Confessional Cross-Pollination: Basel Humanists as Suppliers of Lutheran and Catholic Exempla

Abstract

Basel humanists shaped religious discourse beyond the Reformed sphere through their collections of exempla, short narratives designed to illustrate a moral or doctrinal message. Because scholars of early modern exempla typically focus on either Lutheran or Catholic exempla collections, the role of Reformed compilers as mediators between confessions has been obscured. This article uses methods from the field of digital humanities and corpus linguistics to examine the lasting influence of Theodor Zwinger (1533–1588), Conrad Lycosthenes (1518–1561), and Johannes Herold (1514–1567) on Lutheran and Catholic exempla collections in a newly quantitative way. Using the concordance software AntConc, this study identifies numerous citations that demonstrate that Zwinger and Lycosthenes facilitated confessional cross-pollination of exemplary narratives from the mid-sixteenth through the early eighteenth century. Although citations of Zwinger, Lycosthenes, and Herold are more frequent in Lutheran exempla collections, the existence of several Catholic editions of Zwinger’s Theatrum vitae humanae indicates that Catholic readers also valued Zwinger’s work. This examination showcases the vital role of Swiss humanists in cross-confessional networks of information exchange and religious discourse in early modern Europe.

1. Introduction

Swiss Reformed humanists acted as crucial nodes in the networks of religious communication in the early modern media ecosystem. Their attempts to gather, catalog, reference, and communicate historical exempla—short narratives designed to illustrate a moral or doctrinal message—in a Reformed context facilitated the transmission of religious narratives across confessional boundaries. Through their exempla collections, Basel humanist Theodor Zwinger (1533–1588), alongside his stepfather Conrad Lycosthenes (1518–1561) and their colleague Johannes Herold (1514–1567), supplied later compilers—both Lutheran and Catholic—with vibrant historical and contemporary narratives (Thommen 1900; Franck 1884; Burckhardt 1969). These later compilers excerpted the Basel humanists’ work in their own exempla collections, which remained in preachers’ arsenals of reference books throughout the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Examining the lasting legacy of Zwinger, Lycosthenes, and Herold in both Lutheran and Catholic reception reveals cross-pollination between opposing confessions in the religious discourse of early modern Europe.

Exempla and exempla collections formed an important stream of religious discourse within the dynamic networks of communication and information exchange in the early modern period. Exempla have long been recognized as fruitful sources for the history of religious and cultural mentalities in the medieval and early modern periods (Brémond et al. 1982; Rehermann 1977). Collections of exempla were marketed to preachers as an aid to the composition of sermons and, starting in the early modern period, as books for Hausväter to read aloud for the edification of their households (Büttner 1576, unpaginated preface; Sturm 1588, title page; Prugger 1726, title page). Preachers and compilers calibrated these often entertaining illustrative narratives to persuade ordinary people to embrace certain beliefs and behaviors and shun others (Jones 2013, p. 8). Because preachers and rhetoricians understood exempla to be more compelling than simple statements of doctrine for an audience of ordinary people, exempla reveal both what messages were most important to those who collected and preached them and how that abstract doctrine was envisioned in concrete, true-to-life scenarios (Hondorff 1568, preface, unpaginated; Major 1618, Ad sacri verbi administros, unpaginated).

New methods in digital humanities now enable researchers to identify connections between exempla collections that were previously obscured by the sheer quantity of material. The complex work of the compiler in excerpting, recombining, and recontextualizing diverse narrative material from histories, chronicles, hagiographies, and contemporary wonder-books as well as from existing exempla collections makes exempla collections challenging for researchers to evaluate. Many early modern exempla collections exceed 1000 pages in length, and each page may contain multiple independent narratives. To identify patterns of borrowing and thus the influence of particular exempla compilers on later compilers’ collections at scale, this article uses the concordance software AntConc to survey corpora of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century exempla collections from both Lutheran and Catholic compilers (Anthony 2023). Enhanced keyword searches of these corpora uploaded to AntConc reveal the prominence of Swiss contributions in the collections of later Catholic and Lutheran compilers.

Research on early modern exempla collections has neglected the role of Swiss Reformed humanists as a conduit connecting Catholic and Lutheran exempla compilers not only because of the relative newness of these digital tools, but also because the field lacks cross-confessional comparative studies of exempla collections. Instead, the field is divided into studies of Protestant exempla on the one hand and Catholic exempla on the other. Herbert Wolf (1960) began the exploration of Protestant exempla with his article “Das Predigtexempel im frühen Protestantismus.” Granular studies of particular collections and their compilers followed. Heidemarie Schade (1974) conducted the first in-depth study of a Protestant exempla collection with his “Andreas Hondorffs Promptuarium Exemplorum” in the foundational volume, edited by Wolfgang Brückner (1974), Volkserzählung und Reformation: ein Handbuch zur Tradierung und Funktion von Erzählstoffen und Erzählliteratur im Protestantismus. Wolfgang Beck (1980), building on his earlier article “Protestantischer Exempelgebrauch am Beispiel der Erbauungsbücher Johann Jacob Otho”, published a catalogue of the Protestant exempla found in the work of Johann Jacob Otho, Protestantische Beispielerzählungen und Illustrationsmaterien: ein Katalog aufgrund der Erbauungsbücher von Johann Jacob Otho, in 1992 (Beck 1992). These works provide rich case studies into particular collections but leave the chains of transmission and patterns of textual borrowing between collections more difficult to discern. In a field dominated by these focused studies, only Ernst Heinrich Rehermann’s dissertation, published in 1977 as Das Predigtexempel bei protestantischen Theologen des 16 and 17. Jahrhunderts, provides a larger scope (Rehermann 1977). This remains the most comprehensive study of Protestant, particularly Lutheran, exempla collections to date. More recently, Johann Anselm Steiger (1999) contextualized Lutheran exempla collections within the theology of Lutheran orthodoxy, and Austra Reinis (2013) examined the use of exempla in the sermons of various Lutheran preachers.

A largely distinct group of scholars turned instead to Catholic exempla. Elfriede Moser-Rath (1964) published numerous “Predigtmärlein”, stories excerpted from seventeenth-century Catholic sermons along with an extensive introduction in Predigtmärlein der Barockzeit: Exempel, Sage, Schwank und Fabel in geistlichen Quellen des oberdeutschen Raumes. Following Moser-Rath’s foundational work, early modern Catholic exempla studies followed largely the same pattern of focused, granular explorations of particular compilers and collections. Rainer Alsheimer (1971) examined an early seventeenth-century Catholic exempla collection, the Magnum Speculum Exemplorum, for its relationship to popular narrative forms in his Das Magnum speculum exemplorum als Ausgangspunkt populärer Erzähltraditionen. In the 1980s, German exempla scholarship turned its attention toward the early modern Jesuit exempla, as seen in “Wundererzählungen als Exempel bei dem Jesuiten C. G. Rosignoli” by Wassilia von Hinten (1980), Beispielkatechese der Gegenreformation: Georg Voglers “Catechismus in Auserlesenen Exempeln” Wurzburg 1625 by Wolfram Metzger (1982), and Narrative Anleitungen zur praxis pietatis im Barock. Dargelegt am Exempelgebrauch in den “Iudicia Divina” des Jesuiten Georg Stengel (1584–1651) by Alois Schneider (1982). Wolfgang Brückner (1999) departed from the Jesuits to examine the exempla of Capuchin Martin von Cochem, but the most recent contribution to this field, “Jesuiten-Fabeln des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Leistungen und Grenzen von Propaganda in der Frühen Neuzeit” by Doering-Manteuffel (2005), returns to Jesuits. That the study of early modern exempla has occurred within a framework of this confessional divide results in a distorted picture of early modern exempla as two separate traditions: a Lutheran tradition and a Catholic tradition. This picture obscures the true interconnectedness of Lutheran and Catholic exempla collections, which participated in overlapping pan-European networks of communication and information exchange brokered, in part, by Swiss Reformed humanists.

2. Basel Compilers, Catholic Editions, and Lutheran Reception

Basel humanist and compiler of historical exempla Theodor Zwinger, once hopeful for a preaching office (Zwinger 1548), was the son of a furrier but became connected to a multi-confessional network of European scholars from the center of Basel’s Reformed Protestant community (Thommen 1900; Steinke 2014). He was the nephew of the Basel printer Johannes Herbster Oporinus (1507–1568), whose printing cooperative active between 1535–37 printed the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes in 1536 (Thommen 1900; Salis 1900; Bonjour 1999; Steinmann 2009; Calvin 1536). Not limiting himself to Reformed works, however, Oporinus published five volumes of the foundational Lutheran church history, the Magdeburg Centuries, the brainchild of Matthias Flacius (1520–1575), one of the most controversial figures of sixteenth-century Lutheranism, whose position on original sin was denounced as heresy by fellow Lutherans (Flacius 1560, 1562, 1564, 1567, 1569; Diener 1979; Bibliander 1543a, 1543b, 1543c; Olson 2005, 2010). In 1543, Oporinus published a Latin translation of the Qur’an, which the city of Basel censored and ordered to be confiscated (Thommen 1900; Salis 1900; Bonjour 1999; Bibliander 1543a, 1543b, 1543c). The city only relented after Martin Luther (1483–1546) and St. Gallen humanist and reformer Joachim Vadian (1484–1551) both defended Oporinus’ edition (Bonjour 1999). Zwinger befriended renowned Huguenot humanist Petrus Ramus (c. 1515–1572) who served as godfather to his son Jakob (Thommen 1900; Salis 1900; for the significance of Petrus Ramus see Mack 2011), whose own son grew to be a prominent Reformed pastor and Basel theology professor likewise named Theodor Zwinger (1597–1654) (Thommen 1900; Salis 1900). Beyond these ties of immediate family and friendship, Zwinger developed a vast network of correspondence with contemporary humanists (Gilly 2015).

Most influentially for the production of his own most famous work, Theodor Zwinger was the stepson of Conrad Lycosthenes (Thommen 1900; Alzheimer 2016; Beyer 2016a). Lycosthenes edited collections of exempla, sayings, and miraculous signs from classical and contemporary authors, including Catholic humanists. Expanding his edition of the work of classical author Julius Obsequens (c. 4th c.) published in 1552 by his brother-in-law Oporinus (Beyer 2016b; Lycosthenes 1552, Note: In another moment of confessional encounter, Lycosthenes’ name has been expurgated from this copy held at the library of the University of Sevilla.), Lycosthenes compiled his own collection of miraculous signs and omens titled Prodigiorvm ac ostentorvm chronicon printed in Basel by Heinrich Petri in 1557 (Alzheimer 2016; Beyer 2016a; Burckhardt 1969). The Prodigiorvm was translated into German and edited by Johannes Herold, whose attempts to serve as a pastor or parish assistant failed, leaving him to eke out a meager living assisting printers, including Oporinus and Heinrich Petri (Burckhardt 1969). To this tightly-knit learned community, Herold contributed not only his talents as an editor but as a compiler as well; his own exempla collection Exempla virtutum et vitiorum was published by Heinrich Petri in 1555 (Burckhardt 1969). Within this fruitful decade for Basel compilers, Lycosthenes also edited and indexed a new edition of the Facetiarum Exemplorumque Libri VII by Italian Catholic humanist Lucius Domitius Brusonius (c. 16th c.), an exempla collection first printed at the turn of the sixteenth century and used frequently by Catholic preachers (Rehermann 2016a; Brusonius 1559; Rehermann 1977, p. 186). Likewise, Lycosthenes edited the Officina of French Catholic humanist Joannes Ravisius Textor (c. 1480–1524), an early printed commonplace book (27, 19 p. 131). Lycosthenes’ most influential works for subsequent compilers, however, were two editions of compilations by Catholic humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466/69–1536), his Apophthegmata and Parabolae, siue similitudines, published by Oporinus in 1555 and 1557, respectively (Beyer 2016a). Subsequent editions of Lycosthenes’ Apophthegmata published in Geneva (1591) and Lyon (1602) show cross-confessional interest in Lycosthenes’ work (Beyer 2016a; Lycosthenes 1591; Lycosthenes 1602; Lycosthenes 1614).

After Lycosthenes’ death in 1561, Zwinger took his stepfather’s notes, which Zwinger described as “a heap or undigested mass of exempla collected over fifteen years” (Blair 2010, p. 212, Blair’s translation, quoting Zwinger 1586, sig. ***4v), organized, and expanded them into one of the most ambitious exempla collections of the early modern period: the Theatrum vitae humanae, an attempt at a universal history through examples, an inheritor of the medieval tradition of florilegia, and a forerunner to the modern encyclopedia (Ullman 1959; Zedelmaier 2008; Blair 2010, pp. 12, 198–200, 212–13; Moss 1996). The Theatrum vitae humanae incorporated classical, medieval, and contemporary material (Alzheimer 2016). First published in 1565 by his uncle Oporinus, the Theatrum vitae humanae was reprinted and expanded in 1571 by the most famous Basel printer, Johann Froben (1460–1527), again in 1586–87 by printers Eusebius Episcopius and Heinrich Petri, and finally with an index added by Zwinger’s son Jakob in 1604 (Blair 2010, p. 197; Pfister 1961). By the 1586 edition, the Theatrum vitae humanae had reached a magisterial 4373 pages and an estimated 6.3 million words in length (Blair 2010, p. 305, endnote 70).

Already in the 1570s, two sets of printers, Nicolaus Chesneau and Michael Somnius in Paris and Johann Froben in Basel, wagered that, if modified, the Theatrum vitae humanae would succeed on the Catholic market (Blair 2010, pp. 194–97). Chesneau and Somnius printed an edition of Zwinger’s Theatrum vitae humanae with both expurgations and additions meant to cater to a Catholic audience in 1571–72 while Froben printed his expurgated edition in 1575, but at least in the case of the latter edition the changes were not substantial enough to require different pagination (Blair 2010, pp. 194–97). At least one user of the Paris edition found its expurgations insufficient and added expurgations with his own ink (Blair 2010, p. 202; Zwinger 1571 cited in Blair 2010, p. 306, endnote 93). Strasbourg Protestant Joseph Lang (c. 1570–1615), in the preface to his own collection titled Loci communes sive florilegium rerum et materiarum selectarum published in 1598 (Ullman 1959, p. 186; Lang 1613), praises Zwinger for his “incomparable industry” in embellishing the work of Lycosthenes and Erasmus and praises his Theatrum vitae humanae as the “richest store of exempla” (Lang 1613 quoted in Ullman 1959, p. 192, my translation). Lang places his own work in a compilatory tradition begun by Erasmus, enhanced by Lycosthenes, and furthered by Zwinger (Lang 1613 quoted in Ullman 1959, p. 192). Lang’s own life would come to embody the cross-confessional spirit of this compilatory tradition. Only five years later, Lang converted to Catholicism, faced destitution, and finally found a position on the philology faculty in Freiburg im Breisgau (Franck 1883). Nevertheless, his Loci communes was reprinted in Protestant Strasbourg eight times until 1631, nearly three decades after its author’s conversion to Catholicism (Ullman 1959, p. 186).

Two Cologne printers believed there was still more untapped demand for Zwinger’s Theatrum vitae humanae among Catholic audiences. These printers, brothers Antonius and Arnoldus Hieratus, commissioned Catholic theologian, archpriest, and censor of Antwerp Laurentius Beyerlinck (1578–1627) to produce a new edition of the Theatrum vitae humanae (Blair 2010, pp. 202–4; Alberdingk 1875; Brückner 2016). Beyerlinck already had experience as a compiler, publishing a collection of sayings in 1608 (with some quotations attributed to Zwinger’s Theatrum vitae humanae) and another collection titled Promptuarium morale super Evangelia Festorum, published in 1613 (Blair 2010, p. 204). The Magnum theatrum vitae humanae, expanded to 7468 pages and an estimated 10 million words, was published in 1631, posthumously for both Beyerlinck and Antonius Hieratus (Blair 2010, pp. 197, 202). In the preface likely written by Arnoldus, he relates that Beyerlinck had been commissioned to make a new edition of the Theatrum vitae humanae on the condition that “what could be preserved without suspicion of error from the old Theatrum would be saved” (Blair 2010, pp. 203, 306, endnote 99, quoting Beyerlinck 1666 sig. [e3]v Blair’s translation). Even with this ethos of preserving the original Theatrum within the Catholicized edition, Beyerlinck’s modifications for a Catholic audience were sufficient to secure permissions from the Catholic canons of Cologne and Antwerp and for the title page to carry the assurance that the abovementioned title had been “cleansed from heresy and various errors” (Beyerlinck 1666, translation mine; see also Blair 2010, p. 204). In her analysis, Ann Blair concludes that Beyerlinck did succeed in expurgating the Theatrum, finding no later expurgations contributed by readers (Blair 2010, p. 204). The Magnum theatrum was so successful that it was reprinted four times, three times in Lyon (1656, 1666, 1678) and once in Venice (1707) (Blair 2010, p. 204; Alberdingk 1875; Brückner 2016).

Although Zwinger’s and Beyerlinck’s collections may be understood as primarily humanist scholarship, even exempla collections intended for preaching and religious edification do not cleanly follow confessional lines in their citation of Zwinger and Beyerlinck. Despite the Theatrum vitae humanae’s Reformed origins, Lutheran preachers and exempla compilers Wolfgang Büttner (1522–1596) and Johann Stieffler (1634–after 1686) both list Zwinger in their lists of authors (Büttner 1576, 2023; Stieffler 1668; Rehermann 2016b). More surprisingly, Jesuit writer and rector in Leuven Antoine d’Averoult (1554–1614) includes the Theatrum vitae humanae in the list of authors in his Flores exemplorum as well (d’Averoult 1616, Index Auctorum, unpaginated). Possibly drawing on one of the Catholicized editions, d’Averoult lists simply the “Theatrum vitae humanae” while omitting Zwinger’s name (d’Averoult 1616, Index Auctorum, unpaginated, p. 104 of digitization). This equivocation as d’Averoult chooses to borrow from Zwinger’s work and even list it as a source while refraining from naming him suggests a desire to distance himself from his confessional opponent who compiled the collection while still benefiting from the Reformed compiler’s work. Fellow Jesuit Philippe d’Outreman likewise cites the Theatrum vitae humanae in his exempla collection Paedagogus Christianus without specifying the author (d’Outreman 1629, p. 58, Latin translation; d’Outreman 1664, p. 54, German translation; d’Outreman 1666, p. 50, French edition).

The Lutheran preacher Johann Moeller (c. 1611–1651) takes cross-confessional citation one step further (Moeller 2022). When Moeller lists the authors whose work he incorporated into his 1661 Allegoriae Profano-Sacrae, he does not cite his Protestant counterpart Theodor Zwinger but instead “L. Beyerlinck Magnum Theatrum Vitae humanae” complete with the city and year of publication, Cologne, 1631, and size “in fol.” (Moeller 1661a, unpaginated list of authors, p. 36 of digitization; for a brief mention of Protestant citation of Beyerlinck’s Magnum Theatrum, see Brückner 1974, p. 106). Moeller does not shy away from affiliation with the Jesuit archpriest, citing Beyerlinck’s other collection, the Promptuarium morale super Evangelia Festorum in the next line (Moeller 1661a, unpaginated list of authors, p. 36 of digitization). That Moeller provides such precise citation leaves no doubt that he intends to refer to Beyerlinck’s rather than Zwinger’s collection. Far from treating the Magnum theatrum as contaminated by its Jesuit editor and expander, Moeller embraces this confessionally permeable collection. By referring to Beyerlinck’s Magnum theatrum by name, Moeller portrays his own exempla collection as benefiting from a Catholic collection that has, nested within it, the core of a Reformed collection. Moeller’s embrace of a Catholic source, of course, did not mean his collection was embraced by Catholics in turn. Instead, the title page of the copy held in the Bavarian State Library in Munich is marked with a sweeping “Liber Prohibitus” on the page before its frontispiece and at the top of its title page (Moeller 1661a, unpaginated, page preceding frontispiece and title page, pp. 14 and 17 of digitization).

3. Quantifying the Influence of the Basel Compilers on Later Exempla Collections

But how much does Moeller actually cite from the (Magnum) Theatrum vitae humanae? And which other exempla collections draw from Zwinger’s, Lycosthenes’, and Herold’s work, and to what extent? The frequent citation of Zwinger’s Theatrum prompted one seventeenth-century compiler to describe Zwinger’s work as that “from which recent authors have borrowed very much here and there” (Adami 1699, unpaginated preface, p. 11 of digitization, my translation, also quoted in Brückner 1974, p. 111). To quantify this “very much” borrowing would be nearly impossible with traditional methods of textual analysis. However, the computational text analysis software AntConc enables new insights into the influence of Swiss Reformed exempla compilers on later exempla collections. Developed by corpus linguist Laurence Anthony, AntConc equips scholars to navigate through .txt files through enhanced search functions, statistical analysis, and data visualizations (Anthony 2023).

The method required three steps that involve software tools developed under the interdisciplinary umbrella of the digital humanities. First, digitized images of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century exempla collections in the corpus had to be transformed into .txt files. The books contained in the corpora are listed in the bibliography. The Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) platform Transkribus was used to efficiently obtain reliable transcriptions of the exempla collections and export them into .txt format (Note: A detailed description of this process is outside the scope of this article. For more on scholarship using this software, see Nockels et al. 2022. For more on the software itself, see Muehlberger et al. 2019). Second, these .txt files were uploaded into corpora (collections of several .txt files) on AntConc. The corpora consist of a Lutheran German language corpus, a Catholic German language corpus, and a Catholic Latin language corpus (Lutheran German language corpus: Bellinckhausen 1622; Büttner 1576; Hondorff 1568; Meiger 1649; Moeller 1661a, 1661b; Rivander 1581; Schneider 1669; Steinhart 1596; Stieffler 1668; Sturm 1588; Titius 1633; Catholic German language corpus: Leucht 1614; Martin 1687; d’Outreman 1664; Prugger 1726; Vogler 1625; Catholic Latin language corpus: Bredenbach 1584; Major 1618; Stengel 1650a, 1650b, 1650c). The version of the software used was 4.2.4. Third, search terms related to Zwinger’s Theatrum vitae humanae along with terms related to Lycosthenes and Herold were input into the search bar in Plot view. From Plot view, occurrences of the search terms were visualized as lines on a horizontal rectangle, indicating in which exempla collections a given search term occurred most frequently and at which point each term occurred in the file.

To quantify the impact of Zwinger, Lycosthenes, and Herold on subsequent exempla collections included in this corpus, the number of instances of citation of each Swiss Reformed compiler was tallied, cross-referencing each hit from Plot view in File view, where the full context of the citation could be assessed and the hit either counted or discarded as an error. Search terms were developed to account for spelling variations and transcription errors and implemented with the wildcard character (*) to capture differently declined endings (e.g., the search term “theatr*” delivers instances of both “theatro” and “theatrum”). These search terms were selected to optimize identification of the desired source citation while attempting to exclude false positives. For example, the search term “theatr*”, while sufficiently expansive to include most hits for Zwinger’s Theatrum vitae humanae, may also pull up a citation of Martin Zeiller’s Theatrum Tragicum (Zeiller 1628). However, sorting these hits is more feasible than sorting through all hits for “zwing*” would be, in that several conjugations of the German verb “zwingen” would appear as hits alongside citations of Zwinger. The search implemented was not case sensitive and the “Regular Expressions” box was checked. The search terms used included the following: “zwinger”, “theatr*”, “lyko*”, “lyco*”, and “herold”. Although these search terms are certainly not the only ones which could be selected, they resulted in a total of 1470 hits, of which 934 were found to refer to the works and compilers in question.

The results demonstrate the lasting impact of Zwinger and Lycosthenes on both Lutheran and Catholic exempla collections. Compilers of both confessions borrowed from the Theatrum vitae humanae and from Lycosthenes. However, Lutheran exempla collections contain many more references to the Theatrum vitae humanae and Lycosthenes’ works than Catholic exempla collections do. Despite the availability of the Catholicized editions of the Theatrum vitae humanae, Catholic compilers examined here only reference the Theatrum vitae humanae 14 times compared to the 829 references found in Lutheran exempla collections. These Lutheran references predominantly appear in the collections of Steinhart (633 times), Moeller (148 times), and Schneider (28 times) but are present in Büttner (10 times), Hondorff (5 times), Titius (3 times), and Stieffler (twice) as well. This does not include nine direct references to Zwinger found in Lutheran exempla collections. Similarly, Lutheran collections contain 65 references to Lycosthenes, including citations of both his Apopthegmata and his Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, whereas Catholic collections cite Lycosthenes only once, not counting ten occasions in which Catholic collections attribute the Theatrum to him. Perhaps it was exactly because the Catholicized editions of the Theatrum vitae humanae were so widely available that Catholic compilers did not feel compelled to include material from Zwinger or Beyerlinck’s Theatrum in their own collections.

Lutheran compilers borrowed extensively from Zwinger in their exempla collections at the same time as Catholic printers produced multiple Catholicized versions of the Theatrum and Catholic compilers cited the Theatrum occasionally in their own collections. This concurrent borrowing shows the crucial role of Swiss Reformed compilers such as Zwinger as mediators in the early modern media ecosystem. Members of opposing confessions, each seeking narrative material to shape the worldviews of their parishioners, saw Zwinger and Lycosthenes as valuable resources. Zwinger drew Lutheran compiler Georg Steinhart’s praise in his expanded edition of Büttner’s Epitome historiarum (1596), with Steinhart calling Zwinger “the highly learned and enlightened man Theodorus Zwinger” and referring to Zwinger’s collection as “his grand, praiseworthy work called the Theatrum humanae vitae” (Steinhart 1596, f. 225, my translation). In contrast, Catholic exempla compilers refrain from mentioning Zwinger’s name even once. Yet Catholic compilers were more than willing to borrow from Zwinger’s work. They instead cite Beyerlinck’s edition or attribute the Theatrum to Lycosthenes. Martin Prugger refers to Beyerlinck’s Theatrum three times. Philippe d‘Outreman refers to the Theatrum vitae humanae but names no author. Tilmann Bredenbach (five times), Valentin Leucht (twice), Johannes Major (once), Georg Vogler (once), and Martin von Cochem (once) all cite the Theatrum but attribute it to Lycosthenes. Lutheran compiler Daniel Schneider is the only one to cite Johannes Herold and does so only when also citing Herold’s colleague Lycosthenes; however, this trace of Herold’s contribution only serves to underscore the working relationships between the Basel compilers.

This method makes the reception of Zwinger’s and Lycosthenes’ work by later exempla compilers visible in a newly quantitative way. However, this method is reliant upon a combination of accurate transcription and creative searching. No transcription, whether manually typed or automatically generated using AI-models on Transkribus or a similar platform, is free from errors. The eleventh hit for “lyco*” in Moeller’s Allegoriae Profano-Sacrae showcases this method’s susceptibility to transcription errors. The transcription reads “Thectr. vit hum. L.1o tit. lutus p. 40h. E. Lycosth. Apophtr tit. fucus, ex Elian, l. 8. var. bistor.” While the reference to Lycosthenes is correctly identified by the search, it is adjacent to a reference to the Theatrum vitae humanae that was not identified by the “theatr*” search because of the transcription of “a” as “c” in “Thectr” (Lyu et al. 2021 would classify this as a word error in their categorization of the types of transcription errors). This shows at least one instance in which the prevalence of references to the Theatrum vitae humanae has been underestimated. However, for demonstrating the presence of citations identified correctly in the search step, this method is robust. Although this and perhaps other references to Zwinger’s, Lycosthenes’, and Herold’s work may not have been identified, the results nevertheless can indicate general trends of citation, particularly the heavy citation of Zwinger and Lycosthenes in Lutheran collections.

4. Conclusions

While the results of the research presented here are not exhaustive, they illustrate a new method for examining networks of citation, information exchange, and dissemination of religious messages across confessional traditions. With the help of emerging technologies adopted from the field of corpus linguistics, scholars of early modern book and print history can more readily trace these connections, particularly when assessing the contributions of numerous source texts to compilatory works. This study traces Zwinger’s and Lycosthenes’ contributions to religious discourse across confessional boundaries from the late sixteenth century until the early eighteenth. Zwinger and Lycosthenes, from their position in the Swiss Reformed milieu of mid-sixteenth-century Basel, provided some of the narratives that would go on to shape both Lutheran and Catholic discourse for generations.