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Papists and Sorcerers in Martin Luther’s Europe
Asa Charles Leininger
HST 392: European History Primary Source Seminar
10 December 2022
2
Of Martin Luther’s immense impact on Early Modern Europe, there is little argument to
be had. Likewise, it would be difficult to find an account of Luther’s life that painted him as a
great Catholic sympathizer. After the Protestant Reformation, there was a large increase in the
number of people being persecuted in Europe. Many causes for this increase have been
discovered and discussed within scholarship. Historians have turned to growing concerns of
revolution, concerns of social deviancy, and witchcraft. However, the similarities between the
justification for the persecution of Catholic traditions and traditions associated with sorcery have
been largely unexplored. As superstition within religion began to be seen as increasingly morally
suspect, integral aspects of Catholicism began to be perceived as heretical and non-pious. Herbal
medicine, for example, which had long been conflated with traditions within the Catholic church
that tended towards the more supernatural, became the subject of Protestant ire. More than this,
Martin Luther equated papists in general (Catholics who honored the authority of the Pope) with
sorcerers through his use of verbiage.
This paper does not attempt posit that fear of Catholics directly led to an increase in
persecution of witches but rather that Catholicism and sorcery, for Martin Luther, were indeed
part of the same cosmological issue. This conclusion is reached by the stringent examination
sections of Table Talk concerning sorcery and sections comparing papists. In juxtaposing
descriptions of each, this paper argues that Martin Luther grew more and more convinced of the
similarities between papists and other people with malevolent intent.
The justifications for the prosecution of such groups of people as Jews, sickly persons,
vagrants, heretics, and women accused of witchcraft are inherently tied to Christian religion and
the developments within Christianity that the Medieval era bore to fruition. Much of the
3
constellation of evil in Medieval Europe is comprised of people who explicitly did not abide by
traditional societal norms. The Christian understanding of evil and its intersection with
participation, or lack thereof, in traditionally conservative societal conventions was instrumental
in justifying the atrocities that were committed against minority groups and conventionally
deviant individuals during the Middle ages.
Because the Church often played a vital role in the establishment of law in Medieval
Europe, Christianity was woven into what was perceived as being socially acceptable and,
likewise, what was socially impermissible. Paul Fouracre, in Cultural Conformity and Social
Conservatism in Early Medieval Europe, reveals that not only were laws passed that favored
Christian interests, but the Bureaucratic structure of the Catholic church was also an inspiration
for the way in which bodies of government were formed in Medieval Europe.
1
Thus, it becomes
clear that Christianity, having a notable influence even in the upper-most echelons of society,
was at the heart of many societal norms.
This phenomenon of Christian groups involved in the process of law-making and
normalizing of conventions did not stop with Catholicism, though. Indeed, John Witte argues in
“The War against Heresy in Medieval Europe,” that the reformers of the 16th century played a
large role in shifting normative conventions and laws regarding such things as marriage away
from their earlier, Roman-Catholic-inspired iterations. While some point out that the shifts
resulting from the reformers actions moved establishments like marriage away from the affective
power of religious bodies, the change was still directed in large part by religious leaders.
2
1
Paul Fouracre, “Cultural Conformity and Social Conservation in Early Medieval Europe,” History Workshop
Journal 33, no. 1 (1992): pp. 152-161, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/33.1.152.
2
John Witte, “The Reformation of Marriage Law in Martin Luther's Germany: Its Significance Then and Now,”
Journal of Law and Religion 4, no. 2 (1986): p. 293, https://doi.org/10.2307/1051003.
4
R. I. Moore claims that Heretics – that is, people who did not ascribe to the widely
accepted understanding of the character of the divine – were also often labeled as dangerous and
were cast out of society or persecuted.
3
If we look at the previous rationale, we can easily see the
economic reasons that such persecution might occur. To revolt against the established norms,
which greatly influenced economic models, was to present the community with an alternative to
the extant economic order, potentially upsetting power structures and ways of life.
More than just economic, the practice of persecuting outsiders in Medieval Europe was
an issue of divine nature, having ramifications for all of eternity. Indeed, Nathan Johnstone
argues that many of these marginalized groups were said to have been under the control of the
Devil in his article for the Journal of British Studies.
4
When we understand the connections being
made between the Devil and people labeled as witches, heretics, etc., and we understand the
perception of the Devil commonly held by Europeans in the Middle Ages, the fact that such
widespread persecution of such powerless people occurred becomes far less surprising.
Brian Levack, in The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe, states that the Devil, in both
the Late Medieval Catholic and the Protestant frame of thinking, was a great tempter. He would
come and steal quietly into the minds of all people, bringing with him thoughts that would sully
the sanctity of man’s relationship with God.
5
It was, therefore, the duty of the righteous person to
recognize the distinction between such false divinity and real divinity. This was paramount to
resisting temptation.
6
3
R. I. Moore, “The War against Heresy in Medieval Europe,” Historical Research 81, no. 212 (2008): pp. 189-210,
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2007.00453.x.
4
Nathan Johnstone, “The Protestant Devil: The Experience of Temptation in Early Modern England,” Journal of
British Studies 43, no. 2 (2004): pp. 173-205, https://doi.org/10.1086/380949.
5
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, pp. 103-104.
6
Johnstone, The Protestant Devil: The Experience of Temptation in Early Modern England, pp. 173-205.
5
Carole Levin finds that people like Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in
attempts to maintain piety, recommended abstaining from things like interpreting dreams (which
in the earlier European world may have been viewed as the spiritual gift of prognostication) for
the reason that dreams may have been a falsely divine snare of the Devil, set up to entrap humans
in wickedness.
7
Indeed, Brian Levack states that the Reformation gave rise to a strong
abhorrence towards superstition in general, citing it as, “the rival of true religion.”
8
One aspect of
this was manifested in the refutation of the Catholic intellectual tradition of believing in the
transubstantiation of bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ during mass.
Kathleen Sands argues that to reformers like Martin Luther such a view, actively employing the
sorcery of miracle, was heretical.
9
The task of the ‘righteous’ person was to uphold ‘true’ divinity, righteousness, and
morality even if it came at the cost of the lives of those who disagreed with them. ‘Witches’ who
failed to follow conventional Protestant structures of morality were damned and were cast out, if
not killed.
10
They had not only engaged in practices that were economically and socially
intolerable but had also committed an offense against God and bound themselves to the Devil.
With rigorous examination of scholarship surrounding what constituted evil in Europe in
the Late Medieval period, it becomes evident that the lack of participation in established
conventions of socially acceptable behavior threatened not only the economic security of a
community, but also the divine character of that community. To the Protestants, this meant that
some Catholic traditions were incredibly dangerous. In his article for Folklore, Michael Ostling
7
Carole Levin, “Religion and Witchcraft.” in Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in
Court and Culture, (2008): pp. 61–91.
8
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, p. 108.
9
Kathleen R. Sands, “The Doctrine of Transubstantiation and the English Protestant Dispossession of Demons,”
History 85, no. 279 (2000): pp. 446-462, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229x.00156.
10
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, p. 103.
6
argues that in certain Polish Witch-trials, one of the pieces of evidence used against women was
the use of herbal medicines upon which ecclesiastical blessings had been bestowed. Though this
tradition was not even explicitly pagan, those who practiced it were persecuted for heresy
because of its ties to the superstitious traditions of the Catholic church.
11
Thus, when Catholicism
was demonized, those who adhered to pre-protestant traditions became the focus of the
Protestants’ wrath.
It is widely known that Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, was
poised in opposition to the Pope and to the Catholic church quite staunchly from the 1520s
onward. Though his opposition to the Pope initially resulted from the Vatican’s disciplinary
actions following the publishing of the 95 Theses, it quickly grew into a firmly held belief that
the Pope was the antichrist.
12
The foundation of Luther’s critique laid in his belief that indulgences had no
power to remit any sins.
13
He stated that any remittance borne of an indulgence payment was
only because the payment had prompted the involvement of the church, who could intervene on
the behalf of the sinner in need of absolution.
14
He went on further to say that not even the
church officials could actually remit any sins, but simply gave witness to the remitting of sins
that was first carried out by Jesus Christ.
15
Luther argued that the church could only forgive
11
Michael Ostling, “Witches' Herbs on Trial,” Folklore 125, no. 2 (April 2014): pp. 179-201,
https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587x.2014.890785.
12
Dennis Pettibone, “Martin Luther’s Views on the Antichrist,” Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 18, no.
1 (2007): pp. 81-100.
13
Martin Luther and Ernest G. Schwiebert, Luther's Ninety-Five Theses (Saint Louis: Concordia, 2005).
14
Luther and Ernest G. Schwiebert, Luther's Ninety-Five Theses.
15
Luther and Ernest G. Schwiebert, Luther's Ninety-Five Theses.
7
offenses against the church, not against God.
16
When brought before Papal representatives,
Luther was rendered a heretic for questioning the papacy.
17
Luther was driven by scriptural inspiration. Indeed, in his Table Talks, in nine of the first
ten recorded talks, Luther mentions the divine moral supremacy of the Bible.
18
Anything that
was not explicitly within the scriptures – including decrees from the pope – could not be given
the same divine precedent as passages of Biblical text. In this, Luther found himself growing
surer with each passing day that the pope was not a reputable authority when it came to God. If
the pope was rightly appointed as the leader of God’s people on earth, then why was the pope
passing policies that had no scriptural basis whatsoever? This was the primary question with
which Luther found himself struggling.
This, coupled with an ever-weakening assurance in the honesty of Rome, inspired Luther
to view the pope as potentially being the antichrist. Indeed, in 1520, Luther discovered that the
Donation of Constantine was falsified.
19
This meant that the very claim of the church over the
Western world was founded on a lie.
20
Likewise, Prierias, the papal official that Luther had been
taken to in 1518, published a treatise stating that “the pope could not be deposed from office
even if he “were so scandalously bad that he led multitudes of souls to the devil.””
21
Luther published his response. In his, Address to the Christian Nobility, he argued that
such claims regarding the pope’s infallibility and supreme authority were, if not a play made
directly by the antichrist, a warning of his impending coming.
22
Likewise, in response to the fear
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Martin Luther, William Hazlitt, and Alexander Chalmers, The Table Talk of Martin Luther (London: G. Bell,
1902).
19
Pettibone, Martin Luther’s Views on the Antichrist, pp. 81-100.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
8
that the pope would block the Church council he was busying himself by organizing, Luther
stated:
“Temporal Power has no Jurisdiction over the Spirituality… It has been
devised that the Pope, bishops, priests, and monks are called the spiritual
estate, princes, lords, artificers, and peasants are the temporal estate. This
is an artful lie and hypocritical device, but let no one be made afraid by
it, and that for this reason: that all Christians are truly of the spiritual
estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As
St. Paul says (1 Cor. xii.), we are all one body, though each member does
its own work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism,
one Gospel, one faith, and are all Christians alike; for baptism, Gospel,
and faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people. . . .”
23
In this, Luther openly challenged the ‘spiritual’ authority of the pope. When the pope
exercised his power in a way that prevented Christians from engaging in behavior that edified
Christendom, Luther posited that he was acting more in accordance with the devil than with
God.
24
For only the devil would attempt to block things that would contribute to the edification
of Christendom.
25
Luther even challenged the virtuosity of the pope’s ability to perform miracles, stating
that scripture foretold that the antichrist would perform many wonderous things so as to “deceive
the elect”.
26
And when attacking the culture in Rome, in which people were paid to facilitate the
dissolution of bonds and the “annulment of oaths”, Luther said that because the pope is exalting
his commandment over top of God’s, he must surely be the antichrist.
27
By 1521, in his Defense
23
Martin Luther et al., First Principles of the Reformation: Or the Ninety-Five Theses and the Three Primary Works
of Dr. Martin Luther (London: John Murray, 1883).
24
Pettibone, Martin Luther’s Views on the Antichrist, pp. 81-100.
25
Ibid.
26
Pettibone, Martin Luther’s Views on the Antichrist, pp. 81-100.
27
Ibid.
9
and Explanation of All the Articles, Luther called the Pope the antichrist outright.
28
As the
tension between Protestants and Catholics grew ever more severe and each group openly
prosecuted members of the other for heresy, Luther had yet another reason to believe that the
pope was the antichrist when men he deemed ‘good Christians’ were burned by papists.
29
To understand how Luther’s distaste of the Papacy is comparable to his distaste for those
whom he designated as Wahrsager, Zeichendeuter, or Zauberinnen, one must examine the
language he uses in reference to each.
30
The primary point of similarity between the Pope (and
those loyal to his authority) and those guilty of Fortune-telling, Divination, and Sorcery is
described by Luther in his Table Talk as the fact that both are the subjects of a divine God
revolting against their master. Indeed, in Table Talk, Luther ponders:
“Our ordinary sins offend and anger God. What, then, must be his wrath
against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high treason against
divine majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God?”
31
Using an analogy of monarchal power, Luther likens the use of divine talents to a conscious
revolt against a supreme authority. Likewise, Luther argues of the state of the pope in relation to
the authority of God,
“He names himself an earthly god, as though the only true and Almighty
God were not God on earth! Truly, the pope’s kingdom is a horrible
outrage against the power of God and against mankind; an abomination
of desolation, which stands in the holy place. ‘Tis a monstrous
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters, “Martin Luther: The Two Kinds of Sorcery and the Reformation,” in
Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2001), pp. 261-265.
31
Luther, Hazlitt, and Alexander Chalmers, The Table Talk of Martin Luther, p. 251.
10
blasphemy for a human creature to presume, now Christ is come, to exalt
himself in the church above God.”
32
Indeed, Luther follows this vitriolic statement by asking,
“Whence comes it that the popes pretend ‘tis they who form the church,
when, all the while, they are bitter enemies of the church, and have no
knowledge, certainly no comprehension, of the holy gospel? Pope,
cardinals, bishops, not a soul of them has read the Bible; ‘tis a book
unknown to them. They are a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches, rich,
wallowing in wealth and laziness, resting secure in their power, and
never, for a moment, thinking of accomplishing God’s will.”
33
Thus, it becomes abundantly clear that Luther viewed both the papists and witches as being
entirely opposed to God.
More than just viewing them as engaging in what is essentially the same crime of treason
against the divine, one can find similarities between the descriptions Luther provides regarding
the respective punishments for both adherence to papist doctrine and the practice of sorcery. Of
the Antichrist, whom Luther was convinced was the pope, he states that, “Antichrist attacks with
fire, and shall be punished with fire.”
34
Additionally, Luther suggests that the, “Popedom must
needs be brought to the stake, and pay for all.”
35
Such suggestions of fire and the stake being
used as punishment for the sin of opposing the divine are not without mirrored suggestions of
justifiable punishments for practitioners of witchcraft.
When addressing the subject of a fitting penalty for the practicing of witchcraft, Luther
states:
32
Luther, Hazlitt, and Alexander Chalmers, The Table Talk of Martin Luther, p. 195.
33
Ibid, pp. 196-197.
34
Ibid, p. 197.
35
Ibid, p. 202.
11
“The jurisconsults who have so learnedly and pertinently treated of
rebellion, affirm that the subject who rebels against his sovereign, is
worthy of death. Does not Witchcraft, then, merit death, which is a revolt
of the creature against the Creator, a denial to God of the authority it
accords to the demon?”
36
Here too, the punishment of death is explicitly present. Death is the wage for both witches and
papists.
Witchcraft and papism, for Luther, are essentially the same crime. They both
fundamentally involve treason against the divine. Likewise, we know that they are offenses of
relatively equal severity because the punishments are analogous: death.
Indeed, in one passage of Table Talk, Luther directly states that, “Seeing the pope is
antichrist, I believe him to be a devil incarnate. Like as Christ is true and natural God and man so
is antichrist a living devil.”
37
In another, Luther posits that, “God gives to the devil and to
witches power over human creatures in two ways; first, over the ungodly, when he will punish
them by reason of their sins; secondly, over the just and godly, when he intends to try whether
they will be constant in the faith, and remain in his obedience.”
38
Thus, the conflation of the pope
– as antichrist – with the devil, renders him guilty of causing the same maleficent consequences
as witches.
To reinforce the similarity between witches and papists within Luther’s paradigm, the
vocabulary which he employs in describing both parties shall now be examined. In Table Talk,
Luther repeatedly uses the descriptor “plague” to refer to the effects of the devil, to the effects of
36
Luther, Hazlitt, and Alexander Chalmers, The Table Talk of Martin Luther, pp. 196-197.
37
Ibid, p. 195.
38
Ibid, p. 265.
12
the pope on the church, and likewise to the effects of those ‘servants of the devil who practice
varying kinds of sorcery’.
39
Luther states of the pope’s relationship to the church,
“In the pope’s decretals are many horrible and diabolical canons; they
are a great plague and evil for the church. The shameless pope presumes
to say: “Whoso believes and observes not my decrees, it were in vain for
him to believe in Christ, or give credit to the four Evangelists.” Is not this
the language of the very devil, infusing deadly poison into the church?”
40
In this, he likens the words of the pope to a plague, something he also associates with the effects
of the devil himself and with magicians’ actions. Indeed, when conversing about the emperor
Maximillian, who upon inviting a necromancer to dinner, boastfully displayed his knowledge of
supernatural arts by turning the guest’s hands into claws, Luther resolutely stated, “I am
delighted when one devil plagues another.”
41
Obviously, the effects of magic warrant the same
descriptor as the effects of heretical claims on the part of the pope. Likewise, of the effects of the
devil on man, Luther says, “Even so, when the devil sees that we fear him, he ceases not to
torment and plague us.”
42
Moreover, of a woman suffering illness manifesting as ‘paroxysms’,
Luther gave blessing and commanded her soul to be at peace.
43
Following this blessing, he
turned to the people present and claimed, “She is plagued of the devil in the body, but the soul is
safe, and shall be preserved; therefore, let us give thanks to God, and pray for her”.
44
Such an
explicit use of the descriptor ‘plague’ when applied in different circumstances of analogous
cosmological severity, reinforces the idea that the issues of the devil’s effects of humans, the
39
Luther, Hazlitt, and Alexander Chalmers, The Table Talk of Martin Luther.
40
Ibid, p. 211.
41
Ibid, p. 251.
42
Ibid, p. 276.
43
Ibid, pp. 276-277.
44
Ibid, p. 277.
13
effects of the pope on the church, and the effects of witches magic were of equal importance to
Luther, and were not entirely separate from each other.
While it is enticing to view witchcraft as a phenomenon connected to but separate from
the issue of heresy in medieval Europe, historians might do well to consider them both as being
part of one, same, great cosmological problem for Christians like Martin Luther. It is within his
own writings that evidence supporting this claim can be found. Table Talk gives deep insight into
the correlation between the pope and the antichrist, the antichrist and the devil, and the devil and
malefactors such as witches. Not only does Luther suggest that adherence to papist doctrine and
witchcraft are offences of equal weight, he suggests equal punishment should meet those found
guilty of such ‘offences’. Likewise, Luther, through his use of language, likens the pope to the
devil and also to magicians who use power of a supernatural character. Thus, witchcraft and
papism, for Martin Luther, were not so different.
14
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Luther, Martin, and Ernest G. Schwiebert. Luther's Ninety-Five Theses. Saint Louis: Concordia,
2005.
Luther, Martin, Karl Adolf Buchheim, Robert Scarlett Grignon, and Henry Wace. First
Principles of the Reformation: Or the Ninety-Five Theses and the Three Primary Works
of Dr. Martin Luther. London: John Murray, 1883.
Luther, Martin, William Hazlitt, and Alexander Chalmers. The Table Talk of Martin Luther.
London: G. Bell, 1902.
Secondary Sources
Fouracre, Paul. “Cultural Conformity and Social Conservation in Early Medieval Europe.”
History Workshop Journal 33, no. 1 (1992): 152–61.
https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/33.1.152.
Johnstone, Nathan. “The Protestant Devil: The Experience of Temptation in Early Modern
England.” Journal of British Studies 43, no. 2 (2004): 173–205.
https://doi.org/10.1086/380949.
Kors, Alan Charles, and Edward Peters. “Martin Luther: The Two Kinds of Sorcery and the
Reformation.” Essay. In Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History, 261–
65. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. London: Routledge, Taylor &
Francis Group, 2016.
Levin, Carole. “Religion and Witchcraft.” Essay. In Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics
and Desire in Court and Culture, 61–91. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
15
Moore, R. I. “The War against Heresy in Medieval Europe.” Historical Research 81, no. 212
(2008): 189–210. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2007.00453.x.
Ostling, Michael. “Witches' Herbs on Trial.” Folklore 125, no. 2 (2014): 179–201.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587x.2014.890785.
Pettibone, Dennis. “Martin Luther’s Views on the Antichrist,” Journal of the Adventist
Theological Society 18, no. 1 (2007): pp. 81-100.
Sands, Kathleen R. “The Doctrine of Transubstantiation and the English Protestant
Dispossession of Demons.” History 85, no. 279 (2000): 446–62.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229x.00156.
Witte, John. “The Reformation of Marriage Law in Martin Luther's Germany: Its Significance
Then and Now.” Journal of Law and Religion 4, no. 2 (1986): 293.
https://doi.org/10.2307/1051003.
