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Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), Wilhelm Zimmermann (1807–1878) and the Dilemma of Muntzer Historiography
Ist Teil von
Church history, 1974-06, Vol.43 (2), p.164-182
Ort / Verlag
New York, USA: Cambridge University Press
Erscheinungsjahr
1974
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
“Lies always limp arid are easily caught. It is difficult for them to escape the verdict of a keen, quick intellect.”Thus wrote Petrarch to Emperor Charles IV regarding the authenticity of a document which purported to exempt ”Austria” from imperial jurisdiction. But even Petrarch with his “keen, quick intellect” might have had difficulty in detecting another besetting sin of his day—but by no means only of his day—plagiarism. For by its very nature plagiarism tends to remain silent whereas one lie, as Marc Bloch once observed, “drags in its train many others, summoned to lend it a semblance of mutual support.” A keen, quick intellect, then, though very helpful, may not always be enough to detect a plagiarism; a thorough familiarity with the sources and the secondary literature on the subject in question as well as a great deal of painstaking correlation may also be necessary once suspicion has been aroused. The investigator may also need a “little bit o' luck” as the song of My Fair Lady would have it. What follows has something to do with both lies and plagiarism. Considerably more important, it revolves around two pivotal interpretations of the sixteenth-century religious radical and social revolutionary, Thomas Müntzer, the erstwhile scapegoat of the Reformation era but since rehabilitated by Wilhelm Zimmermann and now the hero of the Marxist interpretation of the Reformation.