 1598 by a pamphlet about the Calvinist threat.
These works and his two separate histories of Brandenburg demonstrate how
Engels WiderNatur und Wunderbuch formed part of a wider pattern of inter-
ests within his work.72 His short history of Brandenburg from 1593, the
Rervm Marchiarvm Breviarvm and his lengthier history of the region in
1598, the Annales Marchiae Brandenbvrgicae, were both filled with examples
of prodigies.73 They recycled many of the same stories, including reports of
bleeding bread, wells of blood, rains of blood and the three cases of bleeding
monstrous births described above. All were presented as frightening and
persistent occurrences that had taken place with increasing frequency since
the founding of Brandenburg in the fifth century. This prodigious and pro-
phetic approach to history writing set Engel apart from peers such as
Christoph Entzelt, whose 1579 history of the region had paid no attention
to the historical manifestation or meaning of prodigious signs.74
71
In his brief discussion of blood wonders Schenda provided a number of examples from
the seventeenth century, but only one from the sixteenth. He did not analyse the earlier
manuscript material: Schenda, Die deutschen Prodigiensammlungen, 6834.
72
I leave aside his book narrowly focused on the dynastic family in nearby Holstein, where
he had lived for several years in 1570s. Andreas Engel, Holsteinische Chronica. Darinnen
ordentliche warhafftige Beschreibung, der Adelischen Geschlechter, beneben derselben
Wapen, Stam[m] Register vnnd Bildnissen (Wittenberg, 1596).
73
Andreas Engel, Rervm Marchiarvm Breviarvm (Wittenberg, 1593); Engel, Annales
Marchia Brandenburgic.
74
Christoph Entzelt, Chronicon oder Kurtze vorzeichnus / darinne begriffen / Wer die Alte
Marck / vnd nechste Lender darbey sind der Sindfluth bewonet hat (Magdeburg, 1579).

by guest
on 15 December 2017
Engel did not indulge in directly aggressive attacks on Calvinism in the

WiderNatur und Wunderbuch of 1597. The book was primarily aimed at
combatting sin in local communities through providing compelling ex-
amples of prodigious events, rather than through an attempt to systematically
define and refute religious enemies. However, in subtle but nonetheless le-
gible ways, Engel fretted and lamented at various points in the book about
religious sectarianism and division. These sections included comments on the
war between the Catholics and Evangelicals in France; a clear source of
anxiety that was predominantly anti-Catholic in tone but also framed
through a broader fear about religious conflict.75 A section on disordered
stars alluded to the Peasants War and Anabaptism, and pointed to a history
of divisions within German Protestantism.76 The nexus of religious others
and prodigy culture in Engels work was intensified through his edition of the
prophecies of fifteenth-century Franciscan monk Johan Hilten.77 Hilten and
in turn Engel stressed Gods anger in relation to the Turk, and the form that
this had taken and would take in terms of bloodshed, pestilence and death.
The Eisenach-based prophet had been especially meaningful to Luther.
Engels expanded and contextualized edition contained many references to
Luther, to Daniel and Revelation, to the coming of the Turk and to the crucial
(for Hilten) years of 1516, 1546, 1584, 1600 and 1606.78 Engel laid particular
stress on the imminent years 1600 and 1606.79 Turkish as well as Jewish and
Catholic threats clearly informed Engels view of prodigy culture and proph-
ecy. But the most substantial threat to Lutheranisms ongoing success in late
sixteenth-century German lands was Calvinism.
Religious enemies had been fundamental to Lutheran prodigy culture from
the movements early days. Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthons joint
publication in 1523 identifying the monstrous births of the Monk Calf and
Papal Ass as farcical but also frightening and legible signs of the evils of
Catholicism and the papacy were only the most notorious examples of a
richly anti-Catholic tenor to prodigy reports by Lutheran authors.80
75
76
Ibid., 1089.
77
Andreas Engel, Kurzer / Jedoch gewisser vnd grundtlicher Bericht / von Johan Hilten / vnd
seinen Weissagungen (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1597). It appeared in 1597, although Engel
had prepared it in 1596 as his preface indicates.
78
It also included prophetic writing by the supposed fifteenth-century prophetic author
Antonius Torquatus of Ferrara, a work more likely written c.1527. Jonathan Green,
Prognostication and Media Change 14501550 (Ann Arbor, 2012), 211, n. 8.
79
Engel, Kurzer / Jedoch gewisser vnd grundtlicher Bericht / von Johan Hilten, 39.
80
Spinks, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture, ch. 3.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
Lutheran wonder book authors such as Job Fincel had, in the 1550s and
1560s, fixated on the papacy. In Engels work and in a sign of the times
the Catholic threat was less prominent than the threats of the Turk and
of Calvinism.
Engel wrote during a period of anxiety about the rise of Calvinism
across the northern areas of central German lands, including Saxony
during the 1580s and early 1590s and Anhalt (located between Saxony
and Brandenburg) in 1596.81 This was a serious and pressing concern for
Lutherans, especially pastors like Engel, and the anti-Calvinist message
would take on increasing rhetorical force around this region.82 Engels
death in 1598 at the age of thirty-seven prevents us from knowing how he
might have further developed his approach to prodigy literature during the
forthcoming period of religious change in Brandenburg: Elector Johann
Sigismunds top-down second Reformation, intended to institute
Calvinism in 1613, which was ultimately unsuccessful. It is the surrounding
context in the 1590s and the threat of Calvinism rather than the specific
but later change in Brandenburg in 1613 which provides a context for
thinking about Engels attitude to Calvinism. As Heinz Schilling argued, it is
crucial to take account of the provisional ways in which Calvinism was
present (or perceived to be a threat), and not just to focus on moments of
clear transition.83
The final page of Engels 1593 history of Brandenburg presented a particu-
larly telling combination of stories from the year 1592. These brought to-
gether possession, Calvinism and bloody signs in the sky in nearby Saxony. He
described how a diligent young Calvinist was attacked by the Devil, so that he
could not move his hands or feet. This, Engel said, occurred against the
background of the division of religion in Saxony; that is, the threat of
Calvinism. Soon after, on 20 March, the region experienced a terrible chas-
matibus or fiery sign . . . which mingled the colours of blood and fire.84
81
Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession, esp. 525, although Nischan also stressed the
returning Catholic threat by the close of the century. See also Heinz Schilling (ed.), Die
Reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland Das Problem der Zweiten
Reformation (Gutersloh, 1986).
82
Bridget Heal, Better Papist than Calvinist: Art and Identity in Later Lutheran
Germany, German History, xxix (2011).
83
Heinz Schilling, The Second Reformation Problems and Issues, in his Religion,
Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society, trans. Stephen G. Burnett
(Leiden, 1992), see 2589.
84
fleiiger Ju[e]nger Caluin war/ vom Teuffel vbel zerschlagen/ also das er weder hende
noch Fu[e]sse regen kundte. die zwispalt der Religion in des verstorbenen
Churfu[e]rsten von Sachssen Landtschafften. ein schreckliches Chasma oder

by guest
on 15 December 2017
It started at eight in the evening and lasted for the entire night. Possession,
Calvinism and the threat of sectarianism in the region, soon after followed by
bloody, fiery signs in the sky in Lutheran Saxony thus combined to
create a telling closing motif for his 1593 book. It was evidently intended to
focus the attention of readers from Brandenburg on their own situation and
the danger of moving closer to Calvinism.
There is no doubt that Engel contributed to a Lutheran culture that de-
ployed signs of natural disorder in order to give shape to the Calvinist threat.
A short anonymous 1597 pamphlet had reported the birth of a three-headed
child in nearby Pomerania and likewise drew parallels between the childs
physical form and the presence of many sects in Christendom (Vil Secten inn
der Christenheit). It formed part of a trend for Lutherans to associate
Calvinism with monstrosity.85 In 1598, a year after the publication of his
wonder book and the same year that he would die, Engels lengthy polemical
pamphlet against Calvinism titled the Calvinischer Betlersmantel appeared.86
Martin Luthers legacy was central to this publication. The frontispiece de-
picted Luther facing down the papacy while being menaced by a snake-
headed Medusa representing Calvinism and the split of Protestantism into
many factions (see Plate 1).87 This was a work in which Engels anxiety about
Calvinism was given full flight. In the same year a pamphlet titled the
Calvinisch Gasthau by Engels Lutheran colleague Johann Praetorius pre-
sented the Catholic Church as the bride of Calvinism, compared Calvinists
to that long-standing feared European enemy, the Turk, and featured a gro-
tesquely apocalyptic beast on the title page (see Plate 2).88 Engels own title
page image was reused midway through the Praetorius pamphlet. Given the
almost identical format of the title pages of the two publications, it is very
Fewerzeichen . . . mit Blut vnd Fewerfarben vntermenget; Engel, Rervm Marchiarvm

Breviarvm, 179.
85
Anon., Zwo warhafftige newe Zeitung: Die erste / so sich in newenmarckt Brandenburg
begeben . . . (Erdfurt, 1597). On this pamphlet see Spinks, Monstrous Births and Visual
Culture, 1436.
86
Andreas Engel, Calvinischer Betlersmantel / Darin angezeignet wird mit was kleider sie sich
befaen / den Schalck verbergen vnd zudecken ko[e]nnen / vnd wer es nit weis / nicht anders
vermeinet / als es die lauter Warheit sey (n.p., 1598). The preface indicates that it was
written in 1596 and then presumably published (or possibly republished) in 1598.
87
88
Johannes Praetorius, Calvinisch Gasthau zur Narrenkapffen genant/ Darinnen die
Calvinisten so wol offentlich als heimlich in jrer Thorheit erwischt / die Larva vermeinter
vnschuldt / vnd heiligkeit jhnen abgezogen / vnnd sambt dem hause vnd Thorheit vmbges-
tu[e]rtzt werden (n.p., 1598).

by guest
on 15 December 2017
1. Anonymous artist, title page, woodcut, in Andreas Engel, Calvinischer Betlersmantel /

Darin angezeignet wird mit was kleider sie sich befaen / den Schalck verbergen vnd
zudecken ko[e]nnen / vnd wer es nit weis / nicht anders vermeinet / als es die lauter Warheit sey
(n.p., 1598). Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munchen, classification mark 4 43.705.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
2. Anonymous artist, title page, woodcut, in Johannes Praetorius, Calvinisch Gasthau zur
Narrenkapffen genant / Darinnen die Calvinisten so wol offentlich als heimlich in jrer Thorheit
erwischt / die Larva vermeinter vnschuldt / vnd heiligkeit jhnen abgezogen / vnnd sambt dem
hause vnd Thorheit vmbgestu[e]rtzt werden (n.p., 1598). Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Munchen, classification mark Polem. 3129 p.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
likely that Praetorius was prompted to create it by Engels work or that the
two works were prepared in tandem.
Engels pamphlet discussed Calvinism as a series of patched-together rags
that made up the beggars cloak of the title. He opened the text with a very
direct and aggressive attack on Calvinism, which he characterized as half
Turkish (halb Tu[e]rckische). In a familiar phrase, Engel also referred to
Calvinischen Schwermerey or zealotry.89 In an echo of the content of the
WiderNatur und Wunderbuch a year earlier, Engels Calvinischer
Betlersmantel was concerned with evil and with the Devil. These themes
dominated the first half of the text, while Christs blood and the issue of
transubstantiation were examined in the second half.90 Engel used the
pamphlet to mount a defence of the real presence along Lutheran lines and
in a long historical context.91 The seventeenth chapter was on Christs blood,
and the eighteenth and final chapter on Christs body, with many references
to blood.92 This pamphlet provides a broader context for understanding
Engels fascination with diabolical power and with wondrous blood, and
shows how he read the anxieties around communion and especially
Christs blood that were central to Protestant and Calvinist conflicts.
V
As scholars have increasingly argued, early modern Lutheranism cannot be
encapsulated by theological doctrines, liturgical practices or by towering fig-
ures such as Luther, even if the movements founder did cast a uniquely long
shadow. As other essays in this volume make clear, there are still many ques-
tions to answer about how Lutheran identity was understood, practised and
communicated by individuals and communities. The late sixteenth century
has until recently been most often discussed in terms of the large-scale process
of confessionalization. The period therefore offers particularly rich oppor-
tunities to now look more closely at individual Lutherans, like Andreas Engel,
as well as to examine in more depth the use and reinvention of genres fre-
quently associated with Lutheranism, such as the wonder book.
The WiderNatur und Wunderbuch was Engels penultimate written work. It
was followed only by his 1598 Annales, which was imbued throughout and
ended with prodigious reports. Prodigies, and the anxieties they generated,
were therefore central to the final written expressions of his own identity as a
89
Engel, Calvinischer Betlersmantel, sigs. A2rv.
90
Ibid., 3259.
91
Ibid., 526.
92
Ibid., respectively 526 and 579.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
Lutheran pastor and scholar, as he expressed individual fears and reached out
to a larger audience.
Engel changes our view of apocalyptic Lutheran prodigy culture. He
demonstrated how, in the face of specific regional circumstances but also
larger, new threats of religious conflict and change, this culture was adaptable
and open to significant new elements. Engels anxiety about Calvinists re-
minds us how the fear of religious others sometimes expressed through
violence and displacement was fundamental to the Reformation, as
Nicholas Terpstra has most recently stressed in a new history of the era.93
Lutheran Germany was particularly concerned with the physicality and pres-
ence of the Devil in the later sixteenth century, with possession cases in both
Lutheran and Catholic areas complemented by moralizing Teuffelbuch litera-
ture. The presence of the Devil was more immediately felt in German lands
than in other European regions. Materiality mattered, and Lutheran
Germany also saw debates over Christs blood, with Brandenburg typical of
a conservative Lutheranism which stressed the real presence of Christs body
in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. It is no accident that Caroline Walker
Bynums Wonderful Blood made considerable use of sources compiled in later
sixteenth-century Lutheran Germany.94 This was material that also
prompted Engel to look back to the medieval past in understanding the
meaning of blood prodigies for his own times, shaped as they were by reli-
gious disorder and the spectre of violent conflict across sixteenth-century
Europe. Both Christ and the Devil were tangibly close at hand for Engel. His
invocation of their twinned presence should be read against new scholarship
that increasingly stresses how sensory Protestantism could be.95
The WiderNatur und Wunderbuch accordingly reinvigorated Lutheran
prodigy culture. Religious differences, conflicts, rituals and symbols were
crucial to Engels new conception of prodigies and of Brandenburgs place
in the Lutheran Reformation. This was linked to the fearful, anxious tenor of
his wonder book. But it was also to a degree perhaps surprising for a
Lutheran wonder book in the turbulent and often pessimistic period imme-
diately leading up to 1600 characterized by a cautiously hopeful sense that
if his own community paid proper attention to the signs and to sin, then God
could be merciful. That he felt it would take blood and the Devil to make this
happen demonstrates Engels boldness as an author and his unique
93
Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of
the Reformation (Cambridge, 2015).
94
Bynum, Wonderful Blood; on the importance of Ludecus see 29.
95
Ulinka Rublack, Introduction, in Ulinka Rublack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the
Protestant Reformations, vi. See also Heal, A Magnificent Faith.

by guest
on 15 December 2017
understanding of the vital role of prodigy culture at the close of a century of

religious transformation.
Andreas Engels focus on regional stories and histories made his work
unusual and compelling, but also renders it difficult to grapple with as a
marker of Lutheran culture in more general terms. When Engel turned his
back on a well-developed pan-European prodigy culture to focus on histories
and events very close to home, he paradoxically reflected a wider anxiety
amongst Lutherans about external religious threats and an anxious expect-
ation about what the end of Luthers century might bring. In contrast to the
constant recycling of similar themes familiar from much existing scholarship
on prodigy culture and wonder books, Engels distinctively regional focus
offered a dramatic new vision of Lutheran prodigy culture in the years leading
up to 1600. It was a vision that made new space for the Devil, and for the
destabilizing power of violence and blood.
University of Melbourne Jennifer Spinks

by guest
on 15 December 2017

Blood, Violence, Calvinism and The Devil: Lutheran Prodigy Culture by 1600 and Andreas Engel'S Wonder Book

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Blood, Violence, Calvinism and The Devil: Lutheran Prodigy Culture by 1600 and Andreas Engel'S Wonder Book

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Blood, Violence, Calvinism and The Devil: Lutheran Prodigy Culture by 1600 and Andreas Engel'S Wonder Book

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

BLOOD, VIOLENCE, CALVINISM AND

THE DEVIL: LUTHERAN PRODIGY

Lutheran authors including Caspar Goltwurm, Job Fincel and Christoph

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

need to establish nuanced, individualized readings of later Lutheran gener-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

and sometimes frightening phenomena in an apocalyptic framework: from

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

read as part of a wider field of prodigy culture that increasingly emerged in a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

ways in which he tormented individuals and groups.26 The Protestant wonder

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

exorcism, while Lutherans had advocated preaching as the best response to

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Mecklenburg in 1492, and in nearby Saxony in 1432, decimating Jewish

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

period. The regional emphasis of Engels often overlooked wonder book

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Engel did not indulge in directly aggressive attacks on Calvinism in the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Fewerzeichen . . . mit Blut vnd Fewerfarben vntermenget; Engel, Rervm Marchiarvm

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

1. Anonymous artist, title page, woodcut, in Andreas Engel, Calvinischer Betlersmantel /

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

understanding of the vital role of prodigy culture at the close of a century of

University of Melbourne Jennifer Spinks

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/234/suppl_12/212/4627967

You might also like