Luther on Hagiography and Hagiographers on Luther

Abstract

There was a remaining task necessary to assess to what extent the principal post-Tridentine Castilian hagiographers, Alonso de Villegas and Pedro de Ribadeneira, were moved by the European controversy on the cult of saints and hagiography in the context of the Reformation: to compare their declarations of purpose and their allusions to the Protestants with the pertinent texts of Luther and his affines, on the one hand, and their Catholic antagonists, on the other. So this work has consisted in identifying these texts, locating them, extracting them and translating them (when necessary), to put them in relation.

The conclusions deriving from such a comparative exercise are that, depending on the level we are dealing with, we find touches of agreement between both sides so virulently opposed, both in regard to the appreciation of the saints, and in regard to hagiography, that the Protestants also end up making theirs. But finally the differences weigh more, because the Protestant manipulation of the hagiography is rejected by the Catholics, who abide by the hagiography authorized by the tradition of the Church, including miracles, as is the case of Villegas and Ribadeneira, on the path of the Italian Luis Lippomano and the German Lorenzo Surio.