A Franciscan Critic of the Catholic Clergy During the Protestant Reformation: Johannes Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst as a Literary-Historical Source

Church historians have already studied the Protestant Reformation from many different perspectives considering both the years leading up to the publication of Luther’s ninety-five theses and following. Although many different textual genres have been scoured for relevant information, literary and didactic narratives have attracted rather little attention. Studying Johannes Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst (1522), which was an enormous bestseller for the next centuries, in light of Reformation history, his moralizing and entertaining exempla reflect the contemporary discourse also on the status of the Church and especially the clergy, seen through the lens of a Franciscan preacher, addressing thereby primarily his clerical colleagues high and low in the religious hierarchy.