‘Belly-Worshippers and Greed-Paunches’: Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation* (2024)

Abstract

In Johannes Agricola’s collection of 750 German proverbs, completed in 1534, the Protestant reformer included the phrase ‘He becomes fat from that’ (Er wirt feyßt davon). In outlining its meaning, Agricola describes how, ‘perhaps due to the reason that what the people curse is blessed by God’, it often happens that a person becomes fat from the curses of others. He uses the following as an example:

In the monasteries, the fathers and highest ranks always have fat stomachs, due to the reason, one says, that the common brothers begrudge the fathers their good food, and murmur about their good life. As the fathers sit on soft cushions in their parlour, the poor brother must sit in the chancel and he often reads a wicked verse during the Vesper since he knows that the fathers are having a good life and he must freeze. Due to this wicked verse, the fathers become fat.1

On the surface, this passage presents fatness as a sign of prosperity, of living a ‘good life’, and even as a ‘blessing’ by God. The proverb reads as a message not to resent or curse the good fortune of others; they will only ‘become fat’ from such bitterness.

In attributing the fathers’ fatness to the bitterness of the monks, the proverb seems to remove responsibility for their size from the fathers themselves, suggesting it is a product not of their own indulgence but merely of this resentment. Proverbs would not always be taken at face value, however, and in stating ‘one says’, Agricola distances himself from such reasoning. He then uses the opportunity to reinforce the long-standing tradition which presented the Catholic clergy as fat and intemperate. Whatever the cause of their size, their lives are still presented as luxurious. The monks’ behaviour is also criticized, for not only do they curse or damn the fathers, but they also actively lust after their good food, easy lives and soft cushions, an image of hypocrisy for these supposedly godly men who have taken vows of poverty.

Agricola thus describes a divided monastery, where the luxurious lives of some are symbolized by their fatness, while others hypocritically lust after the luxuries they are denied.2 This image reflects a view of the Catholic Church propagated by reformers who criticized both the gluttons and the ascetics they identified within it. Luther instructed evangelicals to ‘steer a middle course, lest we become either Epicureans and dissolute, or hypocrites and gloomy monks’.3 Whilst fatness could be employed in a positive sense, showing the wealth and power of rulers, here fatness is a critique, with such positive connotations invalidated by the monastic setting. Agricola’s illustration of this proverb thus demonstrates how weight and size could be made to hold particular meaning in a religious context, especially in view of the Reformations.

In her study of Martin Luther’s body, Lyndal Roper proposes that Luther’s bulky size enabled him to become a ‘popular but also human hero’, suggesting that his body was linked to ‘his character, his views of the devil and the emerging identity of Lutheranism’.4 Luther’s size embodied his views on the appetites and his rejection of monasticism, including the celibacy, fasting and asceticism it involved. At the same time, however, she notes that Luther’s large body created a ‘representational problem for the evangelical movement’, as it departed from the typical form of a spiritual figure, for the thinness of saints or clerics underlined ‘their indifference to the temptations of the flesh’.5 Roper thus intimates the possible contradictions of bodyweight and size for reformers. This article draws out these complexities to consider the numerous ways in which fatness and the body could be made to matter in the context of the Lutheran Reformation. It argues that the story extends beyond the figure of Luther, for discussions of weight were ever-present in this society, embedded in fundamental debates about sin and salvation.6

This position contradicts the view that in past societies, fatness was merely understood as a sign of wealth and prosperity, as evidence of the ability to afford excessive amounts of food at a time when hunger was the norm.7 Numerous historians working on the history of corpulence, an area of body history which has received increased attention in line with current concerns about obesity, have similarly challenged this narrative. Michael Stolberg, for instance, has explored medical understandings of obesity in the early modern period, asserting that ‘virtually every major early modern medical author had something to say about obesity’.8 Ken Albala has similarly argued that anxiety over obesity is not a recent phenomenon but may be dated to the seventeenth century, when, he proposes, ‘fear of fat was introduced into people’s minds by physicians’.9 In The Metamorphoses of Fat, the French historian Georges Vigarello argues that ‘a definitive break takes place with the advent of modern Europe’.10 From as early as the sixteenth century, Vigarello claims, those with wide waists were repeatedly spoken of negatively and the medieval praise of ‘massive bodies’ began to disintegrate.11

Whilst these scholars have drawn our attention to the presence of concerns about fatness in past societies, by moving the starting point for such concerns back in time, they continue to reinforce a narrative by which ‘what was good ... became bad’, frequently overlooking nuances in understandings of bodyweight.12 In his recent study Christopher Forth has emphasized that ‘people in pre-modern eras viewed corpulence with ambivalence rather than appreciation’, and his focus on the ambiguities of fatness is a welcome departure from much of the existing historiography on the subject.13 Given the breadth of his work, which examines ‘how fat has been perceived and imagined in the West since antiquity’, however, there remains a need for a more focused approach which is sensitive to the various meanings held by weight and fatness within a specific context.14 This article draws on the perspective of Caroline Walker Bynum, who wrote that people in the past ‘did not have “a” concept of “the body” any more than we do’, that ‘ideas differed according to who held them and where and when’, and thus that ‘even within what we could call discourse communities, ideas about matter, body, and person could conflict and contradict’.15

Bynum was writing from a medievalist’s perspective, and in the article cited above she considered medieval ideas and images of the body with reference to modern notions of the embodied self. Her aim was not to draw parallels between medieval and modern ideas but to emphasize diversity, for medieval writings about the body were just as ‘multiple and multivalent’ as those from the modern period. This article demonstrates that early modern writings about the body, and specifically its size and shape, could be equally complex. Focusing on bodyweight in the context of the Lutheran Reformation, it demonstrates the complicated and often contradictory ways in which bodyweight held meaning within this particular ‘discourse community’, and thereby enriches our understanding of the body’s role in Reformation theology and culture.

Bynum proposed that death was the focus of medieval theology’s preoccupation with the body. In addressing bodyweight in Reformation belief, this article also takes death as its starting point. It begins by exploring ideas surrounding the bodily resurrection and the form of the heavenly body, topics which Bynum uses to consider the complex associations between the body, identity and temporality in the medieval period. We shall see how late medieval debates about continuity after death, which included discussions of the shape and size of resurrected bodies, developed with the Reformations. Erin Lambert argues that Luther used his sermons on the bodily resurrection to explore the relationship between faith and the Christian body.16 Furthermore, questions of bodily continuity and glorification raised by resurrection debates lay at the heart of the crucial Reformation discussion of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Questions of what form the resurrection body would take gained even greater significance with the spread of Lutheran apocalypticism, as it was at the end of the world that all would rise to face God’s judgement. Concerns about the body were intertwined with apocalyptic beliefs, as an increase in gluttony and ‘fatness’ was thought to prove that the world would soon end. This association between fatness and the deadly sin of gluttony, brings us to a central question concerning Luther’s own attitudes towards the body—how was he (and how were his followers) able to reconcile his large size with the criticism of gluttony and excess? This question forms the focus of the second half of this article, which explores the nuances in Luther’s own understandings of fatness and the belly. The perspective then widens once more, to consider the broader significance of bodyweight and size for reformers, exploring their emphasis on moderation and considering how various bodily sizes could be made to fit within the framework of the ‘middle course’.

I. The Bodily Resurrection: Continuity and Glorification

Bynum has demonstrated that medieval discussions about the resurrection of the body were preoccupied with bodily continuity.17 Debates navigated the tension between individuality and glorification, as it was claimed that all would rise again with their own individual bodies, but that these bodies would become incorruptible and heavenly. Bynum outlined the issues:

If it [the body] becomes impassible and incorruptible, how is it still body? If it remains body, how is its resurrection either possible or desirable? To put it very simply: if there is change, how can there be continuity and hence identity? If there is continuity, how will there be change and hence glory?18

Bodyweight and size were included in such concerns, as it was questioned to what extent bodies would return with the same shape and form they had possessed on earth. The twelfth-century German chronicler Otto I, bishop of Freising, explicitly mentioned the problems of fat and thin bodies when he wrote, ‘We must not suppose that … the fat or the thin [are brought back] in their superabundance or their lack of flesh, to a life which ought to be free from every blemish and every spot.’ He included Augustine’s statement that ‘where there is no harmony of parts, a body offends … because it is deformed’, further quoting, in the context of fatness and thinness, ‘there will be no deformity … and what is less than is seemly shall be supplied from a source known to the Creator, and that which is more than comely shall be removed, though the integrity of the matter is preserved’.19 Taken as a whole, Freising’s text suggests that the resurrection body is the same as the earthly body, the parts of which have been reassembled following the same structure.20 Here it appears clear, however, that this reassembling could include an elevation of the body, enabling it to gain a more beautiful form. Following Otto’s statement, therefore, there will be no fat or thin bodies in heaven, as such bodies will be perfected through either removal or supply.

The resurrection of the body was not a particular point of debate in the Reformations, a fact that is reflected in the limited amount of scholarship which examines the doctrine in this context.21 Ronald Rittgers states that both Lutheranism and Catholicism ‘could hold forth the resurrected body as a source of consolation and hope for suffering Christians’, arguing that it was merely over the earthly body that controversy arose.22 Although the details of the resurrection were not strongly disputed, many texts continued to discuss how the body would rise, aiming to dispel the doubts and questions that were clearly still present among congregations.23 Whilst Lutheran theologians generally took the view that resurrected bodies would be glorified, the tension between identity and glorification remained. In 1544, Luther himself emphasized change in the body in a sermon on 1 Corinthians 15, when he wrote that it would ‘lose its figure [Gestalt], that one will see neither a human body nor bodily figure and therefore a more beautiful, clearer, lovelier and more joyful body will rise, in another nature and life’.24 Yet in the same text he states, ‘it will be wholly the same body of a person, as it was created, though it will be another figure or usage of the body’.25

Similarly, a verse from Nicolaus Herman’s hymn on the resurrection written in 1550 recorded,

So the earthly body is buried in the grave/ and will turn to ash and dust/ and from that will grow a body clear/ which will live with God for evermore/ … And what one sees in mortality/ that will rise in splendour/ and what is buried without power/ that will stand in great strength.26

In the first half of the verse, we gain a sense of a new body rising from the dust of the previous one, and the statement that ‘a body’ grows seems to suggest it is not the body. In the second half, however, it is ‘what’ was buried that will return in splendour, thus suggesting that the body that arises is the same body that was buried. Lambert has written of the act of song as binding body and belief, and as singers sang such verses, feeling the vibration of the music and drawing breath for each new line, they would have been intensely aware of their own bodies.27 With voice and vocal tone intimately connected to age and gender, as well as to body shape and size, the individuality of the body would have been presented to them through this act of singing, perhaps increasing a confusion that this individual body would return and yet would not be the body as they knew it.

The difficulty of believing in the resurrection of the body, with all the contradictions it contained, was acknowledged by Luther who wrote in 1544, ‘Reason says: How can I believe that I will return from earth? When I die, I putrefy and become nothing.’ In response he insisted, ‘we should not continue to dispute questions such as how the dead will be resurrected and with which bodies they will come’, but should trust in almighty God and the power of Christ.28 By this time, however, Luther himself had repeatedly discussed the details of the resurrection body, giving seventeen sermons on the doctrine across the years 1532 and 1533 and returning to the subject in another series of sermons from 1544/45 in which these comments appear.29

In line with Luther’s statement on the need to trust in God, Lambert argues, in these sermons Luther explores the ways in which a Christian’s contemplation of the resurrected body might both challenge and undergird their faith. For Luther then, Lambert proposes, ‘one’s understanding of the resurrection of the dead had profound implications for the faith that made one a Christian’, for to deny that human bodies were to rise from the dead was to reject Christ’s own resurrection.30 Questions concerning the glorification of the flesh were thus also central to Reformation discussions about the Real Presence in the Eucharist, an issue which, Roper notes, ‘dominated Luther’s later years and mobilized his deepest energies’ and ultimately ‘split the Reformation’.31 Of the major reformers, Luther alone insisted on the ongoing, incarnate Christ following his death and resurrection, and thus for Luther, Christ had to be both spiritually and physically present in the bread and wine, a topic which has been explored extensively by Reformation scholarship.32 The intertwining of questions of glorification with discussions about the size and shape of the body suggests that complex ideas about fatness and thinness could feed into these crucial wider issues of Reformation theology, granting them real significance for reformers.

II. The Form of the Resurrected Body

One of the most extensive treatises to consider the form of the resurrected body was a work by Michael Fabri, superintendent of the Sayn region (part of today’s Rheinland-Pfalz), entitled On the Common Resurrection of the Dead, which was published in Frankfurt am Main in 1564.33 In a volume of over three hundred folios, Fabri answered questions such as whether we will recognize each other in the next life, whether those of different skin colours will return with the same skin colour and ‘whether we will rise just as big as we are here, just as long and wide, or how else will we rise’.34 The questions he includes reinforce that concerns about glorification and identity continued. In answer to this last question, Fabri quotes Augustine:

It does not follow … that the size of those rising back to life will be different just because there were different sizes here in this life, or that the thin will come back to life with the same thinness, or the fat with the same fatness. But as it stands with the Creator, each shall retain his special characteristics and the recognizable equality of his figure, in other proportions of the body, however, everyone will be the same, in the same way the matter of each will be measured so that nothing of it shall be lost, and He will supply anything that may be missing.35

This passage returns us to the contradictions of continuity and beautification, for although an individual will retain a ‘recognizable equality of his figure’, mysteriously ‘in other proportions’ the individual’s body will become the same as all other bodies, presenting a certain flexibility in ideas of ‘equality’.

In another passage Fabri includes the quotation from Augustine which Otto of Freising had used in the twelfth century. He writes that

there will be no deformity [in the resurrection body] ... what is too small will be changed, what is too few will be substituted ... and for that which is too much, the matter, whilst preserving the integrity of the body, will depart.

Fabri also gives Augustine’s preceding line, in which he states that this being the case, ‘the thin or fat need not fear that there they must also be that to which they were here resigned but did not want’.36 In basing his answer on Augustine, Fabri appears to reach the same conclusion as Freising: there would be no fat or thin bodies in heaven. Augustine himself, however, was inconsistent on whether one would retain the same size and shape as one had on earth.37 In another passage, Augustine wrote, for instance, that ‘each person will be given the stature which he had in his prime ... or, if he died before maturity, the stature he would have attained’.38 Fabri thus offers a selective reading of Augustine, suggesting that he identified more closely with the emphasis on change. Yet how could Fabri reconcile this sense of change with the conflicting notion of a ‘recognizable equality’ of figure?

Whilst the endurance of discussions on continuity suggests confusion, such statements may not have appeared so contradictory to early modern commentators. Whether there was an exact image of the body, which could be lost through perfecting and beautification, must be questioned. Bodies were moulded by clothing and manipulated in portraiture, yet they were not necessarily thought to have lost their individuality or identity. Furthermore, bodies themselves might change more often than today. For example, women were pregnant on average every other year, and thus their bodies would alter in cycles, expanding and contracting regularly.39

A sense of the ‘true form’ of the body does, however, seem to have existed for some. In Giovanni Marinelli’s medical text for women, translated into German in the late sixteenth century, he included a section on how to regain the ‘rightful shape’ (rechtmessige Gestalt) of the body after carrying and bearing many children.40 The body may then have been seen as having a true or natural form, which could be flexible, changing over time with external influences such as fasting or childbirth. This understanding might align with contemporary medical understandings of the body, where a person’s character and health were thought to be determined by their complexion (which indicated a natural tendency towards an excess of one of the four humours), yet could nevertheless be influenced by external factors such as the six non-naturals (air, motion and rest, sleeping and waking, food and drink, excretion, and the passions or emotions).41

The lengthy and complex discussions of bodily resurrection contain numerous apparent contradictions and possible explanations. Even this limited exploration provides a sense of the layers of meaning that ideas about bodyweight and size could contain, both for this issue and more broadly in this period. Discussions of continuity and glorification suggest that while the size and shape of the body could function as a marker of identity, this identity was not necessarily fixed. Furthermore, Fabri’s statement that the fat and thin are resigned to bodies they do not want reinforces a contemporary ideal of medium proportion. In asserting that they should not worry about having such unwanted bodies in heaven, Fabri presents an image of blessed bodies as fulfilling that ideal, and it is to these heavenly, glorified bodies that we now turn.

III. Heavenly Bodies

The image of the middling heavenly body suggested by Fabri is also present in the sermon on 1 Corinthians 15 by Lutheran reformer Johannes Mathesius which was published posthumously in 1587.42 The majority of texts on the resurrection are not as explicit in their discussion of fat and thin bodies as Fabri’s, but as Mathesius’s work demonstrates, expectations for the resurrected body can be revealed as part of other discussions. In his explanation of the continuity of the body, Mathesius notes that the bodies of all people in this world are from the same flesh and are subject to sin, yet there remain distinctions between them (just as heavenly bodies will be the same as earthly bodies yet will also be superior). He states, ‘one has a beautifully formed, well-proportioned and noble body, whilst the other is born for servitude’, reflecting the hierarchical model of the Ständelehre, by which society was divided into class-based ‘estates’, or Stände.43 This teaching was reinforced by Lutheranism, and here Mathesius grants it an embodied dimension, suggesting such divisions were innate rather than socially constructed. He continues,

When God wants to use one person for government or great things, he gives them greater gifts, in bodily power, understanding, heart and bravery, just as virtue shines more brightly and is more majestic in a beautiful and upright body, as Saul had, than in Marcolpho or a natural fool.44

In stating that the resurrection body will be superior to the earthly body just as noble bodies are better formed than those intended for servitude, Mathesius suggests that the heavenly body will contain features he identifies as noble and virtuous. Bodyweight is brought into this image with his reference to ‘Marcolpho’, a figure from the story of Solomon and Markolf, which was popular in Germany, in which the figure of Markolf was typically presented as short and fat. In a Shrovetide play by Hans Sachs, for instance, a market stall-holder compares the ugliness of another character, Esopus, with that of Markolf, who ‘has a large mouth, swollen jowls … a big swollen belly … with bandy legs, fat and short’.45 In comparison to such bodies of ‘natural fools’, the blessed body will be like that of Saul, described in the bible as tall and handsome (1 Samuel 9:2).

In addition to their beauty, the strength of heavenly bodies was repeatedly emphasized. In Luther’s sermon on 1 Corinthians 15 from 1533, he stated that the heavenly body

will be so strong that with one finger it will be able to carry this church, with one toe it will be able to move a tower and play with a mountain as children play with a ball … For then the body will be sheer strength, as it is now sheer feebleness and weakness.46

Mathesius connected this strength of the heavenly body directly to its size when he stated, ‘from this slender [schmächtig], wretched body which is wasting away, a stronger, more powerful, more solid and healthier body will grow’.47 The blessed body is thus glorified in comparison not only to the shortness and fatness of Markolf, but also to weak and feeble bodies. Mathesius’s use of schmächtig is a specific reference to size or weight; the term can be used to mean ‘delicate’, but in the sense of slender, slight or slim.48 Following both Fabri and Mathesius, therefore, the bodies of the blessed are neither thin nor fat, but rather, well-proportioned, strong and solid, reinforcing the male ideal for earthly bodies.

Although strong and solid, blessed bodies were understood to be weightless, which adds a further layer to the relationship between bodyweight and size. In Mathesius’s text, for instance, he describes how the bodies of the blessed will ‘float in the air like the birds of heaven and the angels’.49 Luther too described them as being ‘so light and nimble that [they] will soar both down here on earth and up above in the heavens in a moment’ and he repeatedly stated the body would be ‘as light as the air’.50 Sander Gilman has used such descriptions of the lightness of heavenly bodies to argue that they were understood as ‘perfectly light and slim’, and he therefore proposes that ‘Luther’s text [on 1 Corinthians 15 from 1533] depicts only fat bodies this side of heaven’.51 Yet this notion of the weight of the body in heaven was not necessarily intended as a comment on body size. In a society in which it was not common to weigh bodies, changes in the body would likely be assessed in relation to clothing rather than in measures of heaviness, and therefore references to a light body are not necessarily related to thinness.

Admittedly, images of the Last Judgement did occasionally present differences in weight between the blessed and damned in terms of fatness and thinness. In Stefan Lochner’s painting of the Last Judgement dated 1435 (Fig. 1), we see a clear distinction, with those bodies destined for heaven shown as slender, with long and narrow limbs, whilst the hellish are shown as ‘weightier’, with rotund bellies. While hellish bodies were considered the only resurrected bodies that held weight, both heavenly and hellish figures were, however, often depicted as the same size, with the distinction in weight indicated by other means. In Hans Wächtlin’s woodcut of the Last Judgement from 1508 (Fig. 2), the bodies of the damned and the blessed appear to be the same size, but they are differentiated by their weightiness. Those rising to meet the angel of heaven hover effortlessly out of their graves, whilst those destined for hell are shown as either needing to be pulled up by a demon or as having to push themselves up from the ground, which appears to require great effort and thus indicates their weightiness. Weight also had particular meaning in images of the Last Judgement, which traditionally involved the weighing of souls. In Roger van der Weyden’s painting of 1450 (Fig. 3), the two figures on the scales appear the same size, but the body of the damned soul weighs down the scales, perhaps presenting this notion of the weighted bodies of sinners. By contrast, in Hans Memling’s image from the 1460s (Fig. 4), the blessed figure is shown as weighing more, although again the bodies of the two figures appear of equal size, probably because in the Catholic tradition the act of weighing was understood as an assessment of the good works of an individual—weighing more was a measure of having performed a greater number of good works.52 Whilst these paintings are both fifteenth-century examples, with their contradictory presentations of weight in relation to judgement, they suggest that equating weight (as a measure of heaviness) with ideas of fatness and thinness in this context is problematic.

Gilman’s suggestion that Luther’s sermons present the distinction between heavenly and earthly bodies as being between thin and fat is too simple. Lightness was evidently not necessarily an indication of thinness, and Luther also specifically states that the heavenly body will ‘no longer hunger or thirst, become tired or decrease in size [abnemen]’, indicating that only earthly bodies are at risk of becoming thin.53 Furthermore, Luther never actually speaks of the earthly body as being fat. Rather, he writes of the belly of the earthly body, describing how ‘we must bear this heavy, indolent paunch [Wanst] about with us, lift it, and have it led’.54 Earlier in the same text he stated that existence in heaven will be wholly different and beautiful, ‘otherwise what would God really have accomplished, if things would not be different, if man would always have to bear his paunch and sack of stench with him and eternally stuff himself and eliminate’.55 This large and heavy belly is to be read metaphorically, as a reference to the appetites and bodily processes to which we are all subjected. Luther certainly embraced earthly appetites, but his concern here is that in heaven, man will not ‘eat, drink, or do what follows’, meaning the processes of digestion and excretion.56 In contrast to the heavenly nourishment of God, on earth the needs of the stomach are a burden, like a sack or paunch which one must bear on the body. On earth one cannot escape the belly’s needs, an idea that accords with Luther’s understanding of human nature as inherently sinful following the Fall. The paunch or sack-like stomach of the earthly body therefore did not merely represent fatness; it had for Luther a deeper meaning associated with appetites and bodily processes, as well as with human sinfulness.

Such discussions within Lutheranism about the form of the resurrected and heavenly body would have become increasingly relevant with the growth of apocalypticism in the later sixteenth century, for resurrection would take place at the end of the world. The relationship between bodyweight and sinfulness is reinforced in the context of apocalyptic belief, as ‘fatness’ resulting from the deadly sin of gluttony took on particular meaning as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

IV. Gluttony and the Apocalypse

As Robin Barnes has noted, following Luther’s death in 1546, ‘the number of prophetic interpretations and apocalyptic warnings published in Lutheran centres rose rapidly and steadily’.57 One reason for the increase was the significance placed on Luther’s own prophetic statements, for ‘eschatological tension pervaded Luther’s whole world-view’.58 Many reformers believed that the biblical signs of the apocalypse were being fulfilled, most prominently with the presence of the Antichrist in the form of the pope (or the papacy in general), who had become a ‘lord above Emperor, King and mighty Prince’ and to whom the whole of Christendom was subjected.59 For the theologian Nicolaus von Amsdorf, the first Lutheran bishop in the Holy Roman Empire, the false teachings of the pope included the forbidding of ‘marriage and food’ for his clergy ‘under the guise of piety’, which, von Amsdorf wrote in 1554, was ‘alone enough through which one should recognize the Antichrist’.60 By denying the appetites of the clergy, the papacy had left God’s kingdom behind, as the true church was ‘not grounded in eating [and] drinking ... but in the power of the spirit, belief and love’.61 The association of the denial of bodily appetites with the Antichrist implicates the body in the belief that the apocalypse was imminent.

A further sign of the end of the world was the proliferation of gluttony and drunkenness. Using Luke 21:34, ‘Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day [the Day of Judgement] will close on you suddenly like a trap’, commentators claimed that the excessive eating and drinking of contemporary society proved that the world would soon end. Writing of this passage during Advent in 1522, Luther had proposed that ‘from these words it is clear that the people will give themselves to gluttony and drunkenness and temporary nourishment beyond all moderation’.62 Luther related this excess to his own era: ‘Such sumptuous and various food and drink has ... never been so common as it is now.’63

Lutheran churchman, homiletician and Gnesio-Lutheran official Gregor Strigenitz connected these two signs of the apocalypse in his collection of sermons published in 1598.64 The denial of appetites propagated by Catholicism had prompted such excesses, he claims: ‘Because they were so broken by the godless and idolatrous torture-fasts of the Pope, [people] thought ... they could reach heaven through gluttony and drunkenness.’65 Unable to maintain moderation, they ‘feasted from morning till night’, which Strigenitz links directly to the coming apocalypse: ‘Then we see before our eyes that it is happening just as the Lord Christ said, that the last belly-world [Bauchwelt] can no longer eat, but gorge [fressen], no longer drink, but guzzle [sauffen].’66

What were the implications of such gluttony and drunkenness, and of the coming apocalypse, for the body? One clue can be found in Strigenitz’s comparison of contemporary gluttony with the biblical tale of the Israelites, who after their escape from Egypt forgot the struggles they had faced there and became complacent and gluttonous. Strigenitz draws a comparison in noting that ‘nowadays we should also not forget the darkness in which our forbearers were placed under the papacy’—freedom from fasting must not be allowed to lead to gluttony.67 The story from Exodus was a common trope in tracts against gluttony. Sebastian Franck used the tale in a text from 1531, describing how Moses stated to the Israelites, ‘You have become fat, wide and smooth [feyst, dick vnd glat], and when one is so fat and full, he forsakes the God who made him and follows false idols.’ Here the idol is the stomach, for Franck writes, ‘[those who are] full, call their belly God’, using the notion of the ‘belly-worshipper’ or ‘belly-servant’ (Bauchdiener).68 In making this comparison to the Israelites, Strigenitz presents the reader with an image of the gluttonous, apocalyptic body as ‘fat, wide and smooth’, with ‘fatness’ thus presented as a direct sign of sin.

To a modern reader, the connection between gluttonous eating and a fattening of the body appears self-explanatory, but the link between food consumption and bodyweight was not always recognized. A second-century physiognomic text suggested that gluttony was indicated by an ‘excessive slenderness and thinness of the stomach’.69 For the medieval period, Susan Hill has written of a ‘disconnection between being a glutton and being fat’, which was underscored, she proposes, by the case of Adam and Eve, whose sin was gluttony and yet whose bodies were not marked by fatness.70

The connection between gluttony and fatness in apocalyptic texts certainly could have been meant literally. Images of gluttons from this period frequently present them with rotund and expansive bodies (as we will see) and several contemporary works do appear to confirm a connection between gluttony and fatness. In a sermon published in 1584, for instance, Mathesius stated that the glutton ‘fattens himself like a pig in a sty’.71 Similarly, the volume on the vices of gluttony and drunkenness edited by reformer and theologian Matthias Erb included the statement ‘we should not fatten the body like a pig’.72 As Alison Stewart notes, the pig was a common symbol of gluttony, and its fatness was part of this association.73 The belief in the coming apocalypse, a key feature of Lutheranism, may thus have been accompanied by a sense that people’s bodies were changing physically, that they were growing fatter as gluttony became more frequent. Again, however, we must be sensitive to the nuances of understandings of ‘fatness’. Just as the ‘paunch’ was used by Luther to represent both the appetites and human sinfulness, the ‘fatness’ of the gluttonous body may also have been deployed metaphorically.

Luther used the pig not just as a symbol of gluttony but also to represent unbelief or ignorance. In a sermon on the resurrection from 1533 he derided, ‘All right, if you refuse to believe, go your way and remain a pig.’74 Similarly, in another text on 1 Corinthians 15, from 1544, he wrote of those who turn away from the ‘true faith’, such as cardinals, bishops and the pope, as being stuck in ‘pig-belief’ (Sawglauben).75 The idea of ‘fattening the body like a pig’ might thus convey a deeper meaning, as the ‘fatness’ caused by gluttony might not be merely literal but rather, in the minds of reformers, be connected to such ideas of unbelief and lack of true faith.

As we have seen, in the context of discussions about the resurrected body and the apocalypse, bodyweight and fatness held complex associations for reformers and could even be intertwined with fundamental questions of what it meant to be a Christian. Building on the metaphorical use of fatness, we turn now to Luther’s understandings of body size and shape, considering the ways in which fatness and the belly could signify more than literal corporeality for the reformer.

V. Luther and the Belly

Sander Gilman has argued that in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 15 from 1532, Luther is the creator of ‘the Protestant distinction between the merely huge and the obese’ and that ‘Luther’s is the central theological statement of a distinction that remained in place until at least the mid-twentieth century, which sees a difference between a “healthy” and a “pathologically” fat body’.76 Whilst Luther does hold a distinction between forms of fatness, Gilman’s reading of his position is problematic. He views the difference as being between a positive, solid fat body and a negative, bloated one. Gilman’s argument for the bloated body rests almost entirely on a single comment made by Luther, in which he criticized Isaiah’s audience, calling them ‘vexatious windbags’, a translation that appears in the standard English edition of Luther’s works.77 Gilman uses this language to propose that ‘their bellies are expansive but only because they are filled with air’.78 In the original German, however, Luther calls the audience ‘vexatious mouths’ (verdriesliche Meuler), which has the same connotations as the English term ‘windbag’ (that they are all mouth/talk) but does not support Gilman’s argument.79 Instead, Luther’s distinction focuses primarily on the belly. As we have seen, in his sermons on the resurrection Luther used the metaphorical ‘paunch’ to represent the sinfulness of human nature. Beyond this text, Luther consistently used—both metaphorically and literally—the image of the fat stomach weighed down by the appetites, to represent the figure of the ‘belly-worshipper’. In contrast, where fatness is evenly spread throughout the body, Luther considered it a positive sign of fruitfulness and prosperity.80

We can see this distinction in a comment on Psalm 92, which states that the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. Writing in 1531, Luther first quotes the Psalm as stating, ‘When you become old, you will nevertheless blossom and remain fruitful and fresh.’ He continues,

We know well, that means: ‘you will still bloom with grey hair, and be fat [fett] and green’. Yet what is being said? The Psalm compared the Righteous with the trees, both palm tree and cedar, which do not have grey hair, and are also not fat [fett] (which a German will understand as lard and think of a fat belly [einen feisten bauch]). But the prophet wants to say, the Righteous are such trees, which continue to blossom, remain fruitful and fresh, despite becoming old, and they remain so eternally.81

Luther thus demonstrates that fatness could be understood as fruitfulness and prosperity. In 1520, in his commentary on Psalm 67 Luther notes the description that the ‘mountain of God is a fat mountain [ein fetter bergk]’ and writes that Christian people will become ‘fat, rich [and] fruitful’ (fett, reich, fruchtbar).82 But this is not fatness in the way Germans will understand it, he teaches; it does not mean ‘a fat belly’. The distinction between these two kinds of ‘fat’ appears linguistic, the difference between fett and feist, but here Luther also connects the adjective feist explicitly with the belly. He thus distinguishes between the fatness (described by fett) that is the fruitfulness of God and the ‘fat belly’ (using the adjective feist) which he describes as the ‘German’ understanding of fatness.

Primarily, a fat belly could be understood as a sign of gluttony and drunkenness. As we saw above, such vices were described as fattening the body, often isolated to the stomach. Gregory the Great had stated in his Pastoral Care that ‘when the belly is distended through gluttony, the virtues of the soul are ruined by impurity’, identifying the fatness of gluttony as the fatness of the belly.83 Similarly, Matthias Erb’s volume describes how with gluttony and drunkenness, the stomach expands to the point where it ‘wants to rip with the weight of food’ and becomes ‘stretched like a drum’.84 Such descriptions offer an image of the glutton’s belly as unnaturally large, with such disproportionate bellies clearly seen in several caricatures created by Hans Weiditz around the year 1520. Seven of his woodcuts created in this period contain such figures. Perhaps most notably, in Dance Partners (Fig. 5), the man’s belly is drastically out of proportion with his limbs. With his chin lifted as though gasping for air, he appears to struggle to move with the weight of his over-extended stomach, even though he pronounces he can dance and skip ‘in a courtly manner’. In Winebag and Wheelbarrow (Fig. 6), the drunkard’s belly is so large he needs a wheelbarrow to trundle it around and he states, ‘I am a true winebag, for [I carry] my belly on wheels.’ This use of the wheelbarrow appears to have become a common motif and was repeated elsewhere in northern Europe in this period.85

The motif of the wheelbarrow also appears in a caricature of Luther from the 1630s (Fig. 7). This use of Luther’s large size to criticize the reformer is relatively unusual. As Roper points out, Lutherans were so successful in making his size ‘part of the positive image of Lutheranism, that there are almost no examples of anti-Lutheran visual polemic that exploit what one might expect would be an easy target’.86 Where criticism was based on his large body, as in this image, it was focused on the belly; in positive representations of Luther’s size, by contrast, his overall largeness provided an image of power. Johannes Cochlaeus’s contemporary criticism of Luther supports this interpretation. Writing about the period shortly before Luther’s death, Cochlaeus stated,

What kind of sanctity or of a miracle is there in this, that every evening after a supper lavishly prepared and abundantly partaken of, with his belly distended by food and drink, he looked out of the window of his dwelling and prayed for a little while.87

Cochlaeus does not critique Luther by calling him ‘fat’, but rather focuses on this enlargement of (just) his belly through food and drink. The emphasis on the isolated largeness of Luther’s belly evoked the specific sins of gluttony and drunkenness, while also suggesting Luther is a hypocrite, for he is himself a ‘belly-worshipper’, the very charge he placed against the Catholic clergy.

Preaching against the monastic vow of chastity in the late 1530s, Luther explicitly described the Catholic clergy as ‘vain belly-worshippers and greed-paunches’ (bauch diener [und] geitzwenste).88 In this characterization of the Catholic Church as servants of the stomach, Luther associated Catholicism with the belly and, in particular, the ‘fat belly’. In 1522, Luther had instructed Christians to ‘be in the empire of Christ and not of the pope, for they say they are spiritual but are more worldly than spiritual, they are fat-bellies [mestbeuch] and remain fat-bellies’.89Mestbeuch derives from the verb mästen, meaning to fatten, usually in the context of livestock, and thus suggests overfeeding with the direct intention of becoming fat.

On one level, this image of the fattened belly of Catholicism was a criticism of the physical bodies of the clergy, which presented their gluttony and thus the hypocrisy of their teachings on fasting. In 1527 Luther spoke of preachers who were ‘stomach worshippers and gormandizers’ (bauchdiener und fresslinge) who ‘through their preaching seek for nothing other than that they possess enough and may fill their paunches’.90 He described the pope specifically as a ‘foul paunch [and] lazy belly’, and the fat belly of the clergy is perhaps best depicted visually in Lucas Cranach’s The Origins of the Antichrist of 1545 (Fig. 8), where the pope (as the Antichrist) is shown lying nude, exposing a particularly fat stomach and thus presented as a worldly belly-worshipper.91

The use of fatness to denote gluttony in criticisms of the Catholic clergy did not originate with the Lutheran Reformation, but had a long tradition across Europe. Boccaccio’s Decameron, from the fourteenth century, for instance, includes a tale about an abbot who on discovering that a monk has a young woman in his cell resolves to sleep with her himself. As he gets onto the monk’s bed he decides he cannot lie on top of her for fear of ‘hurting her by his excessive weight’.92 This tale also demonstrates the long-standing connection between overindulgence in food and heightened sexuality, which added a further dimension to the criticism of the clergy’s excess. Drawing on medieval critiques, such stories proliferated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany. The chronicle of the Counts of Zimmern (1565–1567), for example, contains a tale about a monk who was so fat that he became stuck in a doorway, preventing ‘many honest people’ from escaping a fire and thus causing their deaths.93 In Julius Zincgref’s Deutsche Apophthegmata of 1644, a Carthusian monk is asked why he is so ‘very wide and fat’ when Carthusians ‘only eat fish’, to which he answers that they make oil from grapes.94 This tale presents the common accusation that despite the strict limits on certain foods dictated by Catholicism, the clergy continued to stuff themselves and become fat. In his sermon on fasting, Strigenitz stated, ‘The papacy has not correctly understood the teachings on fasting, and thought that fasting meant when one ate no meat, no eggs nor butter but continued to eat other food and gorged oneself so full on fish that one wanted to throw-up’, and noted that to ‘fill oneself so full that the belly swells ... that is not what the holy text calls fasting’.95 Zincgref’s anecdote underlines such criticism by suggesting the monk is able to eat so much oil that he can become fat whilst remaining within the supposedly strict diet of the Carthusians. This dichotomy aligns with the complaints of reformers who, Christopher Kissane has proposed, ‘contrasted the oppressive influence of fasting regulations on ordinary people with the attitude of the church elite’.96

Luther knew, however, that not all clergy were living such luxurious lives, and his own monastic experience had certainly not been one of gluttony. Roper describes Luther’s time at the monastery in Erfurt as a ‘life of extreme mental and bodily mortification’, where his strict observance meant physical chastisem*nt.97 In 1539, Luther was recorded as stating, ‘I almost fasted myself to death, for again and again I went for three days without taking a drop of water or a morsel of food. I was very serious about it.’98 Martin Brecht wrote that in the monastery, ‘one sacrificed not only one’s possessions but also one’s body’.99 At the time of Luther’s disputation with Johannes Eck in 1519, Petrus Mosellanus described the reformer’s ‘thin body, so exhausted by cares and study that if you look closely you can almost count all his bones’.100 Luther later reflected that ‘being a monk was all about controlling one’s diet and sleep, castigating the flesh and fighting sexual urges’; in his rejection of that life, Roper writes, ‘the transformation of Luther was as much physical and emotional as it was theological’.101 This dramatic physical transition, including the weight-gain identified by Roper, prompts the question of how Luther could reconcile his own experience of monasticism with the critique of Catholicism which presented monks as intemperate ‘fat-bellies’.

First, Luther recorded that ‘only truly afflicted consciences fasted in earnest’, suggesting that his asceticism was not the norm in the monastery.102 He also proposes, however, ‘This is the truth: the most pious monk is the worst scoundrel. He denies that Christ is the mediator and high-priest and turns him into a judge.’103 Luther saw this extreme denial of the flesh, as with good works, as merely an act undertaken to impress Christ, the judge, rather than an act of true belief. This criticism of the fasting of ascetics also suggested their self-denial was intended to impress those around them, as a self-fashioning that allowed them to demonstrate how holy they were through their appearance. In a sermon from 1532, Luther drew on Matthew 6:16, ‘When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting’, in arguing that such hypocrites fasted only in order

to be seen by the people, and to have a name, so that one would wonder and have to say, ‘Oh those are those excellent saints who do not live like common people but dress in grey, hang their heads and look sombre and pale. If they do not reach heaven, where will we be?’.104

Preaching in Regensburg in 1573, Lutheran theologian Josua Opitz opined that ‘this kind [of hypocritical fasting] is also the papist fasting implemented by their idol in Rome’ and in recording that such fasting was ‘flaunted’ before God and the people, Opitz identified an element of performance in Catholic fasts.105 Christina Johanna Bischoff has suggested that in denying the self, the medieval ascetic acted with an audience in mind. In order to separate themselves from the world, she proposes, ascetics saw their behaviour from the point of view of the other, and therefore ‘a relation to the outside world is always presupposed in the liberation from worldliness’ and the monk ‘stages’ this lack of relationship with society.106

Whether Catholics circumvented the restrictions of fasting (either through dispensations or by gorging themselves on permitted foods such as oil and fish) or kept a strictly ascetic diet, they could thus still be portrayed as hypocrites by reformers. Returning to Luther’s statement that ‘they say they are spiritual but are more worldly than spiritual, they are fat-bellies and remain fat-bellies’, we recognize that his use of fatness in this context is a reference not so much to gluttony as to worldliness in general. He uses the notion of the ‘fat belly’ or ‘paunch’ as a metaphor, so even emaciated ascetics can be ‘fat-bellies’ or ‘belly-worshippers’, because they are acting out of the worldly desire to impress those around them, fashioning their bodies to proclaim their faith. This intentionality is reflected in his use of the descriptive term mestbeuch, derived from the verb mästen (to fatten up) (see also pp. 20-1 above), which suggests deliberate fattening.

In his study of the original notion of the belly-worshipper in the Pauline epistles, Karl Olav Sandnes argues that Paul did not consider the outward appearance or form of the belly to be a sign of spiritual significance; the stomach was rather a ‘codeword’ for Paul.107 The belly represented a life controlled by the desires, and although such desires could involve food or drink, ‘belly-devotion’ also referred to a ‘self-centred attitude aiming at pleasing oneself’.108 Similarly, Luther’s characterization of the clergy as ‘fat-bellies’ was not merely a criticism of overeating, for Luther also used the belly as the symbol of a life governed by desire. The ‘fat belly’ could thus be a particularly pertinent term for those who restricted their consumption. When, around 1540, Luther declared, ‘It is a religious obligation of the Franciscans not to touch gold and silver with their hands, although in their hearts they foster ravenous hunger, they long for and consume the wealth of the entire world’, he was reflecting the idea that those who deny their appetites and desires experience them all the more strongly and are governed by them to a greater extent than those who embrace them.109

VI. Reform and Moderation

For Luther, both extremes of gluttony and asceticism could be represented by the ‘fat belly’, just as in Agricola’s explanation of the proverb with which we began, his portrayal of the monastery criticized both the luxurious lives of the fathers and the jealous lusting of the monks. This duality might help explain how Luther was able to criticize the Catholic clergy as being fat and preach against gluttony and drunkenness whilst embracing the appetites and making his own large body part of his presentation as a ‘popular but also human hero’.110 Susan Karant-Nunn considers Luther’s indulgent eating, as suggested by his portraits, to have contributed to a sense of his own ‘sinfulness’, perhaps indicating that he was unable to reconcile his criticisms and his own reality.111 Luther’s complex understanding of fatness proposes a further explanation, however: perhaps he did not view his own large body in the same way as he viewed the ‘fat-bellies’ of those he criticized. When Luther famously described himself as fat or stout in 1546—he used the adjective feist in his statement that at his death he would ‘give the maggots a fat doctor [einen feisten Doctor] to eat’—he was likely teasing, rather than criticizing, himself. He also did not connect his own fatness specifically with his belly, suggesting he perhaps distinguished his fatness from the specific fatness of the stomach with which he associated the Catholic clergy.112

His was certainly not the fat belly of the hypocrite, as Luther spoke out against the fasting of Catholicism and embraced the appetites, stating that their enjoyment was admitted by God. In a sermon from 1534, he used the common proverb ‘On a full stomach stands a happy head’ in noting that eating and drinking ‘is a lovely and necessary work’.113 As suggested by Roper, his embrace of his appetite for food, evidenced by his large body, might also be linked to his rejection of Catholic celibacy, modifying the medieval connection between appetites whereby indulgent eating suggested lasciviousness.114 Returning to eating, Luther wrote around 1540 that ‘abstinence does not please God ... He wants us to preserve our bodies, not to kill them. Therefore He has given us food, drink, clothing, the sun, and the moon.’ Yet, he was quick to point out,

it is not our intention to provide a defence of the wicked Epicureans and antinomians in this way. If they hear this, they look for nothing but excessive luxury and gluttony, in which they exceed all bounds and transgress the laws of godliness and respectability.

He emphasized the need to live with humility, stating, ‘Hypocrites do not do this. They imagine that they are showing deference to God if they abstain. Nor do gluttons, who imagine that it is godly and permitted to stuff themselves and misuse the creatures of God’. He commanded evangelicals to ‘observe moderation’ and insisted, ‘we ought to steer a middle course’.115

This idea of the middle course was a key concept in reformers’ understandings of eating and the body, and the need for moderation was frequently underlined.116 In rejecting the fasting of Catholicism, for instance, in 1523 Luther spoke of the ‘evangelical means of fasting and praying ... This fasting is moderate eating and drinking.’117 Preaching in 1530, Luther first outlined the fasting of the church fathers who ‘did not eat or drink all day and barely slept’, then stated, perhaps surprisingly in light of his generally positive attitude towards the body, ‘I call that the true fasting of Christians, when one causes pain to the whole body and constrains it with all five senses, and one must reject everything that makes one soft.’ He noted, however,

But I do not trust myself to accomplish such fasting, and I do not want to impose it on anyone else. Everyone must look to themselves and how they feel, because we are not all the same and so there can be no common rule.

And then continued,

As far as there is a common rule for all Christians, everyone is required to remain moderate, sober and virtuous ... Although not everyone can keep to the high fasting, they can remain moderate in eating, drinking and all other needs of the body.’118

Luther’s understanding of the differences between people suggests that the amount of food required to maintain ‘moderation’ would be dictated by the individual body, a point made also by Strigenitz when he recorded that one should ‘eat as much as was necessary for one to maintain one’s body’.119 Luther reinforced this position when in 1536 he stated of the Elector of Saxony, ‘Our elector, who is quite a robust man, can stand a great deal of drinking. What he needs to satisfy himself is enough to make his neighbour drunk, for he is a man with a very strong body.’120 To make allowance for his elector’s excessive drinking, Luther presented it as necessary, rather than immoderate, because his body required ‘a great deal of drinking’ to be satisfied. The eating of a large amount of food by someone of a large body could be similarly justified. Here may also lie an explanation for how Luther’s and Philip Melanchthon’s very different bodies could fit into the reformers’ teachings about fasting and the body, as Melanchthon’s thinness could be understood simply as his natural body, which he fed with just enough to sustain it, rather than as the result of the hypocritical fasting of an ascetic.121

The difficulty of judging what was enough to sustain a body would have made the line between eating to support a large body and eating to excess somewhat subjective, complicating definitions of gluttony. In his biography of Luther, Melanchthon wrote that the reformer was ‘by nature something I often marvelled at, neither small nor weak in body, though he ate and drank little; I saw him on four consecutive days neither eat nor drink a thing the entire time, yet he remained completely strong.’122 Roper argues that this statement reveals ‘just how difficult Luther’s followers found his appearance’ and proposes that Melanchthon sought to portray Luther as a ‘haggard hermit’.123 Yet Melanchthon openly stated that Luther was not small and appeared to admire his strength and largeness. Rather than wanting to present Luther as ‘haggard’, Melanchthon seems to have been more concerned to clarify that his friend’s size was not the result of gluttony; he therefore emphasized that Luther did practise moderation and only ate enough to maintain his body, which although naturally large did not require a lot of food.

Just as Luther’s size was only a problem if caused by the excesses of gluttony, Melanchthon’s thinness could be reconciled with the teachings of moderation and the appreciation of the appetites as long as it was not contrived in order to appear holy. Fasting was not inherently rejected by reformers; they set their sights only on fasting as a ‘good work’. In 1520 Luther actively encouraged fasting, with the condition that ‘this same work must not occur in the belief that a person will appear pious before God by doing so’.124 The thought-processes behind eating and fasting were thus of great significance to reformers’ discussions of both, and emotional responses could also be relevant. Strigenitz wrote, ‘If God grants one a good roasted, fat capon, one should recognize it as a gift of God, and enjoy it and say thanks, and not feel guilty about it.’125 Luther’s distinction between the ‘fat-bellies’ of the Catholic church and the prosperous fatness of the righteous may have had a mental and emotional dimension. In forbidding certain foods at certain times and on certain days through the year, Catholics were creating restrictions which might trouble the conscience, causing a guilt which Luther himself experienced and criticized. Roper writes that ‘Luther later spoke with anger about the kind of seeming holiness that focused on externals, leaving consciences burdened’.126 God’s gifts should be accessed free of such cares or guilt, Luther held, which meant enjoying the ‘fatness’ of prosperity and fruitfulness, denied by Catholicism.

In focusing on thought-processes and emotional responses to food and eating and on the maintenance of the body, Lutherans could reduce the significance of actual bodyweight and size. Both ‘fat’ and ‘thin’ bodies could be accepted and reconciled with their teachings so long as they were being fed without guilt or pretensions of piety and with the right amount of food to sustain them. Within such an acceptance of various bodily forms, however, the extremes of fatness and thinness would be rejected if they were a result of departing from this teaching of moderation. Furthermore, such ‘fat’ and ‘thin’ bodies might be constructed with an audience in mind, with the emaciation of the ascetics intended as evidence of their holiness and the fat bodies of gluttons an advertisem*nt of their wealth. For Luther, both ascetics and gluttons could then be viewed as ‘fat-bellies’, a term that symbolized for him the worldly and self-centred of whatever body size. In turn, the ‘fatness’ of the righteous could be applied to all true believers, whether or not their bodies were fat. The ‘fat’ body evidently signified more than mere physical size.

VII. Conclusion

Weight and size, fatness and thinness were made to matter in the Lutheran Reformation. The size and shape of the body held meaning for reformers in settings ranging from apocalyptic belief and debates surrounding the resurrection of the body to Luther’s criticism of the Catholic Church, all of which contributed to fundamental understandings of what it meant to be a Lutheran. A focus on the belly ran through these framings of fatness, with the belly that was a burden weighing down the earthly body, the ‘last belly-world’ of the apocalypse, and the fat belly of Catholicism as identified by Luther. For Luther in particular, the belly was a source of nuance, enabling understandings of weight to be flexible, just as the weighted belly of the earthly body was unrelated to size and shape. His understanding of the belly in relation to fatness is indicative of the complexity of differentiating between fat and thin bodies, for ‘fat’ could be employed as a metaphor or symbol regardless of actual physicality. The reformers’ emphasis on moderation is nuanced in turn, permitting the incorporation of various body types. Luther’s understanding of fatness and the belly is thus indicative of broader perceptions of the body in the Reformation, for indeed, people in the past did not have a single concept of ‘the body’ any more than we do today.

*

I would like to thank Ulinka Rublack for her extremely helpful comments on this article. I am also grateful to Andreas Holzem, Volker Leppin and Fernando Vidal for their stimulating suggestions for exploring this topic. I also thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of German History, as well as the audiences of numerous seminars at the University of Cambridge for their constructive comments and questions. The funding for this research was generously provided by the Cambridge Trust and Murray Edwards College.

1

Johannes Agricola, Die Sprichwörtersammlungen, ed. S. Gilman, 2 vols (Berlin, 1971), vol. 1, p. 411.

2

Of these proverbs, Sander Gilman has written that ‘the Reformation writer took many previously neutral forms and, though retaining their external form, politicized their message, and thus updated them’, which appears to be what Agricola is doing here; see S. Gilman, ‘Nachwort’, in Agricola, Die Sprichwörtersammlungen, vol. 2, p. 370. Robert Scribner also described how many of Agricola’s proverbs have a moral or pedagogical purpose; see R. Scribner, Religion and Culture in Germany, 1400–1800 (Leiden, 2001), p. 32.

3

‘Vorlesungen über 1. Mose Kap. 24’, in Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe [hereafter WA], 120 vols (Weimar, 1883–2009), vol. 43, p. 334. Translation from the Latin in Martin Luther, Luther’s Works [hereafter LW], 55 vols (St. Louis, 1955–86), vol. 4, p. 277.

4

L. Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body: The “Stout Doctor” and his Biographers’, American Historical Review, 115 (2010), pp. 351–84, quotations pp. 352, 381.

5

Ibid., p. 351, and L. Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London, 2016), p. 304.

6

In general, ‘weight’ and ‘bodyweight’ are not used in this article as references to a measure of heaviness, as the measuring of bodies in terms of weight was not common in this period. The term is instead used to denote the size of the body with reference to how fat or thin it might be considered. ‘Bodyweight’ has been chosen rather than merely ‘fatness’ and ‘thinness’ because these latter terms might suggest that only bodily extremes are important, whereas this article emphasizes the importance of the size and shape of the body more generally, and thus of all bodies.

7

See, for instance, G. Eknoyan, ‘A History of Obesity, or How What Was Good Became Ugly and Then Bad’, Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease, 13 (2006), pp. 421–7, and S. Tara, The Secret Life of Fat (New York, 2017).

8

M. Stolberg, ‘“Abhorreas Pinguedinem”: Fat and Obesity in Early Modern Medicine (c. 1500–1750)’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 43 (2012), pp. 370–8, quotation p. 377. See also A. Pyrges, ‘Fat Knowledge: The History of Corpulence’, Curare: Zeitschrift für Medizinethnologie, 34 (2016), pp. 126–35.

9

K. Albala, ‘Weight Loss in the Age of Reason’, in C. E. Forth and A. Carden-Coyne (eds), Cultures of the Abdomen (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 169–83, quotation p. 177; Anita Guerrini has also written of the philosopher-physician George Cheyne’s struggle to be thin in the early eighteenth century; see A. Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman, OK, 2000).

10

G. Vigarello, The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity, trans. C. J. Delogu (New York, 2013), p. x.

11

Ibid., p. 36.

12

This phrase is taken from the title of Eknoyan’s article ‘A History of Obesity’.

13

C. Forth, Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life (London, 2019), p. 14.

14

This description is given on the dust jacket of Forth’s volume.

15

C. W. Bynum, ‘Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective’, Critical Inquiry, 12 (1995), pp. 1–33, quotations pp. 7, 27.

16

E. Lambert, ‘The Reformation and the Resurrection of the Dead’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 47 (2016), pp. 351–70, here p. 357.

17

C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), p. 10. See also C. W. Bynum, ‘Material Continuity, Personal Survival, and the Resurrection of the Body: A Scholastic Discussion in its Medieval and Modern Contexts’, History of Religions, 30 (1990), pp. 51–85.

18

Bynum, Resurrection, pp. 59–60.

19

Otto of Freising, The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D., trans. C. C. Mierow, ed. A. P. Evans and C. Knapp (New York, 1928), p. 450.

20

See Bynum, Resurrection, p. 183.

21

Erin Lambert has recently gone some way to redressing this imbalance; see E. Lambert, Singing the Resurrection: Body, Community, and Belief in Reformation Europe (New York, 2017), and Lambert, ‘The Reformation and the Resurrection of the Dead’.

22

R. Rittgers, ‘The Suffering Body in Sixteenth-Century Lutheran Devotional Literature’, Past & Present, 234 (2017), pp. 33–50.

23

See B. Schmisek, Resurrection of the Flesh or Resurrection from the Dead: Implications for Theology (Collegeville, 2013), p. 34.

24

‘Die Ander Predigt Von der Todten Aufferstehung’, WA, vol. 49, p. 427. Unless otherwise stated, where the original texts from the WA are in German, translations are my own.

25

Ibid., p. 429. These comments are made with reference to the metaphor of the seed for the resurrection body, in which the heavenly body is understood to be ‘the same’ as the earthly body inasmuch as a plant is ‘the same’ as the seed from which is grows. The metaphor of the seed is the dominant metaphor for the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15 and, Bynum states, the oldest Christian metaphor for resurrection; see Bynum, Resurrection, p. 3.

26

Nicolaus Herman, Ein Geistlich liede/ von der Auferstehung der Todten/ und dem Ewigen Leben/ auß dem 15. Cap. Der 1. Epistel Pauli/ an die Corinther (Nuremberg, 1555; first published, 1551), fol. Aiii. Erin Lambert discusses Herman’s hymn extensively in the second chapter of Singing the Resurrection, pp. 47–84.

27

Lambert, Singing the Resurrection, p. 15.

28

‘Die Erste Predigt Von der Todten Aufferstehung und letzten Posaunen Gottes’, WA, vol. 49, pp. 410–1.

29

See ‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an der Corinther’ Nr. 1–17, WA, vol. 36, pp. 478–696, and ‘Vier Predigten Von der Todten aufferstehung und letzten Posaunen Gottes Aus dem 15. Capitel der 1. Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther: Gepredigt durch den thewren Mann Gottes, D. Mart. Luther zu Wittenberg Anno M. D. XLIIII. und XLV.’, WA, vol. 49, pp. 395–414, 422–41, 727–46, and 761–80.

30

Lambert, ‘The Reformation and the Resurrection of the Dead’, pp. 356–7.

31

Roper, Martin Luther, p. 15. Roper also suggests that Luther’s own physicality and his generally positive attitude toward the physical were profoundly linked to his position on the Real Presence. See Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body’, p. 380.

32

See, for instance, S. Karant-Nunn, ‘The Mitigated Fall of Humankind: Martin Luther’s Reconciliation with the Body’, Past & Present, 234 (2017), pp. 51–66, and L. Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation (Cambridge, 2006).

33

Little is known about Fabri beyond what he says in his text, which he dedicated to Count Adolph of Sayn. He states he is from ‘Megeßheim bei Oetingen’ and gives his position as ‘Saynischer Superintendens’, a role of considerable power and responsibility. For more on Fabri see E. Lambert, ‘New Worlds, New Images: Picturing the Resurrection of the Body in Sixteenth-Century Germany’, in A. Eusterschulte and H. Wälzholz (eds), Anthropological Reformations: Anthropology in the Era of Reformation (Göttingen, 2015), pp. 533–40.

34

Michael Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung der Todten/ Auß Göttlicher warer Schrifft/ an Zeignissen/ Exempelen und lebendigen vorbilden/ Nach widerlegung mancherley gegenmeinung/ Auch auß Alten und Newen Scribenten (Frankfurt/Main, 1564), fol. 319^v.

35

Ibid.

36

Ibid., fol. 320^r.

37

See Bynum, Resurrection, p. 98.

38

Augustine of Hippo, Augustine: City of God, trans. H. Bettenson (Harmondsworth, 1972), book 22, chap. 15, p. 1056.

39

L. Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven, 2006), p. 145.

40

Giovanni Marinelli, Weyber Artzney. Vier Büecher/ von allerley schedlichen eusserlichen gebrechen der Weybsbilder (Augsburg, 1581), p. 749.

41

Such understandings are well documented, but for a clear and concise outline see R. Earle, The Body of the Conquistador (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 26–8.

42

Mathesius had been a student of Luther’s, attending his lectures in Wittenberg from 1529 and later contributing to the publication of his Tischreden. He was ordained by Luther in 1542 and worked as a pastor in the Bohemian town of Joachimsthal. For a brief biography see R. Rosin, ‘Johannes Mathesius (1504–1565)’, in H. J. Hillebrand (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Reformation (Oxford, 1996), www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195064933.001.0001/acref-9780195064933-e-0906.

43

Johannes Mathesius, Leychpredigten: Auß dem fuenffzehenden capitel der ersten Epistel S. Pauli zun Corinthiern/ von der Aufferstehung der todten vnd ewigem leben. (Nuremberg, 1587), fol. 61^v.

44

Ibid.

45

Hans Sachs, Sämmtliche Fastnachtspiele, ed. E. Goetze, 7 vols (Halle, 1887), vol. 7, p. 145.

46

‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 657. Translation from LW, vol. 28, p. 188.

47

Mathesius, Leychpredigten, fol. 79^r.

48

In the Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (vol. 15, col. 891) schmächtig is defined in terms of the verb schmachten and therefore as ‘suffering from hunger’ and ‘in need of food’, thus directly suggesting thinness.

49

Mathesius, Leychpredigten, fol. 73^v.

50

‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 657. For references to the body being ‘as light as the air’ see pp. 660 and 671 of the same text. Translations from LW, vol. 28, pp. 188, 190, 196.

51

S. Gilman, Fat Boys: A Slim Book (Lincoln, 2004), pp. 52, 55.

52

Craig Harbison commented on a decline in the presentation of the scales of judgement in images of the resurrection in the sixteenth century, as the reference to good works became merely symbolic, intended to indicate that ‘Christ’s justice and fairness now count more than the careful weighing of specific and select aggregates of good and evil acts’; see C. Harbison, The Last Judgment in Sixteenth Century Northern Europe: A Study in the Relation between Art and the Reformation (New York, 1975), p. 132.

53

‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 671.

54

Ibid. Translation from LW, vol. 28, p. 196.

55

Ibid., p. 635. Translation from LW, vol. 28, p. 172.

56

Ibid., pp. 633–4.

57

R. Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, 1988), p. 60.

58

Ibid., p. 36.

59

Zacharias Engelhaubt, APOCALYPSIS: Der Offenbarung Kuenfftiger Geschicht Johannis/ Von widerwertigkeit vnd verfolgung der waren Christlichen Kirchen sind der Apostel zeit/ bis an der welt ende/ Auslegung. (n.p., 1558), fol. cciii^r.

60

Nicolaus von Amsdorf, Fuenff fuernemliche vnd gewisse Zeichen aus gœttlicher heiliger Schrifft/ so kurtz vor dem Juengsten tag geschehen sollen (Jena, 1554), fol. B^v.

61

Ibid., fol. Aii^r.

62

‘Evangelium am andern Sontag im Advent’, WA, vol. 10.i. 2, p. 94.

63

Ibid., p. 95.

64

Strigenitz (1548–1603) worked as a court preacher in Weimar and then as a superintendent in Jena and Orlamünde. In 1593 he was appointed as superintendent in Meissen, where he stayed until his death. He has been deemed ‘one of the most important Lutheran theologians of the second half of the sixteenth century outside the academic context’; see J. A. Steiger, ‘Strigenitz, Gregor’, Neue Deutsche Biographie, 25 (2013), pp. 556–7.

65

Gregor Strigenitz, IEIVNIVM, Das ist: Vom Fasten/ Einfeltiger vnd gruendlicher bericht/ Was es eigentlich sey/ woher es seinen Vrsprung/ vnd wie es recht zu gebrauchen (Leipzig, 1598), fol. 2^v.

66

Ibid., fols 2^v, 46^r. Philip Soergel has written of Christoph Irenaeus’s consideration of the biblical Flood and all subsequent floods as being caused by gluttony and drunkenness, as ‘a surfeit of water … resembled the overdrinking that produced intoxication and by extension overindulgence in all things’; see P. Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination: The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany (Oxford, 2002), pp. 135–40, quotation p. 139.

67

Strigenitz, Vom Fasten, fol. 44^r.

68

Sebastian Franck, Von dem grewlichenn laster der Trunckenheit so inn disen letsten zeytenn erst schier mit den Frantzosen auffkommen (Augsburg, 1531), fol. 28^r.

69

‘Excessive slenderness and thinness of the stomach indicate a timid and distorted mind as well as gluttony’, Polemon Rhetor of Laodicea, De Physiognomica, second century, quoted in K. O. Sandnes, Belly and Body in the Pauline Epistles (Cambridge, 2002), p. 28. Sandnes also quotes Adamantius the Sophist as stating that ‘the very slim and flat [bellies] signify cowardice, bad disposition and gluttony’, p. 30.

70

S. Hill, ‘The Ooze of Gluttony: Attitudes towards Food, Eating and Excess in the Middle Ages’, in R. Newhauser (ed.), The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals (Boston, 2007), pp. 57–70, quotation p. 59.

71

Johannes Mathesius, Postilla: Das ist/ Außlegung der Sontags vnnd fuernembsten Fest Euangelien/ ueber das gantze Jar. (Nuremberg, 1584), fol. 144^r.

72

Matthias Erb (ed.), Von sauffen vnd fressen Den zweyenn greülichen lasteren wie die durch den heiligen Chrysostomum Hieronymum vnd Basilium Magnum vnd anderen vaetteren vor tausent jaren in jren predigen sind gestraafft wordẽ. (Mülhausen, 1559), fol. 16^r. This quotation comes from a text attributed to John Chrysostom (c.347–407).

73

A. Stewart, ‘Man’s Best Friend? Dogs and Pigs in Early Modern Germany’, in P. Cuneo (ed.), Animals and Early Modern Identity (Farnham, 2014), pp. 19–44.

74

‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 657. Translation from LW, vol. 28, p. 188.

75

‘Die Ander Predigt Von der Todten Aufferstehung’, WA, vol. 49, p. 440. Although a modern translation of Saw or Sau into English would give ‘sow’, meaning exclusively a female pig, in New High German the term was most commonly used to mean ‘pig’ without regard to gender. See Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (vol. 14, col. 1844), ‘Sau’.

76

S. Gilman, Diets and Dieting: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Abingdon, 2008), p. 166. A distinction between a positive fatness, showing power and prosperity, and a negative fatness, expressing gluttony and sin, was also made by Vigarello, who outlined a difference between the ‘big’ and the ‘very big’; see Vigarello, Metamorphoses of Fat, p. 8.

77

For the translation see LW, vol. 28, p. 158.

78

See both Gilman, Fat Boys, p. 55, and Gilman, Diets and Dieting, p. 167.

79

‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 614.

80

Luther’s apparent preference for fatness which is spread evenly throughout the body supports the ideal of proportion in the artistic tradition. Albrecht Dürer, for instance, wrote that ‘harmonious things, one conforming with the other are beautiful’ and thus as long as the body was in proportion, it could be beautiful regardless of its size. See Albrecht Dürer, Dürer: schriftlicher Nachlass, ed. H. Rupprich, 3 vols (Berlin, 1956), vol. 1, p. 100. Translation in Albrecht Dürer: Documentary Biography, ed. J. Ashcroft, 2 vols (New Haven, 2017), vol. 1, p. 253.

81

‘Summarien über die Psalmen und Ursachen des Dolmetschens’, WA, vol. 38, p. 15.

82

‘Deutsche Auslegung des 67. Psalmes’, WA, vol. 8, p. 17.

83

Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, trans. H. Davis (New York, 1978), p. 148.

84

Erb, Von sauffen vnd fressen, fols 40^r, 2^r.

85

The wheelbarrow is seen, for example, in a book of hours from 1520s Bruges in the Morgan Library, New York (MS M.1175), as well as in Lorenz Schultes’ The Brotherhood of Bacchus, in W. Hollstein, German Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1400–1700: J.S. Schott–L. Schultes (Amsterdam, 2000), p. 241.

86

Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body’, p. 361.

87

Johannes Cochlaeus, ‘The Deeds and Writings of Martin Luther from the Year of the Lord 1517 to the Year 1546 Related Chronologically to All Posterity by Johannes Cochlaeus’, in E. Vandiver and R. Keen (eds), Luther’s Lives: Two Contemporary Accounts of Martin Luther (Manchester, 2003), p. 352.

88

‘Matthäus 18–24 in Predigten ausgelegt. Das dreiundzwanzigste Kapitel’, WA, vol. 47, p. 481.

89

‘Der dritt predigt Martini Lutheris der selbigen vor genantten wochen am Freittag uff dem schlos gethan’, WA, vol. 10.iii, p. 379.

90

‘Der Prophet Sacharia ausgelegt’, WA, vol. 23, p. 570.

91

‘Papsttreu Hadriani IV. und Alexanders III. 1545’, WA, vol. 54, pp. 308–9.

92

Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. C. O Cuilleanain (Ware, 2004), p. 47.

93

Froben Christof Graf von Zimmern, Die Chronik der Grafen von Zimmern: Handschriften 580 und 581 der Fürstlich Fürstenbergischen Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen, 3 vols, ed. H. Decker-Hauff and R. Seigel (Constance, 1964–72), vol. 3, p. 70.

94

Julius Wilhelm Zincref, Teutsche Apophthegmata, das ist, Der teutschen Scharsinnige kluge Sprüche (Leiden, 1644), p. 293.

95

Strigenitz, Vom Fasten, fol. 30^v.

96

C. Kissane, Food, Religion, and Communities in Early Modern Europe (London, 2018), p. 66.

97

Roper, Martin Luther, pp. 56–7.

98

‘Anton Lauterbachs Tagebuch aufs Jahr 1539’, in D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Tischreden [hereafter WA TR] 6 vols (Weimar, 1912–1921), vol. 4, pp. 305–6, no. 4422. Translation from Latin in LW, vol. 54, pp. 339–40.

99

M. Brecht, Martin Luther: sein Weg zur Reformation, 1483–1521 (Stuttgart, 1981), p. 74.

100

Roper, Martin Luther, pp. 57, 133.

101

Ibid., pp. 165, 199.

102

‘Anton Lauterbachs Tagebuch aufs Jahr 1539’, WA TR, vol. 4, p. 305, no. 4422. Translation from Latin in LW, vol. 54, p. 339.

103

‘Anton Lauterbachs Tagebuch aufs Jahr 1539’, WA TR, vol. 4, p. 306, no. 4422. Translation from Latin in LW, vol. 54, p. 340.

104

‘Wochenpredigten über Matthäus 5–7’, WA, vol. 32, p. 428.

105

Josua Opitz, Eine Fastenpredigt von christlichem und antichristischem Fasten (Regensburg, 1573), fols Aviii^v –B^r.

106

C. J. Bischoff, ‘Ultra mensuram tendere: zur Maßlosigkeit mönchischer Askese’, in I. Mandrella and K. Müller (eds), Maß und Maßlosigkeit (Berlin, 2018), p. 37.

107

Sandnes, Belly and Body, p. 34.

108

Ibid., p. 58.

109

‘Vorlesungen über 1. Mose Kap. 24’, WA, vol. 43, p. 332. Translation from Latin in LW, vol. 4, p. 275.

110

Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body’, p. 381.

111

S. Karant-Nunn, The Personal Luther: Essays on the Reformer from a Cultural Historical Perspective (Leiden, 2017), p. 41. See also p. 198.

112

‘Tischreden aus Johannes Aurifabers Sammlung FB.’, WA TR, vol. 6, p. 302, no. 6975.

113

‘Predigt am Gründonnerstag’, WA, vol. 37, p. 349.

114

Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body’, p. 380.

115

‘Vorlesungen über 1. Mose Kap 24’, WA, vol. 43, pp. 332–4. Translation from Latin in LW, vol. 4, pp. 275–7.

116

Tessa Storey has noted how in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, moderation became a particular focus for Protestant dietary advice, which she connects to the image of the ‘ideal Protestant/Puritan body as being controlled and moderate in its food intake’; see T. Storey, ‘English and Italian Health Advice: Protestant and Catholic Bodies’, in S. Cavallo and T. Storey (eds), Conserving Health in Early Modern Culture: Bodies and Environments in Italy and England (Manchester, 2017), pp. 210–34, quotation p. 220.

117

‘Das Siebend Capitel aus der Epistel S. Pauli zu den Chorinthern’, WA, vol. 12, p. 103.

118

‘Wochenpredigten über Matthäus 5–7’, WA, vol. 32, pp. 432–3. These statements can be compared to Luther’s stance on celibacy, which he rejected in general (and for himself), although he stated, ‘I do not deny, of course, that there are some who can live chastely without marriage.’ He writes, however, that these people ‘have a greater gift than ordinary folk’. ‘Vorlesungen über 1. Mose Kap. 2’, WA, vol. 42, p. 101. Translation from Latin in LW, vol. 1, p. 135. Lyndal Roper discusses Luther’s ‘remarkably positive attitude toward the body’ in ‘Martin Luther’s Body’, p. 384.

119

Strigenitz, Vom Fasten, fol. 38^r.

120

‘A. Lauterbachs und H. Wellers Nachschriften’, WA TR, vol. 3, p. 338, no. 3468. Translation from LW, vol. 54, p. 206.

121

For more on the relationship between Luther and Melanchthon, including a discussion of their bodies, see U. Rublack, Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 52–5.

122

Philip Melanchthon, ‘History of the Life and Acts of Dr Martin Luther’, in Vandiver and Keen, Luther’s Lives, p. 17.

123

Roper, Martin Luther, p. 304.

124

‘Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen’, WA, vol. 7, p. 30. This statement was made whilst Luther’s own body appeared thin and he had only recently departed from monasticism, yet even as his body filled out and he began to embrace the appetites more fully, Luther never entirely rejected the practice of fasting.

125

Strigenitz, Vom Fasten, fol. 38^r. John Coveney has examined the relationship between food and guilt, arguing that the long standing notion of ‘food guilt’ presents the human understanding of ourselves as moral agents of food-choice; see J. Coveney, Food, Morals and Meaning: The Pleasure and Anxiety of Eating (London, 2006).

126

Roper, Martin Luther, p. 57.

© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved.