Blame Luther. Academic networking, doctrinal censorship and the international condemnation of Martin Luther (1517-1530)

Despite the ever growing historiographical interest in Martin Luther, the early Catholic response to the Luther’s thoughts has often been overlooked. Still, within four years after the proclamation of the 95 theses, three doctrinal condemnations by the universities of Cologne (1519), Leuven (1519) and Paris (1521), one papal excommunication (1521) and an imperial ban (1521) were imposed upon him. This project wants to study the Catholic condemnation of Martin Luther from a transregional perspective by focussing on the connections, dependencies and intertwining between the academic condemnations, the papal condemnation by Leo X and the imperial ban of Charles V. It concentrates on two research questions: (1) what were the (intellectual) networks behind the condemnation process of Luther and (2) what are the textual and theological similarities, interdependences and intertextuality of all condemnation texts? These questions will be addressed through a prosopography and network analysis analysis of the individuals involved and an in-depth textual and content analysis of the condemnation documents. Doing so, not only this project will shed light on the transregional character of the censure process of Luther, it will also contribute to the ongoing historiographical debate on the dynamics between the knowledge, power and censorship in Early Modern Europe.