the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

it does during the Council of Trent (“in qua praecipue & de salutari ac necessaria
Reformation & de uariarum haeresum extirpatione tractandum est”) and believes that the
work could show the right path (“omnia bona uiam ostendere”). 488
The Dionysius passages that Cochlaeus chooses are, indeed, in tune with the
Constitutions. In one passage taken from the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Dionysius praises
order and hierarchy itself, which “entirely reject[s] and exclude[s] the disordered, the
unregulated, and the confused; and, at the same time, choose[s] and manifest[s] the
regulated and ordered, and well-established.” In Cochlaeus’ compilation, this particular
sentence is highlighted by a marginal note (“sacerdotium omne inordinatum et confusum
arcet a se”). 489 Cochlaeus also includes most of the letter to the monk Demophilus
discussed earlier in this chapter, in which Dionysius reprimands the monk for insulting
his superior and acting above his station. 490 And as in the Constitutions, Dionysius
threatens the disobedient with dire consequences, referring again to the priest Uzziah
(called Ozias here), who was stricken with leprosy for daring to offer a sacrifice without
using a priest as intermediary. 491
To prove that schismatics such as the Lutherans are punished not only with
leprosy but even with death, Cochlaeus appends to the compilation two contemporary
examples on the subject of how Protestantism leads straight to disorder and chaos. The
final text in the compilation is from his own biography of Martin Luther 492 detailing
certainly unknown at the period when Ignatius lived” (106). The letter itself is on pages 110-112.
Polycarp’s letter is believed to be genuine. Ibid, 31.
488 Cochlaeus, 2r.
489 Johannes Cochlaeus, Epitome Apostolicarum Constitutionum, In Creta Insula, per Carolum Capellium
Venetum reperatarum, & e Greco in Latinum translatum (Ingolstadt: Alexander Weissenhorn, 1546), 11v.
490 The passage is in Letter 8, and the reference to Uzziah is found at 1089B-1089C of that letter.
491 Cochlaeus, 13v.
492 Recorded contemporaneously over the first twenty-five years of the Reformation by Luther’s lifelong
antagonist Johannes Cochlaeus, the Comentaria de Actis et Scriptis Martini Lutheri was published in Latin
179