Saturday, December 05, 2009

My Snarky Little Exaggeration on 16th Century Roman Catholic Apologetics


"I had another problem with Mr. Swan's article though. His snarky little exaggeration of history about noone wanting to read Catholic apologist stuff in the 16th century is something I still intend to address" [source].
These are the words of Roman Catholic blogger Paul Hoffer (no stranger to this blog). He's responding to this point I made recently:

Roman Catholic apologetics has come a long way. In the written disputes and published propaganda between sixteenth-century Protestants and Roman Catholics, the mass-marketing victory clearly lay in the hands of Rome's detractors. Protestants out-published Rome's apologists winning the popular opinion. Roman Catholic works were unlikely to sell, and therefore not sought out by printers. Rome exasperated the loss by not supporting her apologists in their written endeavors.

I admit, I had to look up the word "snarky". Based on its use with the term "exaggeration", I think I've got the gist of the sentiment being expressed. In terms of dialog, Mr. Hoffer is typically smooth in demeanor, so I was actually a bit surprised by the tone of his comment. Perhaps though he was simply speaking in the lingo franca of the Catholic Champion (It's always helpful to speak the same language as your host).

I've actually made the same comment before about the sixteenth century propaganda war. I did so back in June 2009. In that earlier comment, I actually footnoted it, but this time chose not to (In retrospect, perhaps I should have). My footnote stated:

1. David V.N. Bagchi, Luther's Early Opponents: Catholic Controversialists 1518-1525 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 218-219. Catholic apologists were often provoked to bitterness from lack of papal support. Cochlaeus, one of Rome's most zealous defenders complained to a high Roman Catholic official, "If I am ignored by you any longer, I shall wash my hands of the Catholic cause and denounce all bishops and prelates before God and before men" (Bagchi, 219). Cochlaeus, devoted to defending the Roman Church despite no help from her, went on to publish vigorously against the reformers, maintaining his own printing press. Johann Eck, perhaps the leading sixteenth century Catholic apologist, complained throughout his career over a lack of sufficient or sustained material help from Rome (Bagchi, 218).

David Bagchi's book happens to be one of my favorite books on Reformation studies. If I had to make a top ten list, it would definitely be on it, near the top. I actually went out of my way a few years back to track him down and write him a thank you letter for this book. He informed me that he was working on expanding and revising it, so I look forward to the new edition.

In a very non-polemical tone, Bagchi analyzes the written output of the Catholic controversialists from 1518-1525, the crucial years of the literary battle between Luther/Protestantism and Roman Catholic controversialists, and the subsequent failure of those Roman Catholic writers (Bagchi, p.9). While Mr. Hoffer is more than capable of locating this book to read pages 218-219 as cited above, the following information is from pages 198-200:

Finally, we come to the question of the volume of Catholic controversial publishing. In recent years there have been a number of statistical studies of the use of the press at the time of the Reformation. A consistent result of such studies is the apparent quantitative disparity between pamphlets and books published in favor of the Reformation and those published against. M. U. Chrisman's study of polemical pamphlets published in Strasbourg between 1520 and 1529 shows an overall ratio of Protestant to Catholic publications of 5.5 to 1. R. G. Cole's analysis of the Freytag collection of sixteenth-century pamphlets (a collection biased in favor of the major Protestant reformers) produces a ratio of 7.8 to 1. R. A. Crofts based his research on the British Library's holdings of early printed books from German-speaking countries, which he believes to be a more random collection than the Freytag. His figures for the years 1521-30 produce a ratio close to that of Chrisman, 5.7 to 1. Edwards has analyzed Luther's total output and compared this with W. Klaiber's bibliography, supplemented where necessary by other standard biographies of individual controversialists. By excluding from the count Luther's non-polemical titles and polemical works directed against other Protestants, Edwards obtained a Luther to Catholic controversialist ratio of 1.7 to 1 for the years 1518 to 1544. This would also be consistent with a Protestant to Catholic ratio of 5 or 6 to 1 over the same period.

Of course, these statistics have to be used with care, not least because the evidence we have comes largely from titles that have been collected—and therefore selected—at some stage, and it almost certainly gives no very accurate representation of the actual output of sixteenth-century presses. The cumulative evidence can cut both ways, either canceling out the biases of collectors or compounding them. But the cumulative evidence strongly suggests that there was a significant disparity.

Does this disparity reflect a lack of demand for Catholic polemic, and therefore quantify to some extent the degree of their unpopularity and thus of their failure? Or does it reflect an inadequate supply of prolific writers, indicating a reluctance among Roman loyalists to take up the pen to the extent that their Reformation counterparts did? The immediate cause of the discrepancy was, of course, lack of demand. The statistics that show the 5:1 predominance of Protestant pamphlets are drawn from the catalogues of private and public collections. By their very nature, they record only those books that found a purchaser. Generally speaking, books that remained unsold and were otherwise disposed of by printer and retailer cannot be counted. As a matter of fact, these low-budget publishing ventures seem to have depended heavily on demand. This, in turn, would mean that publishers would tend to refuse work offered by Catholics; indeed, we find controversialists such as Emser and Murner having to bear their own publication costs. When a printer did produce Catholic tracts it was more likely to be a matter of conviction rather than of business sense, and he had to subsidize them by producing anti-Catholic tracts too. In addition, he (no women were involved in the printing of Catholic pamphlets at this stage, to my knowledge) ran risks from Protestant authorities because they enforced libel laws selectively and from Catholic authorities because they did not. But this raises the question, Why didn't Catholic works sell?

The problem was to a large extent one of presentation. Defenses of the Roman Church were more likely to be in Latin and were often written in a heavy, "scholastic" style. They were rarely as short as their Reformation counterparts. Their content was also unexciting compared with that of their rivals. The controversialists' work lacked the appeal of the new, and unlike the reformers they could not draw upon the anti-curialism that was particularly prevalent in Germany. Romanist pamphlets did not sell because they were too long and boring. But why did their authors adopt such an unattractive style? Was it perhaps because they were ignorant of the propaganda possibilities of shorter tracts? This is unlikely, because religious writers before the Reformation both exploited the vernacular tract and perceived its potential for agitation.


Perhaps Mr. Hoffer has some tidbits about later Roman Catholic efforts in the sixteenth century. My comment above though was specific to that period scholars identify as the propaganda battle between the two sides. Perhaps Mr. Hoffer isn't familiar with this, and made his rather harsh comments out of ignorance (I'm only using this term in the sense of lack of knowledge, not stupidity). And by the way, I don't mean anything to be taken in any sort of snarky sense.

Update (1/07/10):

"Surveys of the Catholic literary effort against the early Reformation underscore the self-sacrificing spirit of the Catholic defenders, but relate no significant successes in countering the powerful influence of Luther's polemics. The defensive theology of these apologists suffered from the negative task thrust upon them, from having to fight on terrain chosen by the opponents, and from the writers' inexperience in using Scripture in the new critical manner so different from the methods of scholastic theology" Source: Jared Wicks tr., Cajetan Responds: A Reader in Reformation Controversy (Washington: The Catholic University Press of America, 1978), p. 255, footnote #2].

8 comments:

Carrie said...

Thanks James, very interesting!

Ken said...

David Bagchi's book happens to be one of my favorite books on Reformation studies. If I had to make a top ten list, it would definitely be on it, near the top.

Please make the list for us - We all want to know the top ten books on Reformation studies that you would recommend!

James Swan said...

For what it's worth, I did a blog post a while back on Luther resources. I probably could do a top 10 list on books to get, and books to avoid as well.

Paul Hoffer said...

Thank you Mr. Swan for providing a citation for your thoughts. Snarky perhaps was not a good choice of words but I was taking umbrage at the thought that you were spinning the fact that Catholic apologetic efforts in the early portions of the Reformation tended to be more targeted to a different audience than their Protestant counterparts which I think has more to do with the matter than printers' greed. I used the term snarky because of the overall tone of the point (calling apologetic literature propaganda) I thought you were making and because I felt that your point slighted Protestants of the time who I believed were more interested defending their newly minted religion with zeal and fervor as opposed to being motivated by monetary concerns over what books might sell.

That being said, there are several things that the selections you provided do not appear to address. the sources I have suggest that not as many Catholic works were published because they were geared toward different audiences than their Protestant counterparts. Given that Mr. Bagchi notes that Catholic works were written in Latin and the Protestant ones were largely written in the vernacular, I wonder if he had thought of that. I would also be interested to see what bearing he feels the issue of censorship by both Protestant and Catholic secular and religious authorities had on how many works were published. Ditto in regards to the fact that secular authorities licensed who could operate printing presses to prevent literature they disagreed with from being published and what bearing this would have had on the numbers of books published.

Additionally, I would like to see what time period and geographical area his researches cover. Does his work cover the Counter Reformation? St. Francis de Sales' published writings were very well received in Le Chablais and elsewhere in the Calvinist portions of France and led to the reversion of tens of thousands back to the Catholic faith. Thus, there are examples of Catholic writings being very well received.

However, fair is fair. Since you have provided a source, I can no longer accuse you of snarky behavior any longer in regards to that point. I will withhold judgment as to whether I feel your source is flawed until I have read the book which I intend to do as quickly as I can locate one in a library.

God bless!

James Swan said...

Thank you Mr. Swan for providing a citation for your thoughts. Snarky perhaps was not a good choice of words but I was taking umbrage at the thought that you were spinning the fact that Catholic apologetic efforts in the early portions of the Reformation tended to be more targeted to a different audience than their Protestant counterparts which I think has more to do with the matter than printers' greed.

I always find it interesting the way we all read things in to each others' words. I would assume by "different audience" you mean the educated, or elite. Bagchi touches on this- the fact that some of the early Roman Catholic polemicists did not approve of Luther writing about his disputes with Rome via print available to the "common man": Murner "had consistently identified Luther's chief crime as the discussion of advanced theological matters before the simple folk" (p.208). Luther did though, write specifically in Latin at times as well.

You would definitely enjoy Bagchi's book. It is a fascinating read for both Roman Catholic and Protestants. In fact, I'm thinking of going through it again. I find the entire pamphlet-book war between the early Protestants and Roman Catholics absolutely riveting. Similarly, Steven Ozment's books: Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution , and The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland are similarly fascinating reads that touch on the same subject, but not nearly as well as Bagchi's analysis.

I used the term snarky because of the overall tone of the point (calling apologetic literature propaganda) I thought you were making and because I felt that your point slighted Protestants of the time who I believed were more interested defending their newly minted religion with zeal and fervor as opposed to being motivated by monetary concerns over what books might sell.

Both sides produced propaganda. Ozment does an adequate job with a good introduction to the pamphlet wars between RC's and Protestants. Even there though, the Protestants definitely had the upper hand... my guess would be that the overall tone of Western Europe was a bit fed up with the corruption of government and papacy.

As to the sales of books, you probably know not much money (if any) was made by the authors. The printers though did cash in, and Protestant book were more likely to sell, so printers were more likely to print that which would generate income. I don't doubt the sincerity or convictions of either side of those who went through the effort to write and publish (unlike today). But, greed was greed back then as well. Printers saw where the $$ was.

That being said, there are several things that the selections you provided do not appear to address. the sources I have suggest that not as many Catholic works were published because they were geared toward different audiences than their Protestant counterparts.Given that Mr. Bagchi notes that Catholic works were written in Latin and the Protestant ones were largely written in the vernacular, I wonder if he had thought of that

Addressed above. And, it's good you saw what Bagchi says in the text I quoted in this blog entry: "Defenses of the Roman Church were more likely to be in Latin and were often written in a heavy, "scholastic" style." Implied is the target audience indeed, and I'd have to search through Bagchi's book, but I do recall he went into this. If I recall, the idea was that at least some of the early Roman Catholic polemicists intended to keep the battle among theologians.

-cont.-

James Swan said...

-cont.-

I would also be interested to see what bearing he feels the issue of censorship by both Protestant and Catholic secular and religious authorities had on how many works were published.

I read the book quite a while back now, so I'd have to do a close reading again to locate information on this.. From memory, and quickly flipping through it, Bagchi notes a related issue: A Roman Catholic was not to dispute with a known heretic. Heretics were only to be corrected by authority alone (as Tetzel pointed out). Bagchi notes: "Disputing with heretics, they feared, implied the negotiability of the Catholic faith... or it suggested something equally unacceptable, that heretics were...open to the Spirit of Truth" (p.211).

Ditto in regards to the fact that secular authorities licensed who could operate printing presses to prevent literature they disagreed with from being published and what bearing this would have had on the numbers of books published.

This was also addressed in the book, if I recall. I'd have to thumb through it a bit to locate the section.

Additionally, I would like to see what time period and geographical area his researches cover. Does his work cover the Counter Reformation? St. Francis de Sales' published writings were very well received in Le Chablais and elsewhere in the Calvinist portions of France and led to the reversion of tens of thousands back to the Catholic faith. Thus, there are examples of Catholic writings being very well received.

If you recall the exact title of the book and points I made in this very entry, your question is answered. Without knowing the statistics, but having a bit of a clue as to the advancement of the Reformation in Western Europe, I would venture to guess Protestants outsold Roman Catholics in terms of books and pamphlets.

On the other hand, don't miss my overall point. I think the tide has changed (at least in the USA) quite dramatically over the last twenty years. I've been in large chain bookstores all over the United States, and I'm amazed by the amount of Roman Catholic books in the Christianity / Religion section. They may not yet outnumber Protestant- generated books, but there sure are plenty of them. In some instances, the majority of Protestant books are more-or-less the T.D. Jakes-Joyce Myer-Joel Osteen fluff materials, while the Roman Catholic books have a bit more meat to them (there's usually plenty of Ratzinger books to be found). Of course, this is a broad generalization. It's much easier to find an intelligent Roman Catholic publication than a Protestant intelligent publication. In terms of my own "people" for lack of a better word, I can usually count the number of Reformed authors books I find in the big chain bookstore on one hand. So, in terms of popular publishing, Roman Catholics have a competitive horse in the race. If they ever produce authors similar in charisma to (the heretic!) T.D. Jakes, they could take the lead.

However, fair is fair. Since you have provided a source, I can no longer accuse you of snarky behavior any longer in regards to that point.

LOL. Perhaps you could mentor Mr. Bellisario as to demeanor.

I will withhold judgment as to whether I feel your source is flawed until I have read the book which I intend to do as quickly as I can locate one in a library.

Please do get the book. Time allowing, we could read it together by chapter and dialog on it (though in January, my schedule goes absolutely insane). A large chunk of the book is dedicated to the actual argumentation produced by the early Roman Catholic polemicists. This actually interests me a bit more, and there are some rather shocking discoveries- how for instance, "faith alone" was not as hotly contested a point as papal authority.

Paul Hoffer said...

Hi Mr. Swan, thank you for your gracious offer. I have tracked the book down at a Catholic college library about 15 miles away that I have privileges at and have reserved it. I will let you know when I have read it so we can dialogue on it.

God bless!

James Swan said...

Frankly Paul, other than the book giving you some interesting information, I find it highly unlikely you'll disagree with the conclusions of the author.