Renaissance Vienna Under the Ottoman Threat: Rethinking the Biblical Imagery of the City (1532–1559)

Abstract

The topos of Vienna as the “stronghold of Christendom” emerged soon after the 1529 unsuccessful siege by the Ottomans. The city’s new strategic status not only spurred the building of new urban fortifications, it also stimulated the production of a large variety of printed texts and pictures that emphasized the necessity of Christian unity among divided Christians. In this context, this article aims to shed new light on the use of one Old Testament episode whose significance and polysemy has been largely overlooked for sixteenth-century Vienna: the attack of Jerusalem by the Assyrian King Sennacherib and his subsequent defeat through divine intervention under the city wall. Instrumental in defining a common spiritual approach to the fight, this Old Testament story can be considered a seminal basis for the paradigm of Vienna as a Jerusalem of unity and unanimity. To analyze the significance of this theme in Vienna, this article will first focus on its representation in Hanns Lautensack’s 1558/1559 famous cityscape before demonstrating that it originated from a far less known source: the 1532 sermons by the Bishop Johann Fabri.

1. Introduction

“Given that all Biblical history displays either God’s wrath or His grace and is written for the purpose of warning and admonishment, so too does the present glorious battle—taking place before the majestic city of Jerusalem, between the two mighty kings, the God-fearing Hezekiah of Judah and the blasphemer Sennacherib of Assyria—now stand before the renowned city of Vienna in Austria, as a reminder and admonition of God’s help in times past and future”.1

(Camesina 1856, p. 18; Lazius n.d.a, fol. 22^v)

In these words, the Viennese historian Wolfgang Lazius (1514–1565) explained the somewhat surprising composition of Hanns Lautensack’s (ca. 1520–1565) etching, which interestingly depicted the failed siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in the foreground of his 1558/1559 southwest panorama of Vienna (Figure 1 and Figure 2). Further drawing on the comparison between Old Testament Jerusalem and sixteenth-century Vienna, Lazius claimed that the penance, prayers, and piety of the Viennese, as well as of their ruler Ferdinand (1503–1564), during the Ottoman siege of the city in 1529 was instrumental in what was considered a God-given victory over the troops led by Sultan Suleyman (1494–1566). As a consequence, the picture is traditionally interpreted as an allegory or a commemoration of the 1529 Ottoman failure at Vienna’s gates, as well as a claim that the military fight against the Ottoman should go hand in hand with a spiritual one (Camesina 1856, p. 7; Schmitt 1957, p. 78; Fischer 1996/1997, pp. 106–10; Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, p. 19; Leeb et al. 2017, p. 343; Fischer 2020, p. 236). While all of these interpretations are valid, this article suggests that the polysemy and significance of this biblical episode deserve a closer study in the light of other contemporary sources.

Although the religious dimension of the famous cityscape did not escape previous research, it appears that the significance of Sennacherib’s defeat as a leitmotiv of the spiritual fight against the Ottomans has been largely underexamined in the scholarship on sixteenth-century Vienna. This article, therefore, argues that Lautensack’s engraving, as well as its comment by Lazius, should be understood as a direct reference to, as well as a reminiscence of, a rather overlooked source on the city’s spiritual fight against the Turk: the cycle of sermons delivered in 1532 by the then Bishop of Vienna, the humanist Johann Fabri (1478–1541). Three years only after the 1529 siege, Fabri based his preaching on the theme of Sennacherib before Jerusalem to promote common prayer, moral behavior, and trust in God among a very diverse crowd of Christians preparing to withstand the return of the Ottomans. As I will demonstrate, Fabri not only elaborated on this biblical episode to strengthen Christian unity and galvanize the Viennese, as well as the troops defending them, he also aimed at rivaling other interpretations and biblical references used in previous anti-Turk writings, especially the ones by Martin Luther (1583–1546). In this perspective, this article envisages Lautensack’s etching and Lazius’ text on it, on the one hand, and Fabri (1532) sermons, on the other hand, as the two sides, pictorial and theological, of the same coin of the Viennese spiritual fight against the Ottomans. By suggesting that the former relates to the latter, this article aims to analyze how Sennacherib’s failure before Jerusalem specifically emerged and took root in Renaissance Vienna to reflect the various spiritual, religious, military, and political dimensions of the fight against the Turks led in and from the city.

To this end, I will first shed light on the stakes of Lautensack’s and Lazius’ use of the figure of Sennacherib in late-1550s Vienna. Second, I will analyze the role played by Fabri’s (1532) sermons in initiating this topos of the spiritual fight against the Ottomans.

2. Historiographic Perspective on the Imagery of the Turks Before Vienna

2.1. Lautensack, Lazius, and Sennacherib Before Vienna

One of the best-known representations of sixteenth-century Vienna, as well as one of the most complex, Hanns Lautensack’s 1558/1559 depiction of King Sennacherib’s defeat under the new fortifications of the city also stands out to some extent as one of the least researched (Lautensack 1558, 1559a, 1559b, 1559c). On the one hand, Lautensack’s high-quality etching has indeed often been mentioned, reproduced, and analyzed since the nineteenth century although under different titles (Camesina and Lazius 1855; Camesina 1856, p. 7; Eisler 1919, p. 116; Schmitt 1957, p. 78; Czeike 1974, p. 40; Fischer 1996/1997, pp. 106–10; Rosenauer et al. 2003, pp. 570–71; Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, p. 63; Leeb et al. 2017, pp. 342–43; Fischer 2020, p. 236; Opll 2023a, p. 425). Suffice it to say that it is on display in the permanent exhibition of the Wien Museum (Vienna), which deals with the urban history of the Danubian city. On the other hand, the scholarly interest in this etching has tended to focus more on the cityscape rather than on the Old Testament scene placed in front of it. Therefore, the accompanying text by Lazius also tends to be overshadowed by the remarkable representation of the urban metamorphosis then occurring in Vienna. The originality of Lautensack’s picture, however, did not escape previous scholars, who tried not only to make sense of it, but also to shed light on what could have constituted his sources of inspiration (Fritz Koreny 2003, p. 569). As Ferdinand Opll and Martin Stürzlinger remark, Lautensack’s 1558/1559 cityscape holds, along with his 1556 portrait of Ferdinand I (Lautensack 1556), a special place (Sonderstellung) among the sixteenth-century views of Vienna (Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, p. 18). In this context, this article claims that the polysemy arising from the subtle combination of a biblical episode with a very precise rendering of the mid-sixteenth-century city view has not been fully explored yet.

It seems noteworthy that this etching has been rather rarely reproduced in its entirety, which may well be due not only to a lack of interest in its biblical dimension, but also more basically to the incompleteness of the few surviving original copies. Among the last four original copies remaining in Vienna (Lautensack 1558, 1559a, 1559b, 1559c; Hollstein 1978, p. 49), the only intact one is kept at the Albertina Museum (Vienna), where it is not exhibited. Entitled Der Untergang von Sanheribs Heer. Allegorie auf den Sieg über die Türken vor Wien (Figure 1), this first state of the etching is dated from 1558 and was made from three plates. Dated from 1559, the second state of the etching also consisted of three assembled sheets of paper; the three remaining copies of it are, however, incomplete and/or cropped (Figure 2). Both states of the etching present very minor differences, which are limited to the year, as well as the shape of the letters of the artist’s monogram (HLS) (Schmitt 1957, p. 78; Hollstein 1978, p. 49). One exemplar of the second state, catalogued under the title Türken vor Wien (Albertina Museum), consists of two panels only, the third on the right being missing. While the copy of the second state exhibited at the Wien Museum consists of three parts (Figure 2), as well as the non-exhibited one, all copies of the 1559 version of the etching were cropped to cut away the roof of St. Stephen’s cathedral steeple and mountain, as well one of its main protagonists, that is, the Angel of God striking the troops of Sennacherib. Indeed, the disorderly debacle of Sennacherib’s troops punished and exterminated (foreground) by the avenging Angel of God (middle ground) constitutes a very powerful rendering of the biblical episode (2 Kings 19). The large crowd of soldiers, equipped with fantastic ancient-style armor, seem overwhelmed by the unexpected and irresistible attack from the sky, against which they hopelessly turn their weapons. Flying above the very large Assyrian camp, the Angel of God, armed with a sword, strikes the army from the heavens, which takes up half of the engraving. Amidst the general chaos prevailing in the tent camp, the viewer can make out the king of the Assyrians fleeing in his chariot. In the sky, the angel is surrounded by three empty cartouches. Fritz Koreny (Koreny 2003, p. 569) analyzed how Lautensack’s composition combines a panoramic view with the motif of a battle: while the urban panorama likely relates to the late medieval tradition marked by Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam and the city views of the Nuremberg Chronicle (Schedelsche Weltchronik), the depiction of the battle could have been inspired by the series of battle pictures commissioned by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria in the first half of the sixteenth century from prominent artists such as Burgkmair, Breu d. Ä, Refinger, Feselen, Beham, and Schöpfer, among others. Fritz Koreny further underlined that the idea of the cartouches could have been borrowed from Altdorfer’s Alexander’s battle or from Abraham Schöpfer’s Mucius Scaevola.

It seems that one copy only of Lazius’ accompanying text remains in print (Lazius 1558/1559) (Albertina Museum). Printed in six columns each in folio format, it could be attached below the etching and thus completed it (Schmitt 1957, p. 78; Hollstein 1978, p. 49; Rosenauer et al. 2003, p. 569). However, two manuscripts of Lazius’ commentary still remain at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Lazius n.d.a, n.d.b). One of them (Lazius n.d.a), edited by Albert Camesina (Camesina 1856, pp. 18–23), starts with an explanation of the biblical scene illustrated on Lautensack’s engraving, which is lacking in the second manuscript and the printed version of his commentary. As mentioned above, this introductory excursus explicitly draws a parallel between the failed siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib and the successful siege of Vienna by Suleyman in 1529. After a rather brief explanation of the analogy, Lazius went on with an epitomized history of Vienna from its beginnings to the siege of 1529, which constitutes the core of the printed commentary. The addition of Lazius’ printed text in letterpress below Lautensack’s picture achieved a grandiose result, whose majesty is highlighted by the reproduction of the complete artwork, along with its commentary in the third volume of the series dedicated to the art of Austria (Rosenauer et al. 2003, pp. 570–71). To the best of our knowledge, this is the only complete reproduction of the artwork and its commentary, which not only does justice to the cooperation between Lautensack and Lazius, but also allows one to better comprehend the grandeur of a piece obviously intended for an elite public. While most scholars assume that Lazius’ text was meant for both versions of the etching (Hollstein 1978, p. 49; Koreny 2003, p. 569), Ferdinand Opll and Martin Stürzlinger suggest that the commentary was meant for the 1559 state of the artwork (Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, p. 19). Although debatable, this latter assumption makes perfect sense considering that 1559 was the thirtieth anniversary of the failed Ottoman siege before Vienna. However, it seems to imply that Lazius’ text came after Lautensack’s picture and was in some respect secondary to it. Whatever year Lazius’ commentary was published, this article argues that Lazius’ role has been underplayed in previous analysis of the 1558/1559 etching and that it can even been assumed that Lazius was most likely the instigator of the biblical depiction under the walls of sixteenth-century Vienna. To this end, it seems necessary to compare our case in point with other contemporary sources, both written and pictorial. Even if Karl Fischer rightly remarked how Lautensack’s etching may recall earlier fifteenth-century representations of Vienna, which also placed the city in the background of a biblical episode (Fischer 2020, p. 236, n. 96)—Fischer was thus referring to the fifteenth-century pictorial tradition of placing a Viennese cityscape in the background of a biblical scene, notably, on altarpieces, such as on the famous Schotten-Altar (Opll 2013, p. 10; Opll 2023a, pp. 276–96; Opll 2023b, pp. 174–77)—the methodology, which consists of comparing the etching with the large corpus of sources that emerged after the 1529 siege of Vienna, constitutes the best means to shed new light on the picture.

2.2. Vienna vs. the Turks: Urban Identity and Religious Antagonism

Mainly interpreted as an allegory of the 1529 Ottoman failure before Vienna (Camesina 1856, p. 7; Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, p. 19), its commemoration (Jubiläumsgedanke) (Fischer 1996/1997, pp. 106–10; Fischer 2020, p. 236), or even a “commemoration and propaganda text” (“Gedenk- und Propagandadruck”) with regard to the past and present Turkish danger (Koreny 2003, p. 569), both states of Lautensack’s etching are de facto integrated into the larger corpus of Viennese cityscapes, which have been under scrutiny over the past thirty years in the rich literature dealing with the history of the city. Ferdinand Opll and Martin Stürzlinger emphasized the role played by the research trends emerging in the 1990s to explain the strengthening of scholarly interest in this corpus against the backdrop of a renewed approach to cultural studies (Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, p. 5). The “iconic” or “pictorial turn” reinforced the attention paid to iconographic sources, while the “spatial turn”, also called “topographical turn” (Günzel 2008, p. 226; Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, p. 5; Svatek 2020, pp. 191–92), prompted the understanding of space in its historical, geographical, and mental dimensions. This historiographical turn arguably led scholars to apprehend Lautensack’s 1558/1559 biblical depiction of Vienna in its urban and religious dimensions. And yet, the remarkably detailed cityscape in the background has understandably tended to overshadow the biblical battle in the foreground. Lautensack’s rendering of the newest urban fortifications appears indeed as an invaluable mine of information to analyze the transformations occurring in Vienna after the destructions of 1529 (Opll et al. 2017, passim; Leeb et al. 2017, pp. 242–43; Opll 2023a, p. 425). While its accurate topography stands out and is highlighted by the names of the main urban monuments, Lautensack notably etched the earliest precise depiction of the Habsburg palace (Burg) with its four corner towers. In this perspective, it has been often underlined how Lautensack’s urban panorama was echoing the city view made by Augustin Hirschvogel ten years earlier but arguably outdid it in terms of accuracy (Koreny 2003, p. 569). While little is known about Lautensack’s training, art historians tend indeed to draw thematic and stylistic parallels between his work and Hirschvogel’s (Grebe 2014, p. 307).

The historiography of these last thirty years has also done justice to the religious dimension of the etching, so that the time when scholars from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century consciously chose to fully ignore the defeat of Sennacherib now seem a distant memory. Albert Camesina was probably the first to reproduce Lautensack’s cityscape and edit two versions of Lazius’ commentary on it (Camesina 1856). He did it without the battle scene, though, explaining that: “Doch mochten wir uns hier bei der Wiedergabe jener Ansicht Wien’s nur auf die Letztere allein beschränken und auf die Assyrer-Schlacht um so lieber verzichten, als die Darstellung derselben, wie sie sich auf Lautensack’s Bilde findet, bei ihren zahllosen Anachronismen nicht die geringste Belehrung bietet” (Camesina 1856, p. 8). By erasing all biblical elements from the picture, Camesina de facto inaugurated a tradition of cropping Lautensack’s artwork, which found its way into other publications dealing with Viennese history, such as the one by Max Eisler (Eisler 1919, p. 116). More specifically, the latest historiography interestingly relates Lautensack’s work to the new urban identity rising in the sixteenth century from the new strategic role of Vienna (Opll 2002a, 2002b, 2004, 2008/2009, 2013; Opll and Scheutz 2020). Indeed, the failed siege of 1529 marked the end of the Ottoman Empire’s westward expansion, which had begun with the decisive conquest of Belgrade in 1521 and led to the domination of most of Hungary after the battle of Mohács in 1526. While the urban revival is highlighted by the new fortifications, Sennacherib defeated by the Angel of God pointed out the necessary spiritual fight against Ottomans, interpreted as the enemies of Christendom. The rich historiography on the representations of the Turks in the Early Modern era has long highlighted the important role played by the traumatic 1529 siege in the imagining of the Turks in the Holy Roman Empire in general and in Vienna in particular.

A shocking event, which resonated throughout Europe, the 1529 siege spurred the production and dissemination of a large variety of prints, which shaped multifaceted imagery of the Turks, as well as of the Danubian city. The significance and interrelatedness of both topics belong to the key questions of the literature on early modern Vienna. As Ferdinand Opll and Martin Stürzlinger emphasize, the 1529 siege marked a major turning point for the city, not only in terms of its historical development, but also regarding its representation and, hence, its identity and self-understanding (Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, p. 13). First, the siege spurred the international demand for views of Vienna, which multiplied from that moment onwards, thanks to the growing interest in sensational news, the invention of printing, the commercial stakes arising from these pictures, as well as their political uses to communicate about the Turkish threat (Opll and Stürzlinger 2013; Opll and Scheutz 2020). The significance of the “motive of the Turks” (“Türkenmotiv”) thus marked the views of Vienna, starting from 1529 until the 1570s, that is over forty years after the event (Opll and Stürzlinger 2013, pp. 13–16). Second, the siege also demonstrated the need to build up-to-date fortifications in order to respond to the new strategic role of Vienna, which went hand in hand with the gradual emergence of a new urban identity. From around 1540 onwards, the construction works spurred the production of new cityscapes and maps, which display the aspirations, power, and dominance newly associated to the city, whose decline under Maximilian I and the first years of the reign of Ferdinand I seemed forgotten (Opll 2002a, 2002b). Vienna’s image as a major stronghold to defend the Holy Roman Empire, and beyond, all of Europe, against the “enemy of Christianity” thus emerged on the initiative of the Habsburg court. Promoted by the ruler, this new urban identity of Vienna as the “Bulwark of Christianity” was well received and eagerly assumed by the city and its representatives (Opll 2004; Opll and Stürzlinger 2013).

Lautensack’s picture perfectly fits this analytical framework while proposing an original rendering of the defeated Turks and, hence, of the victorious city. Made by two courtiers at the service of Ferdinand I, the picture and its commentary were arguably echoing earlier representations of the Turks before Vienna while honoring the city and its ruler in a seemingly new way. The forest of tents under and around which Suleyman’s army is bustling in the foreground of Bartel Beham’s 1529 depiction of the siege (Beham 1529) was thus pointed out as a possible inspiration for Lautensack’s composition (Koreny 2003, p. 569). It seems necessary, however, to focus on other biblical depictions of the 1529 siege to shed new light on the etching. Indeed, not only the religious, but also the confessional and political stakes behind the picture require reevaluating the collaboration between Lazius and Lautensack, as well as the significance of the imperial election in 1558. Although Fritz Koreny underlines the significance of the political and confessional background to make sense of the biblical episode, the full extent of the religious, confessional, and political dimensions requires further enquiry. This article argues that Lazius likely suggested the biblical topic of Sennacherib’s defeat to Lautensack based on the sermons delivered in 1532 by the then bishop of Vienna, Johann Fabri. Since Fabri’s preaching can be seen as an attempt not only to galvanize and comfort his audience waiting for the return of Suleyman’s army, but also as a confessional reply to Luther’s eschatological interpretation of the Turkish threat on Vienna, this article postulates that Lautensack’s etching should be analyzed as the counterpart to biblical renderings of the 1529 siege made by Lutheran artists. This intertextuality should help us to highlight the significance of preaching in shaping the mental landscape of the sixteenth-century Viennese.

3. In the Beginning Was the Preached Word: Fabri’s (1532) Sermons Against the Turks

3.1. The Preaching Behind the Pictures: Luther, Fabri, and the Biblical Interpretation of the Turks

One cannot stress enough the profound originality of the biblical allegory depicted in the foreground of Lautensack’s (1558/1559) etching. An iconographic hapax in the sixteenth-century rendering of the Ottoman threat, Lautensack’s picture is therefore too often restricted to the literature on the Danubian city. It appears significant that Charlotte Colding Smith does not even mention it in her research on the pictorial representations of the Turks in sixteenth-century Germany and Central Europe, although the role of the 1529 siege for German-speaking artists is very well demonstrated and the multiple interpretations illustrated by their pictures well highlighted (Colding Smith 2014, pp. 68–95). Her chapter dedicated to the Biblical images of the Turks notably analyzes how their Apocalyptic rendering drew on medieval traditions associating Islam with the archenemy of Christianity (Colding Smith 2014, pp. 104–42). The omission of the theme of Sennacherib besieging Jerusalem in Charlotte Colding Smith’s seminal work on the Biblical motives used to construct the visual antagonism between the Ottoman Empire and Europe can well be due to the originality of a topic that appears in many respects as distinctly Viennese.

Indeed, this article assumes that Lazius suggested this theme to Lautensack based on the powerful preaching by the humanist Johann Fabri from the pulpit of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in 1532. Delivered at a time of great urban anguish, Fabri’s (1532) cycle of 37 sermons was devised for the spiritual comfort of a diverse audience of civilians and soldiers waiting Suleyman’s return to Vienna three years only after the traumatic siege of 1529. While the inhabitants of the city, along with the troops that came to defend it, were preparing themselves for a second siege, the bishop of Vienna authored a series of consolatory sermons based on the episode of Sennacherib besieging Jerusalem (Feierfeil 1907; Knappe 1949; Roche 2015; Grimmsmann 2016). Over almost two months, sermon after sermon, Fabri elaborated on the example given by the Jerusalemites and their King Hezekiah to exhort his listeners to penance, prayers, and the practice of Christian virtues. Fabri’s preaching was meant to instill hope in God’s protection, which could free the Viennese from the Ottoman danger as it freed the Hebrews in the Bible from the Assyrian siege. The Ottoman troops were delayed around a hundred kilometers to the south of Vienna, which brought about a great relief in the city after weeks of anxiety (Buttlar 1974). Shortly after the danger was over, Fabri had his sermons published in Latin by Johann Singriener the Older under the title Sermones consolatorii Reverendissimi in Christo Patris, ac Domini, Domini Ioannis Fabri Episcopi Viennensis, habiti ad plebem eius, ac Christi milites, super immanissimi Turcorum Tyranni altera imminenti obsidione inclytae ubris Viennensis (Fabri 1532).

This swift publication tends to prove that Fabri considered his preaching as far more than a work dictated by the prevailing circumstances. By publishing his Consolatory Sermons, Fabri likely aimed to reach at least three closely interrelated objectives: first, equipping the parish cleric of his small diocese with the necessary instruments against what now looked like an ever-threatening Ottoman danger to Vienna; second, proposing a biblical exegesis of the Ottoman, which differs from the one given from Wittenberg by Luther; third, providing the city with a unifying theme, which could accommodate a varied crowd of Christian listeners united in the spiritual fight against an enemy of another faith. The bishop of Vienna since 1530, Fabri was close to the Archduke Ferdinand, who invited him to Vienna as his confessor and adviser in the early 1520s (Helbling 1941; Immenkötter 1984). While his appointment by Ferdinand might well be due to the reputation forged on his commitment against the new ideas promoted by Luther and Zwingli, it seems noteworthy that once at his service, Fabri also distinguished himself in the fight against the Ottomans. Both these challenges accompanied him for the rest of his life until his death in 1541. As the general vicar of the bishop of Constance (1518–1523), Fabri took part in the Diet of Nuremberg (1522–1523), which emphasized the necessity to resort to “spiritual weapons” against the Turks (“geistlichen Waffen”) (Grimmsmann 2016, p. 225), understood as the scourge of God for Christian sins. While Fabri eagerly implemented the Diet’s recommendation in the diocese of Constance by fostering prayer and penance against the Ottomans, he further committed to the military effort against them by serving Ferdinand as a fundraiser (1525) and diplomat (1527) while the situation in Central Europa had worsened after the defeat of Mohács (1526) in Hungary. As the bishop of Vienna, Fabri had to deal with the consequences of both the siege of 1529 and the success of the Reformation’s ideas in the city. As in the rest of the Holy Roman Empire, the Reformation’s thought spread very early on in Vienna, which led to the division of the Christian community (Leeb 2003; Vocelka and Traninger 2003; Winkelbauer 2003).

Although the fight against the Ottomans understandably tended to constitute a common ground, even among the divided Christians of the Holy Roman Empire, the interpretations given to it could still reflect the hostility between the proponents and opponents of the Reformation. Whereas Fabri explicitly designated Lutheranism and the Turks as both enemies of the true Church in 1528 (Fabri 1528), Luther, in his preface to the book of Revelation for the 1530 edition of his New Testament, identified the Turks as Gog and Magog while condemning the papacy as the plague of the West (Moger 2016, pp. 270–72; Colding Smith 2014). As Jourden Travis Moger puts it, “for Luther and his followers the false religion of the East (Islam) was linked to the false religion in the West (Catholicism)” (Moger 2016, p. 272). Nevertheless, Luther shared the interpretation of the Turks as the rod of God against a sinning Christendom (Luther 1518) and therefore prompted people toward repentance and prayer. While integrating the Turks in his eschatology, Luther started to associate them with the destroyer of the Apocalypse shortly before the siege of Vienna (Luther 1529), a development that was reinforced during and after the siege. Luther’s eschatological interpretation of the Turks seems even more remarkable, as it inspired what appears as the most famous biblical representations of the 1529 siege of Vienna. Three different woodcuts made in 1530, 1533/1534, and 1534 (Luther 1530, 1533–1534, 1534) to illustrate various editions of the Book of Revelation translated by Luther thus represented the Turks as the troops of Gog and Magog gathered around Vienna, while a dragon symbolizes Satan as the instigator who exhorts the armies to battle (Moger 2016). As in the book of Revelation, however, God punishes the attackers from the sky, which was rendered on each version of the woodcut by smoke and fire resulting in the ruin of the Ottoman Sultan and his troops (Moger 2016).

In this context, Fabri’s sermons on the theme of Sennacherib’s failed siege can well be considered an indirect response to Luther’s eschatological apprehension of the Turks by proposing an interpretation from Vienna itself based on a biblical episode, which highlighted the significance of common prayer, Christian virtues, and the good government of a pious ruler. An interpretation that substituted the Angel of God for Satan while pointing out the significance of the spiritual fight of the urban community, a Catholic interpretation that served as a distorted mirror of the apocalyptic vision of Luther. The quantitative study by Dammaris Grimmsmann on the sermons against the Turks delivered in the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth century shows the originality of the theme of Sennacherib. Not only was Fabri the only preacher to use it in the first half of the sixteenth century against the Turks, but he was also the only Catholic preacher of that time to base his preaching on a recurring specific biblical passage (2 Chr 32) (Grimmsmann 2016, pp. 210–12). While Protestant preachers gradually used to base their anti-Turk preaching on two main passages, including Ezekiel 38–39 and Psalm 79, as inspired by Luther, Catholic preachers lacked such patterns, except for the Viennese bishops (Grimmsmann 2016, pp. 210–12, p. 226). Even if the later use of the Sennacherib theme by the court preacher Urban Sagstetter (ca. 1529–1573) (Sagstetter 1567) and the bishop Johann Caspar Neubeck (Neuböck) (ca. 1545–1594) (Neubeck 1594) obviously falls beyond the scope of our study, they nevertheless help to put into perspective the posterity of Fabri’s endeavor.

Between Fabri’s and Sagstetter’s mentions of Sennacherib, Lautensack’s artwork stands out as a remarkable reminder of Fabri’s (1532) cycle. Although he did not use the topic initiated by his friend and predecessor on the episcopal see in his own anti-Turk preaching, the famous preacher Friedrich Nausea (1496–1552) occasionally compared King Ferdinand to Hezekiah. In any case, Fabri sent a copy of his 1532 book with interesting remarks on the success that he had encountered with his preaching (Nausea and Philarchus 1550, p. 126). Thus, it seems plausible that Lazius, a devoted Catholic and a citizen of Vienna, knew Fabri’s work and suggested the theme to Lautensack. The printed commentary to the etching obviously suggests that Lazius and Lautensack collaborated on the artwork (Lazius 1558/1559), while the commentary’s extended version (Lazius n.d.a) explicitly dedicates the etching to emperor Ferdinand, whose coats of arms adorned the cartouches on both sides of the Angel. Indeed, the cartouches showcased four coats of arms which paid a tribute to both the city and the ruler (Figure 1) (Schmitt 1957, p. 78). While emphasizing the imperial dignity of Ferdinand, the picture also commemorated his 1529 achievement and underlined the unity of the city. Lazius and Lautensack had been working together at the service of Ferdinand since 1554. In contrast to Lazius, Lautensack was a newcomer to the Habsburg court and did not hail from Vienna. Possibly born in Bamberg around 1520, Lautensack grew up in Nuremberg, where he moved with his father after 1527 (Grebe 2014, p. 307). His 1552 views of Nuremberg etched on three plates were his first major artistic achievement (Lautensack 1552a, 1552b), which may have prompted the invitation to him by Ferdinand I to join his court as a drawer, more specifically, as “Röm. Kais. Majestät Antiquitäten Abconterfetter”, although Lautensack also served as a portraitist (Czeike 1994a, p. 694). Beside his above-mentioned portrait of King Ferdinand (Lautensack 1556), Lautensack notably etched a portrait of Lazius (Lautensack 1554), with whom he had been called to work on the publication of his numismatic collection (Louthan 1997, pp. 27–33). While the prospective etching of the collection should have been based on Lautensack’s drawings, Lazius was entrusted with the historical study of the collection. The curator of Ferdinand’s collections of antiquities and coins, Lazius also served Ferdinand as physician, advisor, and court historiographer (Czeike 1994b, p. 699; Donecker et al. 2021). Born and bred in Vienna, Lazius belonged to the major scholarly figures of the city. Well acquainted with the Turkish threat to Vienna, he was fifteen in 1529 and later served as a military physician in Hungary. A distinguished humanist, his name passed to posterity for his work on the history and topography of Austria. Published in 1546, his Vienna Austriae (Lazius 1546) constituted his first major publication on the topic, which prompted Ferdinand to ennoble him and appoint him as court historian. In many respects, Lazius’ commentary on Lautensack’s etching appears as a summary of his grand urban history of Vienna. While their work on Ferdinand’s numismatic collection was never brought to full completion, Lautensack and Lazius obviously collaborated on the 1558/1559 etching under the auspices of Ferdinand. Well-versed in the history and contemporary hardships of the city, Lazius was also involved directly and indirectly in its urban revival. Fritz Koreny interestingly underlines the coincidence in time between the first state of the etching (1558) and the imperial election (1558), suggesting that the biblical topic chosen by Lautensack had a political and religious dimension in the era (Koreny 2003, p. 569). It seems that one of the emperor’s main concerns after the Peace of Augsburg (1555) was to promote Christian reconciliation. From the late 1550s until his death in 1564, Ferdinand kept fostering Christian concord at and from his court in Vienna (Louthan 1997; Almási 2009; Roche 2023). To some extent, this concern for Christian unity can be traced back in Vienna to the early 1530s. A further exploration of Fabri’s sermons should help us to uncover some of the religious stakes behind the failed siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib.

3.2. Vienna as Jerusalem, Suleyman as Sennacherib, and Ferdinand as Hezekiah

Rather than an eschatological perspective on the Ottoman threat, Fabri promoted a cyclical vision of it while trying to address the diversity characterizing his audience. In doing so, he advocated Christian piety and virtue to overcome the Turkish Other, which came to embody the religious antagonism par excellence. In the dedicatory epistle that he addressed to Cardinal Bernhard von Cles (1484–1539), Fabri stated that a large crowd had gathered around him to eagerly listen to the Word of God, “including soldiers, who are otherwise by nature very impetuous, fill the church, apply themselves to piety and religion and wait daily with an alert and sharp mind beyond measure for the arrival of the furious Turk in the union of their vows”2 (Fabri 1532, fol. aii^v). On September 12, 1532, he emphasized in a letter to Friedrich Nausea the challenge of preaching to a crowd as cosmopolitan as it is heterodox: “There are doubtless many who think me courageous and magnanimous because in those very troubled times, after leaving the court, I dared to go to my sheep in the midst of the Turkish army and the warlike tumult. But I, surely, think that it is more remarkable and that it requires a greater soul to have dared, among so many nations of varied kinds, doubtless of different sects, to proclaim the Word of God fearlessly in public. […]. I can, however, rightly assume that I had as listeners Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Anabaptists, without any contradiction”3 (Nausea and Philarchus 1550, p. 126). Trying to be a good shepherd, Fabri adjusted his Word to the religious heterogeneity of a Christian crowd undermined by schism. He also likely saw it as an occasion to retake the spiritual lead of the community. His preached Word therefore aimed at transcending confessional borders, establishing a transconfessional adequacy with the expectations of the varied audience gathered. His pastoral care of repentance rested on three pillars that informed its Christian dimension: the Old Testament exegesis of the conflict with the Ottomans; the culture of religious antagonism with the Turks; and finally, the conversion to a transconfessional practice of prayer and penance that founded this pastoral care of Christian concord.

Indeed, Fabri offered a biblical exegesis of the conflict with the Ottomans, according to which the Viennese perpetuated the Old Testament story of the sinful Chosen People punished by their wrathful God. To this aim, Fabri focused on the exemplary episode of Hezekiah and his people overcoming Sennacherib by his army, which he interwove with other biblical models. By doing this, he was returning to the Sacred Text in which he ingrained his preaching. According to the humanist example of preaching inspired by scripture, the episcopal Word consisted of an interlacing of biblical quotations, the arrangement of which alone was a matter of the preacher’s art. By basing his cycle on the story of the Hebrew people attacked by the desert peoples who came to besiege Jerusalem, Fabri followed the well-known interpretative path that consisted of designating the Turkish threat as the scourge of God, avenging sinful Christianity. However, Fabri adapted this paradigm to make it resolutely inclusive and to distinguish himself from Luther’s discriminatory exegesis, which associated the Pope with the Turk. Rather than a direct indictment, Fabri preferred a pedagogy of guilt, culminating in an invitation to the Viennese to recognize the similarity of their fate with that of the Jerusalemites: “Consider, my dear ones, I ask you, whether we are not in the same condition, not to say damnation, we who have sinned with the Jerusalemites; because of this, the sword of the Lord is drawn over us. But it would very easily be turned away and sheathed if, humiliating ourselves and without trusting in our own strength, we resort to the Lord”4 (Fabri 1532, fol. 43-^v).

The exegesis of the Turks as “a people perhaps avenging our sins and the scourge of Christianity, flying with enthusiasm from the other end of the earth”5 (Fabri 1532, fol. Aii) reconstructed a unifying and united “we”. In the spirit of the imperial and princely mandates related to the spiritual fight against the Turks, the bishop blamed the vices of the faithful to better silence the schism. As for knowing what the fault of the Jerusalemites, shared by the Viennese, consisted of, Fabri evoked, allegorically, the golden calf venerated by Israel (Fabri 1532, fol. 43^v) and, more pragmatically, blasphemy, pride, arrogance, or drunkenness (sermons 7, 9, and 24). He did not distinguish between good Christians and those who would have aroused divine wrath. Fabri was thus rebuilding the unity of the urban community as a sacred community in the Old Testament.

Fabri’s cycle focused on a central biblical episode, then expanded upon by a multitude of secondary examples. The resistance of Hezekiah, “king of Judea and Jerusalem”, against the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, stood out as the matrix of his preaching. Rather than the pericope of the day, which he only occasionally incorporated into his exegesis, Fabri preferred a quotation from the Second Book of Chronicles as the opening leitmotif of each sermon. To the Viennese, “trembling […] because of the attack of the inhuman tyrant of the Turks […] and thinking of the siege of the city […] and its storming”6 (Fabri 1532, fol. 3), the bishop offered Hezekiah’s consoling words to the Jerusalemites terrorized by the Assyrian attack: “Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more with us than with him: With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles”7 (2 Chr. 32:7–8) (Fabri 1532, fol. 3).

If we accept that, along with the reading of the pericopes, sermons formed the privileged access of most of the faithful to Scripture, the repetition of this theme and the biblical passage that underpinned it allowed the assiduous listener to appropriate this model in order to better anchor himself in it. From the various scriptural traditions of the story of Hezekiah and his people, Fabri recomposed a story in close accordance with the critical situation of his audience. Based on the Second Book of Kings, the Second Book of Chronicles, as well as on the prophet Isaiah and Ecclesiastes (Fabri 1532, fol. 3^v), he re-wove a framework of events centered on four thematic sequences while ending with the saving horizon of divine intervention in favor of the besieged. Sennacherib’s inexorable advance towards Jerusalem, this king’s contempt for the God of Israel, Hezekiah’s zeal to follow the Lord’s commandments, and finally, the material and spiritual preparations of the besieged under his leadership concluded with the outcome proposed in Isaiah (37:36): “But in one night the angel killed one hundred and eighty-five thousand men. And when Sennacherib got up in the morning, he saw all the corpses. The king of the Assyrians broke camp and left. He returned and remained in Nineveh”8 (Fabri 1532, fol. 3^v). The secondary figures on which Fabri based his exegesis constituted as many antitypes as possible to the critical situation experienced by the city in distress. Over the course of the sermons, a repertoire of ordinary heroes of the Viennese Turkophobic epic took shape. Fabri identified the Viennese with the people of the pious Judith, who saved Bethulia besieged by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar by beheading General Holofernes; guided by Moses, they saw the Red Sea closing on the armies of Pharaoh; behind David, they hoped to defeat Goliath the Philistine, thanks to the same unshakeable faith as that of the young shepherd, a faith in God that assured Judah Maccabeus, Jephthah, or Jehoshaphat military victory over the enemy (Fabri 1532, fol. 28–29^v and 38-^v).

The transposition of the conflict with the Ottomans into Old Testament times was part of a Turkophobic “culture of antagonism” (Poumarède 2009, pp. 5–79). The Viennese revealed themselves as successors of the Chosen People, followers of the true faith confronted with pagans carrying false idols. A military threat, the Ottomans also proved to be a religious peril symbolized by the crescent on their banners. Thus, according to Fabri, it was necessary to place the fight against the Turks under the banner of the cross, a Christian sign similar to the pillar of fire that once preceded the Israelites, an inseparable sign of the victory of “the Most Christian Emperor Constantine […] against the Infidels” (Fabri 1532, fol. 69). The assimilation of pagans to “Infidels” reinforced the ideal of the Crusade that underpinned his seventeenth sermon “De signo Crucis” (Fabri 1532, fol. 66–69^v). Christianity had a universal vocation from its origins. The cross, “this honorable sign was erected on Mount Calvary with an inscription in Hebrew, Greek and Latin because this sign was to triumph over the three parts of the earth, Europe of course, Asia and Africa, and among all nations, so that from sunrise to sunset his great name would be revealed”9 (Fabri 1532, fol. 66-^v). This interpretation reaffirmed as much a Christian identity called into question by the Reformation as it created an unbridgeable gap between the forces present.

The imminence of the Ottoman threat led not only to the regular presence of soldiers in Vienna and its surroundings, but also to the occasional transformation of the bourgeoisie into defenders of their city. This double imperative raised the question of the Christian struggle and the coexistence of civilian and military populations. Placed in 1532 in the delicate situation of justifying armed resistance when the Decalogue taught not to shed blood, Fabri devoted his thirteenth sermon to “How it is fitting for the Christian to wage war against the Turks” in order to give “the military a standard of life” in accordance with the Word of God (Fabri 1532, fol. 53). Fabri developed an ethic of the Christian soldier and recalled, without quoting Luther, that the military response to Turkish attacks was not without criticism: “From the example of King Hezekiah, we, who daily expect a new Turkish siege, learn to strengthen our walls, towers, and fortifications. But there are some in our time, presuming greatly, who even in their published books and treatises have dared to teach in public that it is not permissible for any Christian to fight against the Turks, since any war undertaken against the Turks contradicts the Gospel”10 (Fabri 1532, fol. 53). Fabri intended to counter a position previously defended by Luther without offending soldiers who might have been won over to his views, that is, without polemicizing or naming the Reformer. In fact, Luther initially tended to emphasize the spiritual fight against the Turks at the expense of the military response, which he rejected as a fight against God himself (Luther 1518). Reflecting on the Gospel of Luke (3:14), Fabri demonstrated under what conditions a Christian soldier could achieve salvation: “And behold, John the Baptist is preaching to you, soldiers, along the Jordan, and teaching you three salutary things to observe,” namely, “Do not molest anyone, do not extort anything, and be content with your pay.” To analyze the precursor’s triple commandment, Fabri discussed the proper use of violence. The prohibition of using force against one’s neighbor did not exclude the possibility of doing violence to the enemy. In this case, the neighbor took on the face of the Christian brother attacked by the Infidel. It was up to the soldier to defend him in the name of the Christian commandment to do to one’s neighbor what one desires for oneself. The bad soldier did not defend his neighbor and left him prey to the Turk, while the Gospel did not refuse soldiers to fight against “the impious Turks and very cruel persecutors of Christian blood”11 (Fabri 1532, fol. 55).

4. Conclusions

In conclusion, the exploration of the biblical narrative surrounding Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem, as articulated by Bishop Johann Fabri, Wolfgang Lazius, and Hanns Lautensack, reveals a profound interplay between historical events and theological interpretation in sixteenth-century Vienna. This study aimed at highlighting how the appropriation of the Old Testament story served not only as a means of spiritual reflection, but also as a unifying framework for the Viennese population amidst the looming Ottoman threat. Fabri’s sermons, with their emphasis on collective guilt, prayer, and penance, as well as the necessity of divine intervention, resonate deeply within the context of a city grappling with its identity during a period of religious upheaval.

Likely suggested by Lazius, the artistic representation by Lautensack further cements this narrative, transforming the historical siege into an allegory of triumph over adversity. Ultimately, the convergence of art and theology in this context illustrates the enduring significance of biblical imagery in shaping communal resilience and identity, thereby reinforcing Vienna’s symbolic role as a modern Jerusalem. This analysis not only enriches our understanding of the cultural dynamics of the time, but also invites further inquiry into the ways in which religious narratives continue to inform collective memory and identity in contemporary contexts.