Martin Luther's Jewish Assassin
In light of recent reconsiderations of "anti-Judaism" in all of Luther's writings and the move to hold historical events and the process of memorialization closer together, the forgotten story of Luther's Jewish assassin increases in significance. The use of the incident by Luthe...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
The Johns Hopkins University Press
[2020]
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| In: |
Lutheran quarterly
Year: 2020, Volume: 34, Issue: 3, Pages: 249-267 |
| IxTheo Classification: | BH Judaism HA Bible KAG Church history 1500-1648; Reformation; humanism; Renaissance KDD Protestant Church |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In light of recent reconsiderations of "anti-Judaism" in all of Luther's writings and the move to hold historical events and the process of memorialization closer together, the forgotten story of Luther's Jewish assassin increases in significance. The use of the incident by Luther's earliest biographers provides the modern observer not necessarily with facts of "what really happened," but with layers of a mediated tradition that can serve as a window into the early "memorialization" process regarding Luther. Kaufmann has observed that the paucity of scholarship on the subject may be due to its "bizarre elements"; and yet, it may be exactly the strange elements of the story that help us perceive Luther through sixteenth-century eyes. The purpose of this essay is not primarily to assess the evidential bases of the incidents of the 1520s and 1530s (though this is covered), but to capture how Mathesius - Luther's most important sixteenth-century biographer - used the story to memorialize Luther as an extraordinary person (Wundermann). |
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| ISSN: | 2470-5616 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Lutheran quarterly
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/lut.2020.0048 |